Page 110 of Reaper's Pack

Don’t give in.

I swore I heard him, clear as day, inside my head. Maybe I was delusional at this point, but the strength in his gaze emboldened me, gave me courage.

For how much longer, I wasn’t sure, not when I watched him get up only to be knocked back down—over and over and over again. Declan crawled around, dragging that awful chain behind him, screeching when the whip made contact, the lashes ripping his skin. Their intensity seemed to sharpen, hitting harder with every strike, and I tried so damn hard to be strong.

But I couldn’t endure this.

Couldn’t let the hellhounds I loved suffer for my stubbornness.

And yet I couldn’t condemn innocent souls to him, to be torn apart and eaten by a sick god while his disgusting little sidekick watched.

Dragging in a ragged breath, I turned away from the violence, frantically searching once more for something I could use to help—maybe even to harm. A rock. A fallen candle or its silver stand. Anything.

My knees gave out when I realized there was nothing. Nothing I could reach. Nothing I could summon. I crawled to the far right of my cage, hands scrambling over the ground, desperate for the smallest token—

Two orbs glittered in the darkness dead ahead of me. I stilled, Declan’s shrill cries louder than ever, the singe of Gunnar’s fur making me gag. Leaning to the left, then right, then back again, I stared hard at the dark mouth of a rocky opening that would have only been waist-high on me, narrow and unassuming, sequestered off to the side. Ignored, most likely, by a certain god and warlock.

Something caught the light depending on how I leaned, reflected it back at me.

I had seen that reflection before: Knox sitting in the corner of his room, next to his hearth, keeping watch while his pack slept in his bed that first night.

My heart soared, and I pressed up as close as I dared to the shimmering orange bars, squinting as a massive humanoid shape came into focus, filled the entire opening, black mane and all.

“Knox?”

33

Knox

This pain was going to kill me.

Stop my heart—bam.

But not until I let it. Not until I had done what I came here to do.

“Knox?” Hazel’s choked whisper grated my frayed nerves. I hated to even guess what she’d thought of my absence—where her mind had gone, thinking I had abandoned her, the pack, everything. The look in Gunnar’s eyes had been torturous enough, but the thought of my mate’s heart breaking because I wasn’t there…

That was the pain that would finish me off, not her scythe chipping away at my flesh.

Over the course of the day, I’d had a theory. A theory that could have either panned out or wound up a miserable failure. No matter the cost, I’d needed to try. Needed to throw that damn warlock off the scent. Needed Declan to play along, to make my beta, my second-in-command, a piece of me, believe I had betrayed everything we now cherished.

As it stood, the theory had worked.

To a degree.

Hot blood coursed down my arms in rivers. Dripped on the floor. If that fucking god wasn’t so busy getting his rocks off with the whip, he would have smelled me. Rage rooted me in place; Declan’s cries were so familiar, and for once I couldn’t rush to his side and bully back his abusers. He had to take it, and so did I.

I readjusted my grip, the slightest movement wrenching further agony from everywhere. My flesh—on fire. My heart—clamped and choked and twisted. The pain was in my bones, my teeth, driving into my skull with a ferocity I had never experienced. It would kill me; that much I knew.

A scythe imprinted on its reaper.

With such power, it could never fall into the hands of a stranger.

It fought back. Scorched flesh. Turned bones to dust.

So too would be my fate. But not yet.

Hazel was my mate. We were one, two sides of the same coin. My alpha bloodline gave me strength unparalleled by other hellhounds. I could endure. The scythe knew me the moment I clamped my hands around it. It knew me—but still it resisted.

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