Page 113 of Reaper's Pack

I went left; I would never go right again, not as I once had.

The lamp on Declan’s bedside table was on, but his bed sat empty.

As did Gunnar’s. I frowned in the doorway—until a wiry, luxurious shadow sidled into the corner of my eye. A glance down the hall had me grinning again: arms crossed, lips quirked, Gunnar leaned against the doorframe at Knox’s bedroom.

My cheeks warmed under that unfamiliar gaze. Everything else about him was the same: a statuesque figure corded with subtle strength, his skin pale, his lips thin and passionate, his limbs long. He stood before me in a slouchy pair of grey sweatpants, his chest bare and toned. But those eyes. Once a dark, lush blue, they had lost their sheen during Richard’s attack, and now, as if they had absorbed some of his magic, sparked with a startling bright blue, forever humming with electricity. In a way, they suited Gunnar better, but it would still take some adjusting to on my part.

“You’re all wet, reaper,” he mused as I padded over to him. His crossed arms loosened, and I rose up on the tips of my toes for a teasing little kiss. Our mouths lingered a breath apart, and his pursued mine when I eventually dropped back down, his chuckle tickling between my thighs. A firm hand cupped my chin, holding me close, and Gunnar cocked his head to the side, a few chocolate-brown curls falling over his new eyes. “I suspect this won’t be the last time I tell you that tonight.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Promises, promises…”

His touch was like fire, and I cuddled into his chest, my lower lip caught between my teeth, and basked unabashedly in the heat.

“Did all go well with Alexander’s pack?”

I nodded, trailing my fingers over the muscular curves of his arm. “My pack now—until they find a suitable replacement.”

“You should be the only reaper in Lunadell,” he murmured into the top of my head, his hands locked behind my back. “You can handle it.”

“No, I can’t.” Pushing up onto my toes again, I stole a quick peck, then danced out of reach when the hellhound snapped at my lips. The solid clack of his teeth colliding sent a shiver down my spine, a promise for what was to come glittering in his eyes. He had said it more than once in the last few days that I ought to be the only reaper—that I should just take Alexander’s pack and reap Lunadell on my own. But then I would never see my boys, forever jumping between Earth and Purgatory to escort souls—not for me. I was happy to share the burden. “But thanks for your vote of confidence.”

His arms tightened around me when I tried to squirm free, so I ducked under them rather than struggle to break through them, slipping around his narrow hips and skirting into the bedroom behind his back.

The sight always took my breath away: Knox actually sleeping in his bed, not just standing guard next to the hearth. In fact, until recently I hadn’t ever seen Knox sleep, but his body needed it to heal from the monumental trauma of that night. Shirtless, the alpha reclined into a mountain of pillows, half sitting up, like he had fought to stay conscious until he just couldn’t a second longer. His head lolled onto his shoulder, the stubborn creature, all those pillows Gunnar and I had fluffed for him totally wasted. Still, he looked peaceful enough, his eyelids smooth, his handsome scarred features relaxed.

Might wake up to a kink in his neck, but that was a small price to pay for recovery, surely.

At the end of the bed, Declan occupied his usual place, stretched lengthwise, snoring softly on top of the covers with an arm crooked under his head, his back to me. Long red stripes replaced what had once been shredded flesh; I still wasn’t used to that either. Charon’s brutal whip had left eight neat slices down Declan’s back, and while they had been the easiest to heal on the day, my magic and his natural healing ability working together to close his gaping wounds, there was still the risk that they would eventually just scar over.

Leave him branded.

It didn’t sit well with me.

But he was alive, same as Knox, and at the end of the day, that was all that mattered.

Moving quietly, mindful of the few floorboards that were extra creaky, I crept deeper into the room and climbed onto the enormous king-sized bed. It dipped beneath me, the blankets slightly askew under my knees. He looked so peaceful, my noble alpha—the hellhound who had been willing to die for all of us.

On that awful day, once we had stabilized Declan, Gunnar and I whisked them both back to the house. Knox’s wounds would have been fatal had the angel I’d summoned from the reaping department not arrived in time. At first, Angelus—do not get me started on the name—had refused to treat my dying alpha. After all, he had touched a reaper’s scythe: he should die, or at the very least lose his hands. But then he saw the marks on my neck, my shoulder, my wrist. And then, patiently, he had listened to my story, really absorbed every detail. Knox and I were fated mates, same as Declan and Gunnar and me, and with his alpha blood, Knox had been permitted to return my scythe to its rightful place—though not without cost.

Slowly, the angel and I had fixed him up, me sealing bone and sinew, Angelus growing flesh from nothing. From there, he had returned to the Silver City and summoned a tribunal council to assess the incident. We had been called to testify—Knox gave his deposition from this very bed—and Alexander had disappeared. The trials were then postponed. No penalty had been placed on my beloved hellhound for taking my scythe into his own hands, but he was cautioned from doing it again.

“If I have to choose between my hands and her life, I’ll do it again in a second,” Knox had snarled from beneath his blankets, all those pillows stacked high around him, his hands red and sore and healing.

Today the flesh was pink and soft, like stretching out his fingers risked tearing it along the faded lifelines on his palm. Gently, silently, I lifted Knox’s huge hand to examine the new skin, pleased with its progress. Angelus had estimated he would need another week before his full strength returned and suggested Knox not shift in the meantime. My poor alpha had been miserable sitting around in bed these last few days, even with the TV we had set up for him, all the books, the steady onslaught of healthy meals I made him eat, but the only real thing that seemed to make him happy was our company.

I was just about through examining his other hand when Knox exhaled curtly and nudged me away.

“Stop fussing, woman,” he muttered, voice rough with sleep, eyes still shut. At the end of the bed, Declan roused with a deep breath of his own, and I shook my head, grinning.

“Hush and let me fuss.”

I snatched up his hand and gave the fingertips a hard look; they had been a little too pale that first day, leaving Gunnar and me fretting about circulation through his new skin. Knox shuffled about beneath the covers, then snapped his hand around mine and shot up with more vigor than I’d seen in days, tackling and pinning me to my back with a growl. Months ago, that sound would have terrified me. Tonight, I went down in a fit of squealy giggles, curtained by his black mane, tickled by the ends of his beard.

“Knox, stop,” I ordered halfheartedly, squirming when he secured my wrists on either side of my head. “Your hands—”

“They’re fine, mate.” His mouth seized mine midprotest, swallowing my indignant noises with a kiss that made my toes curl. Not only did it thrill me to see his energy up, his movements less stilted, but I’d really missed his rough caress in the short time he had been bedridden. I wriggled beneath him, my effort to escape more for show than anything, my heels digging at the bed, my hips writhing, my back arching. The dip in the mattress told me Declan was up, and the faint tread of bare feet across the hardwood confirmed that the little display had caught Gunnar’s eye too.

I sucked in a gasp when Knox dragged an openmouthed kiss along my jaw, my lashes fluttering in the dim lamplight. Outside, another crash of thunder announced that the storm wasn’t dying down anytime soon.

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