Page 59 of Reaper's Pack

Mouth dry, I took a small sip of my latte, the sweetened coffee cooled just enough that it didn’t scorch my tongue. The spice concoction wasn’t anything new: ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, a pinch of allspice. Humans had been baking fall treats with it since I was alive, long before even, but its popularity nowadays opened it up to ridicule.

I rather liked it.

There was nostalgia in the blend, memories of Mum’s homemade pies, Dad’s hot chocolates with a dash of cinnamon and cloves. It made me smile, the taste, the smell, and I’d hoped it might temper Knox this afternoon, but so far, his drink remained untouched.

“You know, I’ve tried to understand you, Knox,” I told him with a shake of my head and a frown. “I’ve tried to get to know you—”

“Have you?” His patronizing laugh brought the heat back to my face, and I rolled my shoulders, once again preparing for a bout with him.

“Well, you aren’t exactly an open book.”

The hellhound shot to his feet so abruptly that the bench’s thin wood panels literally bounced back into place without his massive body weighing them down. I gripped the metal armrest instinctively, latte jostling around inside the cup, my frown deepening when he looked over his shoulder at me—only barely, mind you.

“You want to know me?” he asked, growling out every word so low that I had to strain to hear him. “Quid pro quo, reaper. You first. Try to give instead of take.”

I rolled my eyes again; I knew I shouldn’t have let them watch Silence of the Lambs the other day. But fine. I wasn’t exactly an open book either, but if someone asked about my life, the life before this, I had nothing to hide. So, shouldering my purse, I stood, then jogged after him when he strolled toward the gravel path. His pace was slow, leisurely, like he was waiting for me to fall in line, but those long legs carried him a great deal farther than five of my steps would have.

“Well, what do you want to know?” The little rocks crunched underfoot, and I slipped one hand in my pocket, ignoring the sudden outburst of barking dogs, their owners shouting for them to calm down.

“How did it feel to die?” He said it so casually, examining the trees—the first batch of non-cedars he would have seen, the last of the pack to leave our forested territory. I swallowed hard, throat dry again, and then chugged down half my latte to compensate. The sweetness that I usually enjoyed curdled in my belly.

“It… It felt like nothing,” I told him as we followed the path’s gentle curve deeper into the park, a pair of joggers zipping by us on the grass. “And, I guess, it felt like everything too. It happened so suddenly… They bombed us. I was in France for the war—”

“The Second World War?”

“Yes. I was an army nurse. We had a small camp set up for wounded soldiers, and the Luftwaffe did an air strike in retaliation for an English one… It was over before I even realized what had happened.” I didn’t remember my reaper, but I was told after, when I had accepted my scythe, that there were thousands scattered across Europe for the war. Reapers and their hellhounds, rounding up the millions who had died. A vague, fuzzy memory of the angel Peter remained, somewhere deep in my mind, along with the sensation of a frigid hand on my shoulder as we approached him and the gate. After that, nothing. Then paradise. Then—longing.

“Did you have a mate?” Knox asked, moving on without pressing for any of the gory details. I arched an eyebrow up at him.

“This isn’t quid pro quo, Clarice,” I insisted. “I’m supposed to ask a question now.”

We paused at a fork in the path. Left would take us to the outskirts of the park, to smaller paths that opened here and there to the sidewalk and the rest of Lunadell, surrounded by wilting fall flowers and hip-high stone walls. Knox turned right, herding me with his huge frame toward the playground, the tennis court, the kiddy pool.

He also straight-up ignored my comment, and I sensed this wasn’t going to be a back-and-forth at all. But maybe I owed him something more than that. He was right, after all. Reapers took, took, took from their hellhounds. I could give.

Maybe this was his way of connecting with me.

So, fine.

“I had a fiancé,” I told him after a group of women in spandex power-walked by us, chatting and laughing, a few pumping five-pound weights with each dramatic swing of their arms. “Royce. We grew up together… He lived just down the street. Sweet man. A good man. He was drafted when the war started, and I joined the nursing corps on the off chance that we could be together over there. He survived, I didn’t. Death… let me reap him a few years ago when he finally died.”

“Did you love him?”

I shrugged, studying the smattering of dead leaves hanging off a maple. “I thought I did.”

“And do you think you love Declan? Gunnar?”

A little bump in the path caught me by surprise, but I stumbled more over the question than anything. Was that what this was all about? Rooting out my intentions with his packmates? I bit the insides of my cheeks as heat bloomed in my chest.

“I don’t know.” Might as well be honest. Knox’s whole stern, silent, sexy brooding schtick had always suggested that he could sniff out lies anyway. “I care very deeply for them… for all of you.”

There was no cool chuckle this time, but a deep, barreling laugh that scattered a handful of pigeons pecking around a garbage can up ahead. I stopped, every inch of me wound tight as Knox laughed in earnest for the first time in… Well, it was the first time I had seen this genuine amusement before, and it hurt.

It hurt that he still didn’t believe me, that he could just guffaw away my feelings like they didn’t matter, like they weren’t real.

“Don’t be like that,” I snapped as he wiped under his eyes, his tanned skin flushed beneath all that rough facial hair, his mouth stretched so wide it might just fall off his face.

“Like what?” he asked through his tapering snickers. We had come to a standstill, and this time, when a cluster of joggers blitzed by us, one slowed to shoot us a glare over her shoulder—like we were the biggest assholes alive for just standing there. I stared back, unfazed, then shifted my fury to Knox.

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