Page 58 of Reaper's Pack

I shouldn’t leave him alone, but where the hell was he going to go without his pack? Nowhere. None of them could cross the ward without me breaking it first, so, really, I had zero regrets abandoning him on the sidewalk and jaywalking across two semi-busy lanes of traffic just to get some space.

Space I needed to cool down in—otherwise today would be pointless. Declan and Gunnar had made their connections with me already; I’d felt the shift in our dynamic, an ease around the house despite my guilt. Knox was the last—and most stubborn—brick to fall. Today had to go well. We needed to go home unified.

And…

Well, sex was one way to go about it, much to my surprise, but unfortunately, our tension just wasn’t the kind to erupt in a fit of carnal release.

More like a shouting match if he kept pushing me.

Although I seldom frequented cafés as a reaper, I went through the motions, same as any other body in there. Placed my order. Paid—I didn’t steal everything, after all. Waited for the drinks to be made, breathing in the scent of cocoa beans and humanity. Listened for my name. Hazel. I took a to-go paper cup in each hand, the pumpkin spice lattes inside positively scalding against my palms, then flashed a strained smile at the distracted woman who held open the door for me on the way out.

Back across the street, Knox wasn’t where I’d left him, but as instructed, he hadn’t gone far. Following the gravel path into the park, I found him seated on a bench under an old oak, its leaves kissed by autumn decay. He practically took up the entire space, legs spread wide, utterly alpha in his stance, those thick arms stretched along the pine backrest.

He was watching the dogs in the little park within a park. Head cocked to the side, his dark eyes followed those in the bigger run, the edges of his mouth lifting when a few started to tussle.

That flicker of a smile extinguished when I entered his sightline, and he readjusted himself on the bench, allowing me a smidgen of space to sit beside him. Arms withdrawn, he accepted his drink without a word, and I slumped against the rigid bench’s back, looking but not really taking in the dogs at play.

“Humans go wild for this every year,” I forced out a few minutes later, neither of us indulging in the drinks yet. Both of my hands coiled around mine under the guise of warming them, steam swirling from the teeny opening on top. “Pumpkin spice latte… It’s a seasonal treat.”

Knox grunted, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, latte in one hand, still somehow dwarfing me with his size. I sighed.

“Knox, when are we going to get on the same page?”

“Do you have something planned for today?” he rumbled, eyes tracking a human with a leashed dog jogging along the path in front of us. The golden retriever didn’t look our way, but his hackles rose ever so slightly when he passed by Knox. Smirking, the hellhound shot me a sidelong glance. “Or will it just be straight to sex—rutting in those bushes over there?”

“Stop.”

I swiped at my hair, half-up, half-down, a few white tendrils stuck to my coat and tickling my chin. Even through that intimidating black mane, his neat facial hair, I noted the dance of his jaw muscles like he was gritting his teeth. Good. I’d take annoyance over smugness any day.

“No,” I admitted after a beat. “I didn’t plan anything for us, because I have no idea what you’d want to do.” Declan had needed a soft place to fall, something simple to start out with. Gunnar’s fascination with music was obvious. Knox, meanwhile, remained a goddamn mystery. “But I figured we should talk.”

The hellhound huffed a cool laugh before bringing his latte up for a sniff. “Well, you guessed wrong, reaper. I don’t want to talk.”

Shocker. I rolled my eyes, shifting in place to face him. “Look, make fun of me all you want… Make all the sex innuendos you want. It happened. I don’t care what you have to say. I don’t need your permission to…” My face exploded with heat, the kind that beelined straight down between my thighs when he lifted his black eyebrows. “Never mind. We’re in this together. Whether you like it or not, your pack and I… we chose each other.” I held up a hand to stop him when he straightened, taking a breath like he was finally ready to argue. “No, we did. You saw the importance of reaping for yourself. And if you don’t pass the trials at the end of this month, if you run away, you’ll be taken back to Fenix—or maybe someone worse.” The idea made me sick, honestly. “Maybe you’ll be put down because you can’t do your job—”

“Our job?” Knox’s enormous hand snapped tight enough around his latte that the plastic lid popped off. With a growl, he clamped it back in place. “None of us chose this life—this job. We were bred into it. Manufactured centuries ago to serve your kind.”

I’d thought about that at length before, and having spent the last two months with the pack, I felt even worse about it now than I had then. Honestly, I tried not to think about it, otherwise I would spend each and every day perpetually nauseous. “And I’m sorry about that. This isn’t how I would have you get into any of this. You’re my… You’re my partners. We’re a team. I want you to succeed.”

“And what about what we want?”

“What do you want?” I crossed my legs, waiting for honesty—for the truth this time, after weeks of Oh, we just want to go beyond the ward to learn about humanity, Hazel. Right. Like I believed that was the whole story for a second.

A dogwalker with a pack of eight attached to a belt around his waist strolled up to the fenced-in park, on his phone, not noticing that the smallest of the bunch was dragging behind. Knox seemed more interested in them than me, going so far as to stand up when the little white fluffball whined and stumbled over his front feet. Fortunately, the brief pause at the gate allowed him to catch up, and soon enough they were all inside and off-leash, scampering about as their minder chatted with another human. Scowling, Knox returned to the bench, and I offered him a sympathetic look that he ignored.

“If I had to guess,” I said softly after reminding myself of who he was, what he was in the grand scheme of things, “I think you want safety for your pack and security for its future. Food, a bed, respect… the freedom to come and go as you please.” Knox spared me a glance, barely looking over his broad shoulder in my direction, a shoulder I battled the urge to touch, to rest my hand on so he could feel that I meant what I said. “I’m sorry you’re in this position. Really. I am. From the bottom of my heart. I think it’s foul how your kind came to be, and walking through Fenix’s kennels was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever experienced.

“But my feelings, your feelings, our indignation—it doesn’t change anything. Those running this world are more powerful than me and you. We’re just a piece in the machine, easily replaced when it becomes faulty or makes too much noise. And if we fail the trials…” I finally did touch him, grabbing at his arm hard enough for him to shrug me off and give me his full attention, even if the brunt of his black stare made me want to shrivel up and hide under the bench. “If we fail, you’re gone. Can you really afford to let Declan go to another pack where they’ll attack him, put him at the bottom again because of his size—scar him even more than they’ve scarred you? Do you think he can survive that? And Gunnar… Do you want to see him in a pack where nobody appreciates him, where he’s bored and aggravated, his talents wasted? I certainly don’t. That would destroy me.”

It wasn’t the snide comments that would bring me to my breaking point—it would be watching this pack disintegrate.

“They’re good at this,” I pressed on. “Gunnar and Declan may have been forced into this life, but they are exceptional hellhounds—we both know it. You wouldn’t tolerate them if they were any less, and they wouldn’t have sailed through my field training otherwise. They’re good. They could be great. And they actually seem to like reaping. Declan connects with frightened souls with nothing more than a look. Gunnar will never lose a soul, no matter how slippery they think they are.” Everything around me blurred—Knox, the park, the dogs in the run—eyes suddenly stinging with tears—with passion. I let him see the shimmer but wouldn’t let them fall. “They don’t deserve to be taken away from this life, or from you, or, frankly, from me. I don’t want to see that happen, and neither do you.”

Knox studied me a beat longer, then looked away, back straight and eyes unfocused as he surveyed the park in silence. At least he hadn’t snarled at me, sneered about circumstances we were equally powerless against.

At least he appeared to be mulling things over.

That was a start.

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