Rage flooded through me, hot and familiar. At least anger was better than the devastating hurt trying to claw its way up my throat. “Get off this property.”
“Or what? You’ll fight me again? How did that work out last time?”
Mary moved faster than I could track, werewolf speed I couldn’t match even with my enhanced abilities. Pain erupted across my ribs as her claws raked through my shirt and into flesh. I cried out, stumbling back, hand going to my side. Blood seeped between my fingers, hot and sticky.
“Next time I won’t be so gentle,” Mary hissed, her claws still extended and dripping red. “Take your mongrels and run, or I’ll gut you in front of them.”
Hunt’s roar from inside the house could probably be heard three blocks away. Mary’s eyes widened and she vanished into the trees before he could burst through the door.
I tried to stay upright, tried to look less injured than I was, but my legs weren’t cooperating. The cuts burned, deeper than they’d seemed at first, and blood was soaking through my shirt at an alarming rate.
Hunt caught me as I swayed. “Shit, you’re bleeding. Kids, stay inside! I need to call Knox!”
But Thea was already in the doorway, flour still in her hair, eyes wide with terror. “Mama? Is Mama okay? There’s blood!”
“Stay there, sweetheart!” Hunt called back, already pressing kitchen towels to my wounds while fumbling for his phone. “Everything’s fine!”
Everything was not fine. Mary was pregnant with Knox’s baby. He’d lied to me. Again. Given me a ring while carrying on withher, made promises while planning a future with someone else. How could I be so stupid? How could I fall for the same tricks twice?
“Come on, pick up, pick up...” Hunt muttered into his phone. “Knox! Thank fuck. Mary - the bitch attacked - no, not the kids. Lina. She’s bleeding. It’s bad, Knox, she...”
His voice cracked, and I could hear Knox’s roar through the phone from across the room. The sound should have been comforting. Instead, it just reminded me of all the ways he’d fooled me into trusting him again.
“Mama!” Both twins were in the doorway now, Rowan holding Thea back even as tears rolled down his face. “Hunt, please tell Mama will be alright!”
“Your mama’s tough,” Hunt said, but his hands were shaking as he applied pressure to the wounds. “She’s going to be fine.”
I could feel it already, the strange sensation of skin knitting back together under Hunt’s hands. The enhanced healing Knox’s bite had given me was kicking in, closing the wounds with unnatural speed. I wouldn’t need a doctor, it seemed. Just another reminder of how he’d changed me, marked me, claimed me while lying through his teeth.
“Five minutes,” Hunt was saying. “He’ll be here in five minutes. Just hold on, Lina. Five minutes.”
But five minutes felt like forever when your heart was breaking all over again. The ring burned on my finger. I wanted to rip it off, throw it as far as I could, but my hands were covered in blood and movement made the pain worse.
“Knox is gonna lose his shit,” Hunt muttered, more towels already soaked through. “Fucking Mary. I knew we should have dealt with her sooner.”
Dealt with her. Like she was a problem to be managed, not the woman carrying Knox’s baby. His real baby, not the bastards he’d had with a human. The heir Mary had called it. The legitimate one.
My vision blurred, and I wasn’t sure if it was from blood loss or tears. Probably both. Here I was, bleeding on Noah’s porch because Knox’s pregnant girlfriend had attacked me, while my children cried in the doorway and Hunt tried to hold my insides in with kitchen towels.
“Stay with me,” Hunt said urgently. “Don’t you dare pass out. Knox will kill me if you pass out.”
Knox. Everything always came back to Knox. Knox who’d promised to earn my trust. Knox who’d sworn there was no one else. Knox who’d given me his grandmother’s ring while planning his wedding to another woman.
The skin was definitely healing now, pulling together in a way that felt wrong and right at the same time. But the physical wounds were nothing compared to the gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be.
I was such a fool.
30
— • —
Knox
I sat in my office with Noah, reviewing the investigation into Mary’s pregnancy that had become my personal nightmare. Papers spread across my desk, timelines, scent analyses, everything we’d gathered in the last few days while trying to figure out who the actual father was.
“The scent markers are strong,” Noah reported, tapping one of the documents. “Whoever the father is, he’s powerful. High-ranking. That narrows it down to what, two dozen wolves?”
“Less,” Noah said, leaning back in his chair. “Mary’s vain. She wouldn’t sleep with anyone she considers beneath her. No low-ranking wolves, no one poor, no one she finds unattractive.”
