Page 64 of Reaper's Pack

“Get back on the celestial plane,” Hazel growled, “and see to her soul. She is lost. She is broken. She is terrified.” The reaper situated herself between me and the sobbing ingrate, peering down her nose at me, only a slight quiver in her lips suggesting she wasn’t in complete control. That, like me, she was a second away from shattering. “Do your duty, Knox. Now.”

Hazel spoke of duty…

This should be my duty: punishing the wicked.

Perhaps I ought to work in the pits of Hell instead, inflicting punishment onto damned souls.

No. My eyes slid to the growing pool of bright red blood. No, I couldn’t torture the damned for eternity; I could barely stand to breathe the same air as this cretin.

“She needs you,” Hazel told me, her flat inflection hinting that this was the last warning I would get before I found the scythe at my throat again. While I hesitated at first, eventually I turned, my innate protectiveness forcing me to cross between realms. Annoyance ripened at the fact that she knew my trigger—that I would always defend the meek. It was what separated me from other alpha hellhounds: the need to protect the smallest among us rather than pit the others against them.

Amy’s soul remained in a tight ball on the floor, tearstained cheeks hidden behind her hands. I smelled the salty tang of sorrow as I approached, dropped to the ground, and positioned myself like a great furry black wall between her and her killer. While I would have preferred to focus on her, to lick her tears away, to nestle in so that her shaking body found warmth in mine, there was one big bloody distraction that I just couldn’t ignore.

In the mortal realm, Hazel crouched before the battered male. She traced her hands along the wounds, sealing them with the same grace and ease that she sealed our ward. Slowly, the color returned to his cheeks, the life to his eyes. He eventually found the strength to sit up and skitter back, crashing hard into the nearby couch with a cry. Hazel studied him for a moment, then crept closer. Her finger found his forehead, even as he shrank away, and once she made contact, the vile creature at her feet stilled, eyes glassy, jaw slack.

“You’ll forget the hellhound,” she said, firm and in control again. “The name Knox will mean nothing to you. The last five minutes never happened.” Her finger left his flesh—and she faltered. A heartbeat later, it was back, and her white brows crinkled. “But you will never forget what you did to her. You’ll never forget this night. You will remember, in painfully vivid detail, until the day you die how you killed her, the look in her eyes when you finally choked the life out of her. And deep down, you will understand, Christopher Morten, that when you die, we’ll be back for you. Knox and me, we’ll be waiting,” she whispered, “to take you straight to Hell.”

Withdrawing her hand, she stood with a disgusted look, then wiped her finger on her robe, as if to rid herself of this Christopher Morten for good. The human lay there on the floor, dazed, and only came to when Hazel stepped inside the celestial plane and left him utterly alone in the house, with the corpse of his mate and the faint knowledge that he was damned.

My eyes tracked her every movement back to Amy, even if she wouldn’t so much as glance my way. Hazel crouched at the soul’s side, expression hard, while I remained a silent, looming presence. At no point did I utter an apologetic whine, nor did I growl out my frustration that she had stopped me from killing him, from punishing him for committing the foulest crime of them all.

Murdering one’s mate…

I’d never forget it.

Never forget this night.

It made itself at home alongside a lifetime of other vile memories and would likely surface from time to time in the future.

And I then would remember how it felt to lose control.

How it felt to disappoint her.

“This is your last moment of suffering, Amy,” Hazel murmured as she stroked the soul’s hair from her face and took her gently by the shoulder. “I promise.”

She then reached for me with the hand clasping her scythe, resting the rigid staff along my back.

And in the blink of an eye, we left the nightmare at 786 Clemments Street behind for good.

* * *

Anxiety rippled through the pack bond—mostly from Declan, which was nothing out of the ordinary, but also from Gunnar tonight, both of them fearful of my failure. Sighing, I threaded my fingers together, then tossed my head side to side, a noisy, satisfying crack thundering from my neck with each toss. Declan paused his pacing for a moment, his attention on me, face crinkled with worry, then resumed his back-and-forth in front of the manor’s double-doored entrance.

If he went any longer, he’d wear a path into the tile. Gunnar, meanwhile, leaned against the opposite staircase from the one I sat on, still as a statue, that dark blue gaze drifting from the doors to me. Silence hung over the entire house—the whole property, even, the night deathly quiet, the forest still. Hazel had been gone for almost an hour now, and every faint creak of the settling manor sent fire through the bond from all three of us, each expecting our reaper to fly in at any moment.

It was exhausting.

While my pack wore clothes—Declan in a sweater and jeans, Gunnar in more formal trousers and a grey button-up—I sat naked. Dried sweat clung to my skin, and forest earth caked up my calves from the solo walk back. After we had deposited Amy’s soul in Purgatory, Hazel had brought me to the property’s edge, cut clean through the ward, then ordered me in. After closing it behind me, she vanished, no doubt off to deal with my impulsivity on a higher level.

Fuming yet slightly remorseful, I had trudged through the cedars alone, half as a hound, the rest of the way a naked man. Mud coated the soles of my feet and between my toes. The bitter fall chill had settled into my bones, and the battle lust had faded in her absence. A poorer alpha would have kept his failings from his pack, but living in such tight quarters, knowing the bond forming between the others and Hazel, it would get out eventually. Gunnar and Declan had greeted me at the front door, eager as pups for the news.

And I’d given it to them, every bitter detail. The excitement had vanished, and here we waited with bated breath—for my fate, for Hazel’s true reaction to what I’d done to that fucker.

Gunnar had snarled and buried his fist in the wall at the notion of harming one’s mate, even a hair upon her head.

Declan had raged silently, raw fury pulsing through our bond.

I’d known then that they had been thinking of her—of one of us, or some other bastard, truly hurting her.

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