The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (19 page)

I pause on the steps. “She’s a big girl. She makes her own decisions. And besides, if things play out like you say, she either dies now with friends at her side or she dies alone later. What do you prefer, Mia?”

“My friends are all dead,” Mia says, her voice thick with sorrow and anger.

We’re a few feet from the bedroom door when Mia sniffs the air and says, “Holy hell, Lil. You got a kill room up in here?”

“Sort of.”

I enter the master bedroom. Plastic crinkles under my feet.

Mia takes a slow breath when she sees the dead family. I look at her. Try and gauge her reaction. I’m hoping for shock. Sadness.
 

But her faces remains perfectly expressionless.
 

“This it?” she says. “This all you wanted to show me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, fuck it. They offed themselves. Made the right call. There’s worse ways to die, trust me.”

“Look at them, Mia.”

“I am, you fucking crazy bitch. Bunch of dead Skins. Seen a thousand a day since your man marked your neck.”

“No. Really
look
at them.”

“You trying to pin this on me? That it? What the fuck, Lily? You need someone to blame, look in the mirror. None of this would’ve happened if you had the sense to stay away from my Prez.”

I ignore her, turn to face the dead family.
 

Something cool and slippery wraps around my neck. A snake, thicker than my arm, winds down my chest and around my back, squeezes the breath from me.

“Mia…please…”

“Call her, bitch,” Mia hisses. “Call your creature. I know you’re dying to. I see it in your ugly face. Call her and rip me to pieces.”

I can’t breathe. Warm wetness leaks from my nose.
 

Blood.
 

“Call her!” Mia hisses.
 

“I…can’t…”

“No? What a shame. I think I changed my mind. I think I’ll murder you after all. Simply because I can.”
 

The snake tightens its coils, lifts me into the air—

“Fucking let her go, Mia. Now,” someone says from the doorway behind us. “Or I blow your face across the wall.”

Trish.
 

“The cop chick likes her gun,” Mia says. “But it’s a bad idea all around. You fire my men come running—”

“Release her,” Trish repeats.

“They’re gunna launch those grenades—”

“Guess I’ll take that chance,” Trish says.

Mia sighs. The snake slowly slithers off me. When it’s gone I stagger to the wall, take a few gasping breaths and say, “You still haven’t looked at them.”

“Time’s almost up,” Mia says, “I best get going.”

“Let me kill her, Lil,” Trish says. “She hates you. She’ll hunt you—”

“Just fucking look!” I scream at Mia.

“Everything all right?” Anik calls from downstairs.

“Not the sharpest tack,” Mia laughs. “Cute but dumb. My favorite kind.”

“Anik has a good heart,” I say.

“Oh, I’m sure he does. It’s certain to get him killed.”

“See them? How they died?” I kneel down, trace my fingers over the faces of the dead, closing their eyes. “They were afraid. But peaceful. They died with their loved ones, Mia. With their
family
.”

“How sweet. My heart bleeds.”

“You have a family, too. A pack. You could die with them. But instead you’re choosing to die,” I gesture toward the window, my lips curling in scorn, “with
them
. A bunch of asshole strangers. Skids and redneck douchebags. You said so yourself.”

“Doesn’t mean shit,” Mia says. “When you’re dead you’re dead.”

“Really? I think it means a lot, who you choose to have at your side when you die. Look at the faces of this family and tell me you honestly believe it doesn’t matter.”

There’s a long silence.
 

“My pack is dead,” Mia says, so quiet I barely hear.

“You don’t know that.”

Mia looses an angry burst of breath. “And besides. The fucking bastard! He was
shit
at leading. Drove our pack right into the ground. And for what? For
you
. A piece of Skin trim.”

“Aaron didn’t know what I am. And by the time he did it was too late.”

“The motherfucker!” Mia shrieks, smashing her snake-arm through the drywall. “The stupid, infantile, fucked-up, brainless asshole motherfucker!”

Mia sends the snakes away, then punches her bare fists through the wall in fury and grief. Drywall dust fills my nose. The floor shakes.
 

Mia’s tearing the room down around us.

“That douchebag Skin army will turn on you in a heartbeat when they discover what you truly are,” I say. “They
hate
you. Your life is a lie. I never thought you’d let that happen, Mia. Thought you’d want to face the truth head-on. Arm the missiles and fuck whatever comes next. You don’t belong with those assholes. You belong with the Purebloods. Running free.”

“That age has passed.”

“That’s what you tell yourself. But you don’t
know
. How many others like you are out there? Dying alone? Surrounded by enemies? Living a lie?”

“You’ll never make it out of this house alive,” Mia says.
 

“We will. With your help.”

“
Help
? Help with what, exactly? What the fuck’s the plan, Lily? Do you even have one?”

Trish lowers her Glock.
 

“The plan is…uh…we go north. To find my father.”

“Your father? Why? He also your brother? The First Fallen?” Mia says with a cruel chuckle.

“No. But he…knows my missing son. And I just feel…like I need to find him is all. Like he might know something that can help us defeat the Fallen.”

Mia leans her head against the smashed-in wall. “That’s not a plan, Lily,” she says. “That’s a fucking schoolgirl fantasy. You want to see your daddy one last time. Clear the air. Say goodbye.”
 

“I need to find my son,” I say, my tone cooling.

“Yeah, that’s wonderful. Perfect…for you. But what about your pack? What do
they
need?”

Trish casts me a glance like she’s with Mia on this.

 
“Look, we do this one thing. One thing! Find my son. And then we…we find my fourth sibling. Connor told me about him. Rodas. He’s in Mexico City. And after that…” My voice trails off.
 

“After that we hunt the motherfucker down,” Trish says.

“Yeah,” I say, real slow. “After that we hunt the Fallen.”

Mia and I share a long glance.
 

“I’ll get you out of here,” Mia says in a burst of frustration. “After that you’re on your own.”

I say, “You should travel north with us.”
 

Mia gives a frustrated sigh. “I should’ve
killed
you. I should’ve torn your chest open at the safe house when you first came down from Aaron’s room.”

“You would’ve if Sorry and Nash weren’t there.”

“Bet your lumpy tits I would have.”

“So?”

“So?”

A long, potent pause. Mia looks at me. Then at the dead Skins at my feet.
 

“Well?” I ask.
 

“We got forty-five seconds,” Mia says, scowling. “You all bleed red?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. That’ll help. We need to make it look convincing. Now. Which one of you bleeds? I say you, Lily. I say the cop bitch bleeds if she wants to live.”
 

“I
F
YOU
CAN
’
T
beat ‘em join ‘em,” I say after Mia and Lily lay out their plan to have us fake being Skins and use the New World Order’s convoy to get us to the Monroe Correctional Complex.

Which is where? I don’t exactly know…and neither, I think, does Lily.

“Then it’s settled?” Lily asks.

“Yes,” I say.
 

But something in my voice or the way I say it doesn’t seem to sit right with Lily, and so she says, “Only for a day or two.”

She thinks I’m upset at being forced to hide my spirit animal. But that’s not it. I don’t think he’d come even if I called him. I’m upset about what happened with the Kin Eaters. Upset that Sedna is still out there, searching for me.
 

Hunting me down.

And what that means for me.
 

I’m not rid of her. I still want her.

Why?

Shiori told Lily it’s because I still feel guilty about what happened to my parents.
 

Still haven’t forgiven myself.
 

She’s right. There’s a poison churning through my blood. Self-hatred. I deserve to be consumed by Sedna. Deserve that endless suffering. And I think…as long as I believe that…some part of me will always be locked in Sedna’s watery lair.

“All right,” Lily says, looking at Mia. “Do it. And don’t have too much fun.”

“Oh, this is going to be
nothing
but fun,” Mia hisses.
 

Faster than my eye can follow Mia slams her gloved fist into Lily’s face. Lily’s head snaps back. Blood pours from her nose. She touches her upper lip, then stares at her own blood reddening her fingertips.
 

“Not convincing enough,” Mia says in mock concern. “Need to get you bloodier if they’re gunna believe you resisted—”

Mia catches Lily with a firm backhand. The smack echoes through the house. Lily swallows a shriek and then Mia hits her again and this time Lily looses a low growl and her skin begins smoking and her eyes go bright red.

Her animal’s close.

“You better keep that thing inside, sweetie,” Mia says, rubbing her knuckles. “And don’t heal up too quick. Or we’re fucking done for, got it?”
 

Lily swallows, nods. Her eyes resume their usual light brown color. Her face is swollen and bruised. There’s a cut along her cheek and her nose is still bleeding badly.

Mia hands Trish a length of cord and tells her to bind everyone’s wrists.
 

Shiori, crouched in a dark corner of the suburban McMansion, sniffs with derision when she sees the cord. She’s not taking to Lily or Mia or their plan too well.
 

And I can’t say I blame her.

Right now, though, I’m willing to do almost anything to get out of this house. I feel…constricted. Caged up. Like the walls of the room are pressing in on me. I’ve always felt most comfortable outdoors. This fancy house was a coffin for the family who owned it. Filled with shiny objects, trinkets, expensive things. Gleaming stainless steel appliances. A garage full of unused sports equipment. Twenty different cheeses molding in the fridge.
 

A life of self-interest and accumulation.

I’ll never understand the southern land.
 

These shallow people who judge a life by how much they own.

I should never have answered Lily’s call.
 

Should never have dragged my sister here.
 

The longer I stay the weaker I become.

I miss winter cold stinging my skin. The sound of ice cracking beneath my paws as I stalk my fleeing prey. The boreal forest, stunted black spruce trees heavy with snow and emerging like ghosts in the days-long dawn of late winter. If I manage to make it home I swear I’ll never leave. This world can burn for all I care. As long as Pim and I are safe.

Mia crosses her arms, taps her heel impatiently. “Well?” she says to Lily. “Are they in? Are we all fucking
clear
about what needs to be done.”

“We’re in,” I say, gathering Pimniq close.

Mia eyes me skeptically. She’s pretty. Made up to look hard, and I guess that’s what this cruel land demands of her. But her eyes? Sparkling violet and green. Glittering like jewels in the dim half-light inside the house. She’s more than coldness and cruelty and an uncompromising will to survive, and when Mia notices me looking at her maybe a little too long she reaches out, snaps her fingers inches from my nose and says, “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you too bad, handsome.”

I look away without saying a word.
 

Southerners. Always talking but saying nothing.

“What about the creepy chick?” Mia says, jerking her thumb at Shiori. “Pasty bitch has to keep her fucking bugs on lockdown.” Mia raises her voice, looks at all of us in turn. “You get it? No animals. No weird shit. You’re just a bunch of frightened Skins I rounded up to sell into slavery at the Blood Market. Yeah? Cuz if these douchebag assholes even
suspect
you’re something else—”

“We know,” Lily says quietly. “We saw.”

Mia’s jaw tightens. “Right.”

“You’re certain about this?” I ask her.
 

“Fuck no,” Mia snaps. “I’m not certain of shit. This isn’t a sunshine holiday cruise. No one’s gunna suck you off poolside. Maybe the Skins kill you. Maybe they take a shine to your little sister. Maybe I can convince them to leave you all alone. Maybe not. But I am certain about this: any of you go weird and shit’s gunna go sideways real fucking fast. Now. We’re lucky you’re the only male. That makes it easier.”

“Why?” I ask.

Mia lifts a heavy-looking ceramic vase from the coffee table. “Because the women are
valuable
, you nitwit. You?” Mia raises the vase over her head. “Only way you’re gunna live is if I claim you’re valuable to
me
. Admah gets what she wants.” Mia smiles, waiting, then looks up at me and says, real quiet, “I can’t smash this vase into your fucking head unless you kneel, big guy.”

I look at Pimniq. Tears track down her cheeks.
 

There’s clarity in the north.
 

A thing either is or isn’t.
 

Life is simpler. More pure.
 

But here? Nothing is clear or simple or pure.

Deceit and treachery are the only constants.

Maybe Shiori’s right.
 

Maybe our alpha has failed us.

I kneel.

***

I wake very thirsty, with a pounding head and stinging wrists.