“I only helped them once I found out what you were. Once I knew that David had been a full-blooded wolf, I knew how valuable you would be to them. I want the power that is owed to me. I’m the firstborn son. I should be what I was meant to be.”
“You son of a bitch! You’ve killed me! I’m going to die and it’s all because of you,” Maddy wailed.
I growled and stepped beside her, putting an arm around her. She was vibrating with fury. I couldn’t imagine the betrayal she felt. This man, who had slowly become a member of her family, a connection to her past, a man who she thought was growing to love her, had slammed a knife into her back for his own greed.
“No!” Kenneth said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you dead, Maddy. I lied to the royals. I gave them false information. They won’t be here for at least another day. I just need your blood. Now that Luis found the vault, I can use your blood to get in and take the vial of Edemas’s blood. I can finally become a shifter. My blood isn’t pure enough to become a werewolf, but that’s not what I care about. I just want to be what I was born to be. You and Nico will be able to get away safely. I’d never break my promise to your mother. I loved her too much to help them kill her child.”
“You’re a traitor,” I said, stabbing a finger in his direction. “How can you expect us to believe you? You’re only telling us what we want to hear.”
Kenneth shook his head vehemently. He tossed his gun across the room where it bounced safely on the sofa. He held his hands up and shrugged. “I promise, I don’t want you dead. You just can’t leave until I have her blood.” Tears dripped from his eyes. “Please, Maddy. I loved your mother. I love you because you are your mother’s daughter. Please believe me.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Maddy said. She sounded confused, dejected, and sad. “I can feel it.”
I turned to look at her, unable to believe what I was hearing. “What?”
“I can’t explain it. We can talk about it later.” She turned back to Kenneth. “I’ll make you a promise,Uncle. Cut off all contactwith the royals. Put your trust in me and Nico. If you do that and stay out of our way, I’ll make sure you finally meet your dormant wolf. Do we have a deal?”
Kenneth stared at her for several seconds, then I witnessed a grown man breaking down. His face crumpled, and he slowly sagged down to his knees. He was sobbing like a baby. “Thank you. I’m so sorry. I never meant for things to get so out of hand. I’ll go back into hiding. I have another safe house. I promise you, the royals will never hear from me again.” He glanced over at me, and even though I still wanted to rip his head off, I let him speak. “Nico? I’m sorry. I never wanted Maddy hurt.”
I shook my head. “Kenneth, it?—”
I never got to finish that sentence. A burst of air slammed through the cabin—the sizzling, buzzing sound of a bullet. It crashed through the back window, crossed the room, and slammed into Kenneth’s forehead. A neat little black hole appeared like magic between his eyes. A spray of red-and-gray gore splattered on the wall behind him. Kenneth’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and his body fell forward. His head bounced lifelessly on the floor.
Maddy’s scream ripped through the air.
35
MADDY
My scream was still reverberating through the cabin. My eyes were locked on Kenneth’s body. All I could see was the massive pool of blood spreading from his head. He was gone. In an instant. One second, he was alive and talking to me. The next, he was just gone.
I was shaking violently, like I was freezing to death. My mind was starting to dissociate. I was dangerously close to going into shock, and I was fully aware of it. There was So. Much. Blood.
“Move!” Nico hauled me through the front door, almost tearing my shirt off with the grip he had on me.
I hadn’t even noticed the other gunshots. Bullets were knocking out windows and snapping through the wooden doors. Nico and I stumbled down the steps and sprinted into the woods. He tugged me along, his breath remaining steady. Nico was running so fast that a normal human would never have been able to keep up. I was just barely able to stay with him because he was pulling me along. My foot snagged on a tree root, and I crashed into the ground. The forest floor was thick with pine needles, so I thankfully didn’t hurt myself.
Nico slid to a stop and crouched down with me. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was going so fast.”
“Are they still shooting?” I whispered.
Nico looked back the way we’d come and shook his head. “Not right now. I don’t hear them following, either. It doesn’t mean we’re safe. We really need to keep moving.”
I nodded and wiped dirt off my hands and knees. “Okay, just not so fast.”
Nico took my hand and led me deeper into the forest. He stopped every two or three hundred yards to find a break in the trees and check the position of the moon. It felt like he was leading us somewhere, but I had no clue where. Nico had never been here before. He had to have some sort of plan, but whatever it was didn’t make sense to me. All I could do was follow. I didn’t even want to risk whispering. Shifter senses were strong, and the people who’d killed Kenneth could still be on our tail. I didn’t want to give anything away.
After nearly forty-five minutes, we emerged into a small clearing with a narrow gravel road that led east and a big lump of something that was covered by a camouflage tarp.
“Thank God. I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to get here,” Nico said, relief coating his every word.
“What the hell is this?” I asked.
Nico led me toward the tarp, then took hold of one corner. With a jerk of his arm, the plastic sheeting slid away, revealing a small Swedish SUV. I looked at Nico like he was some sort of magician. How the hell had he managed to get a car to this clearing?
He must have seen the look on my face. “I didn’t put it here—Kenneth did. There’s three or four gallons of water and some shelf-stable foods in there. And a pistol in the glove box.”
“Kenneth? How did you know he had this here?” My mind was still reeling from everything that had happened in the last hour. This was the last straw.
