Page 32 of Reaper's Pack

But the pup had held his tongue, uncharacteristically so when it came to her, throughout all this—the arrival of our food, followed swiftly by Gunnar explaining that he had followed her into the real world yesterday morning. My second-in-command let it all out in agonizing detail, from her weepy visit to the children’s school to her depressing sit-in at the mall food court.

Hazel hadn’t said a word either until this moment, but her cheeks had grown darker and darker, and as soon as Gunnar concluded his tale, she’d shot up from her seat at the other head of the table, no longer squaring off with me. Now, she couldn’t seem to stop moving.

“I think we should talk about this,” I insisted, working hard to keep my voice even and calm, like I was soothing Declan after an incident with—well, fuck, anyone in Hell. Her flushed cheeks and accusatory glares threatened to throw me, riling me up from the inside out. With all the windows closed in the otherwise empty dining hall, her scent hit hard, raging like the sea.

Breathing through my mouth helped a bit, thank fuck.

“Oh, you think we should talk about this?” Hazel bristled as she rounded in place and marched back to the table. “Yes, let’s talk about the incredible invasion of privacy and the ridiculous breach of trust. Let’s.”

Declan wilted at my side; if he could, he probably would have hidden under the table for this conversation, but for the plan to move forward, we all had a part to play. Gunnar, meanwhile, showed no outward signs that her indignation affected him, his skin smooth and pale as always, lips in a thin line as he filled our glasses with a pungent red wine.

“Hazel, you must understand our position…” Reclined back in my seat, I threaded my hands together and let them rest on my chest. Above all, I intended to look relaxed throughout this conversation, refusing to get dragged into some ridiculous push and pull with Hazel’s anger.

Hazel. Her name always left a strange taste in my mouth, as though I had craved it all my long life, even if it made me sick—like it was too good for me. But I’d watched a documentary recently wherein the human interrogators used a criminal’s name repeatedly throughout the questioning to build trust between them. That was big for her—trust. If I could create it subconsciously, then we were doing better than expected. “After all, we were born and bred in bondage. Raised for servitude. In our cases, all three of us have suffered greatly at the hand that barely fed us. Gunnar simply wanted to know you.”

“That’s crap,” she fired back, pointing her scythe at us so abruptly that Gunnar stiffened to my right, eyes on the blade. Hazel huffed a lock of that white mane out of her face, her free hand twisting in the shapeless black gown hiding her curves. “I know you’re trying to find a way around the ward, and now you did, and now I’m going to have to—”

“What?” I tipped my head to the side, brows up in another silent challenge. “Punish us?”

Her cheeks ripened to scarlet. “Well, I mean, no, but—”

“Hazel, I think—”

“Stop saying my fucking name. I know what you’re doing.”

I bit back a smile. Her fire was exquisite.

She was right to smell like the sea, this ghostly reaper garbed in shadow, calm one moment, a tempest the next. Exhilarating, really, to find such a quality in a female.

“Fine,” I said gently, hands up in mock surrender. “I simply think this is an opportunity for growth.”

She shook her head with a scoff, the angles of her face catching the light of the overhead chandelier—a gaudy gold piece lit by three dozen candles, not electricity, the massive room cast in an eerie orange glow.

“This sets us backward,” Hazel argued. “It’s not growth.”

“You wish to build trust? All right. Let’s build trust together.” Fingers twined together again, I directed both pointers toward the stained glass window behind her, the focal point of the room, the feature wall—fuck all those house renovation television programs. “And let’s build it out there.”

Her mirthless laugh made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “Fuck no.”

Declan exhaled sharply, fiddling with his fork and refusing to meet anyone’s eye.

“Seeing you weep for the humans changed my perception of you, Hazel,” Gunnar admitted, his honesty catching her—and me—by surprise. Hazel. He’d also watched that documentary.

The reaper stared him down for a moment, full lips parted, distracting, and then rolled her eyes and stalked away from the table.

“I see you now,” Gunnar pressed as he rearranged his cutlery, his plate, his glass, positioning each piece at perfect angles, all straight and aligned with the table’s edge. “Not just the reaper who paid for me, who I am contractually obligated to serve…”

More raw honesty. I glanced at Gunnar’s sharp profile; if there was one hound better at masking their emotions than me, it was my beta. But perhaps a touch of earnestness was what we needed.

Because the goal was to earn her trust—truly. Then, when she felt for us, connected with us, cared for our well-being beyond her duty as a reaper, we would start to pull away.

And Hazel would let us. Because of all the trust, connection, and care. This moment right here was the start. No part of me wished to spend more alone time with her than necessary, not when she affected me like she did, but it was the best plan we had under the circumstances. Bullying our way out wasn’t an option, nor could we breach the ward without her help. While we three had slowly expanded our horizons and learned more about our own brand of magic, magic that had been beaten out of us for years, we were nowhere close to outriding a ward.

Warding magic was complicated and highly specialized—not something any of us were about to master anytime soon, if ever.

Recently, a human proverb had struck a chord with me: you catch more flies with honey.

While I wasn’t the honey type, I’d be a fool not to recognize the power in that sentiment.

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