Page 90 of Pack Rage
“Maybe you knocked your head, too, Del. Nobody’ll ever respect me. I’m Southern trash.”
“You’re Southern steel, Flor. You may not be the strongest on the outside, or the fastest—though we’re gonna start training with more weights. You gotta get faster at outrunnin’ those assholes.” He pulled back and stared into my eyes. It was kinda itchy to meet his gaze, but he was proud of me when I didn’t drop my head. “Your spirit is pure steel, Florida Wills. Pure steel, and as bright as a sharp blade. You’re gonna cut the rot outta this world, just wait.”
He let me go, and examined the cut on my arm again. Somehow, it had stopped bleeding already. He grunted, getting up to put the medical kit away. “But first, you’re gonna need to cut the rot out of fifty pounds of old potatoes.”
My arms had been sore after I’d peeled and chopped all those potatoes. No one had noticed the extra salt in them from my tears, though the whole table of males who’d thrown me in the trash had somehow gotten the squirts that night. I’d figured out how, when I saw the empty box of human laxatives in the dumpster.
My arms were even more sore now, though I could draw power from the moon since the dome had fallen, and power from my mates, too. But my heart was what I worried most about, and not just my own.
Glen had watched his beloved father die. Luke and Finn had both killed their own shitty ones, though I would’ve taken my mates’ places in a heartbeat if I could’ve, so they didn’t have to live with those memories. No matter how awful your dad was, there was still that connection to mourn.
Not that I was going to let myself think about that right now. Maybe not for a few years.
But now I was going to have to kill Finn’s mother right in front of him. I’d felt him end his father a few minutes before, and thought it might be the moment when Elina would falter as well. I’d hoped it would be, since Finn hadn’t been close enough to see her fall. But she’d only stumbled once, cursed, and spat a little blood. Her wolf had to be dead for her not to react at all to her true mate’s death.
Or maybe not.
“Please no. Don’t make my son see this. Not like this, not while he’s watching,” she whispered as her eyes darted to him, hovering anxiously on the edge of the loose circle that stood by, witnessing the fight. The onlookers were mainly Mountain and Northern fighters, though there were some powerful-looking shifters I didn’t recognize, big wolves that I hadn’t seen at the Southern Council. Maybe they were from some other country, but they weren’t Ivan’s Russians. No, those fuckers were allacross the ring, getting their asses handed to them by Grigor, Brand, and Glen. My boys had some aggression to work out, it seemed like, though when Grigor felt my mind touch his, he immediately sent me a thought.
Do you need us, little flame?
Nah. But Finn might.I was about to make him an orphan, after all.
I jerked my attention back to Elina. She was doing a damned good impression of a defeated woman. The faint scent of ozone I’d smelled earlier beneath the silver, when she’d been moving faster than she should have been able to, was gone. Her narrow shoulders drooped, and her hair fell around her face. Well, around part of her face. A hairpin or something was keeping half her bun from collapsing, and her long-ass hair from becoming an easy handhold for me to slit her throat.
I wasn’t about to fall for her hangdog routine. “You think I should give you more consideration than you and your mate were going to give Bradley and Margarette? You think you’ve earned a death with dignity?”
“I suppose not,” she whispered. “You’re the same as me, after all. A witch, flush with power. Why would you be any more compassionate?”
“You think I’m like you?”
She sighed. “I know it. You’ll see. The power makes your heartcold. It keeps you from feeling what you should. If I had another chance…” She hung her head, letting her sword fall to the ground. A few of the shifters watching let out shocked gasps. “Please, let him look away. Please, don’t let him see this.” I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, or praying to, but I knew what she wanted.
“Fool me once, shame on you,”Mama had said more than once when I was a little kid. It wasn’t until later that I learned there was a second part to the saying.
I turned my head away from Elina, sending Finn a look of apology. His expression was stricken, though Luke, who stood beside him, holding him back, seemed to have figured out what was going on. I liked that. He believed in me. Finn, well, he’d take some training.
I let my head stay turned for one second, two seconds…Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice?—
Elina fell for my bait and reached into her hair. I thought she might be grabbing a hairpin, but it was far cleverer than that. From the corner of my eye, I saw she had a garrote that had been holding up her bun, a fine silver wire running from one dark wood tether to another, tucked around the bun in a clever arrangement. She held one end in her hand, then sent the loop flying over my head, in a flash.
But I was ready for it. I had my steak knife already on the way up, catching the wire on the serrated blade just as it dropped over my head. With a hard yank, I tore it out of her grip, the silver stink in the air making my stomach churn.
She let out a scream of rage, but I was already using my leg to knock her off balance, hooking a foot behind her knee and driving her to the ground. One of her arms had landed behind her with a sickening crunch. The other I pinned with a knee as I kneeled over her torso. She knew she was defeated, and threw her neck back, though her eyes still sparked with a few defiant flickers of red.
“See? You’re the same as me.” Her Southern accent was back, and her voice sounded far too close to the way mine did.
One wooden end of the garrote was in my hand, the other wrapped around my steak knife. I moved the knife, thinking. I wanted to twist the wire around her neck, to let her feel the burn of silver, like so many of the innocents on this battlefield had. More than any other shifter I’d met, she deserved to have her head taken as well.
But I couldn’t do it. As she watched, I unwrapped the wire from my knife and threw the silver away.
Finn shouted, “No! Flor, don’t let her—” The sparks in her eyes flared up, into a bright fire, and I knew she was planning to use magic against me.
Let her fucking try.
My focus on my five-pointed scar, I tapped into the power that waited inside me, thebehrserkerrage that I’d first felt at Southern no longer making me a mindless killing machine. Though I expected Grigor was helping me somehow, or maybe Brand, or both of them, as I was now able to channel that strength into my arm.
She managed to say one word. “Fool?—”
