And in that moment, nothing else mattered.
The antidote worked, but not like magic. It was slow, ugly, and left a trail sadly not fast enough to save everyone. I wound up in a ward at the hospital. The worst of us were here. She was beside me, exactly where I knew she’d be, slumped in a vinyl chair the color of old blood. Her head hung forward so her chin nearly touched her chest. The ends of her hair were stained with dried tears, sweat, and mucus from her nose. Her hands were clasped together, white-knuckled, one wrapped around the other as if she could will my heartbeat into not stopping.
I tried to move my hand. It responded; a surprise. I reached out, grazed her knuckles. She flinched, then looked up, the whites of her eyes shot with red but sharp, electric, alive.
“You’re back,” she croaked. Her voice was a box of nails.
“Looks that way.” I tried to smile. My lips split again. “What’s the verdict?”
She wiped her nose on her sleeve, uncaring. “Doc says you’ll live. Most of the pack, too. Some didn’t make it.”
I nodded. I could feel the emptiness through the pack. “Who?”
She looked away. “Old ones mostly. Sable, Mr. Alonzo, Gunner’s grandma.” Her face twisted. “It was my fault.”
I squeezed her hand as hard as I could, which was less than a handshake but more than a prayer. “Wasn’t you, Wren. This was Silas and whatever demon he rode bareback. You saved us. You brought the antidote.” I wanted to say more, but the effort tore the air from my lungs. “If you hadn’t, we’d have all died. Greenbriar had been planning something for years.”
She shook her head. “Stop. Just stop.” The words came out sharp, but her grip didn’t loosen. “I just feel responsible. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d have stayed gone.”
It took all my strength to push myself up. The room spun, slow at first, then steadied. “You want to hear my theory?” I coughed. My own voice was strange to me, like listening to yourself on an old tape. “I think you made the shit start mattering. Before you, I didn’t give a fuck about much of anything. Now I want to kill everyone responsible for this, and then I want to come back here and figure out how to live. With you.” I let that hang between us, ugly and real.
Her face trembled, and I watched the wall come down and the girl I remembered peek through, just for a second. “You always were a terrible liar, Eli Leonard.”
“Never lied to you, Wren. Not once.” I forced my fingers to curl around hers, and this time, she let herself believe it.
Doc came in every few hours to check vitals, hang new bags, mutter about “goddamn miracles” and “demonic gene-editing.” He’d gotten the first shot of the antidote himself, so his hands only shook a little. He said the others were stable. Some needed more time. A few, like Rocket, were being kept in isolation, so their tiny hearts didn’t explode from the shock.
On the third day, the room was quiet. Not dead quiet—just the absence of fear. The antidote had done its job. We’d lost six, maybe more. The pack would be okay. They tried to take us down, but we’d come back stronger.
Bronc was up, but weak, his voice gone to hell. He called a meeting, insisted on it. Doc argued, said it was too soon, butBronc’s face was set and he would not be moved. So the survivors gathered, limped, dragged, or wheeled in. Even Rocket was there, carried by a nurse in a sling like a baby.
The war room looked like an ICU. Blankets on the chairs, IVs run into arms and legs, oxygen tanks for the worst of us. Bronc presided at the head, face gaunt but alive. Juliet beside him, pale and shaking but with the same iron in her spine as ever.
When I walked in, the room went still.
I pulled Parker with me, not caring who saw.
Bronc’s eyes narrowed, then softened. “Sit,” he said. “We need to talk.”
I did. The chair felt like a punishment, but I’d earned it.
He looked at Parker. “Tell us what happened after they took you.”
She took a steadying breath. “I woke up in a room at the Greenbriar compound in Clovis. Apparently, they relocated everything and everyone there. I was chained to a bed. Silas was in the room, and he told me about the toxin and that I had been given the antidote. He said that everyone here would be dead in a few days. He showed me the case that held the vials and that he’d gotten them from Maltraz. He’d left me alone for a while, and I managed to slip the cuffs. I waited for him to come back. Don’t know if he was watching me by camera or what, but he came in with his gun drawn. I hit him, and the gun went under the bed. I went under after it. He looked under the bed, and I took the opportunity to put a bullet in his head. Silas is dead. I also managed to kill two of his bodyguards. But I didn’t see Vex, Rook, or Dagger. Those are his main officers. They’re still out there.”
“Holy shit. Thank you Parker. Sounds like you cut off the head of the snake. That leaves the body, and we know that with Greenbriar there is always someone waiting to sew another head right back on it. Maltraz is a different matter altogether. I think, for him, he saw an opportunity. Greenbriar has to be the priority.”
No one argued.
“Doc says we’re through the worst,” Bronc said. “But if we don’t answer this, they'll be back. I need ideas.”
Gunner groaned, “They might have vampire help too.”
Arsenal, from his wheelchair: “I say Greenbriar first. Then we’ll deal with the other parasites later.”
“Agreed. We don’t wait,” I said. “We take the fight to them. But we do it smart. Not like last time. Not a head-on charge. We bait the trap, and when they come, we finish it. We wipe out everyone in leadership. And their pack?”
Bronc contemplated. “Damn it. They are likely innocent. Just because you’re born into a shitty pack doesn’t make you a shitty wolf. Or maybe it does. I don’t like the idea of a wholesale massacre. That’s not who we are.”
