“Bullshit. You weren’t listening to me when I was talking just now.” Patrick never blinked, never looked away. “You good?”
“Yeah, mate. I’m good.”
“Okay. I’m going with you.”
“No.” When Patrick opened his mouth to argue, Jono covered it with his hand, Patrick’s breath warm against his skin. “Marek is at his flat with the rest of the Tempest pack. Take Wade and go there. Keep Marek and Emma’s pack safe. I don’t trust what Estelle and Youssef might do whilst I’m in the god pack’s territory.”
Patrick dropped his hands down to his side, and Jono removed his own from Patrick’s mouth.
“I’m not a huge advocate of murder without an alibi, but if anyone deserves a grave, it’s those two,” Patrick said after a tense pause. “I’ll keep an eye on Marek. Maybe this time he’ll even listen to me when I tell him to stay put.”
Jono didn’t know what he was going to do when he got to the god pack home, but he knew enough about himself that murder wasn’t off the table.
He leaned down to press a hard kiss to Patrick’s mouth before retreating to the bedroom to get dressed in proper clothes. Dark wash jeans, a grey T-shirt, and his second-favorite boots. Jono’s fingers were steady when he laced them up, Fenrir’s fury sparking along his nerves even as his heartbeat remained eerily calm.
“Take the car,” Patrick said when Jono came back out. “I’ll call us an Uber.”
“You sure?” Jono asked.
Patrick waved him off, half-finished with putting away the food so it wouldn’t spoil. “Go.”
* * *
If asked,Jono would say he remembered the drive Uptown, but in truth, it felt as if he closed his eyes in a slow blink and found himself standing on the porch from yesterday when he opened them again. He didn’t have Patrick by his side this time, but he had Fenrir riding his soul, and Jono had to tamp down the desire tokillas he reached for the doorknob.
Guide me, he snarled at the god.Like you promised me you would.
Fenrir’s answer was a howl in his thoughts that bit like teeth—sharp and fierce and dangerous like a feral animal.
Jono’s hand crunched the metal doorknob, his strength tearing the door off its hinges when he slammed it open. The threshold couldn’t keep him out because Estelle and Youssef had already requested his presence. Jono stepped inside, the sound of dozens of heartbeats drumming in his ears through the floor from below.
The single werewolf left to man the front door eyed Jono with wide amber eyes. She scrambled out of Jono’s way, giving ground in a show of submission no one in her god pack would appreciate if they’d witnessed it. Jono ignored her and walked deeper into the home.
The god pack’s central building had gone through many renovations over the decades. One of the biggest was a deep underground stadium that stretched beneath half the houses on the block. It was where pack challenges and trials were handled, in a dirt ring that had seen too much blood over the centuries. Jono knew Estelle and Youssef had never once cleansed the place, the same way their predecessors hadn’t.
It smelled like death down there, and had since the god pack first claimed this territory generations ago.
The underground stadium, with its grave-like scent, was a place only pack alphas ever saw. It was a place Jono had visited exactly twice since coming to New York. Once to plead his case to remain in the god pack territory here, and once to witness a failed challenge from within the god pack itself in the face of Estelle and Youssef’s leadership.
Jono remembered that execution. He would never call it a fight, fair or otherwise. He always thought Estelle had manipulated the discontent seeping through her god pack like rot to put on a show just for him.
A warning, if one liked.
One Jono hadn’t taken to heart at fucking all.
The stairs leading below ground were lit by light bulbs now, though the old torch and candle brackets were still bolted into the stone walls that gave the stadium its shape. The winding staircase reminded Jono of the steps in the parapets of Notre Dame from a school trip he’d taken years ago as a young lad.
Unlike that sacred cathedral built on holy ground and cleansed daily by way of prayer, the staircase here and the underground stadium it led to was currently filled with the scent of unease, grief, and desperate anger. Beneath all that was the old, coppery tang of blood. The disparate scents stung Jono’s nose, twining through his lungs even as he listened hard to the heartbeats he could hear, picking out the ones that mattered.
Emma, Leon, and Sage.
All three were here, all three were alive, and Jono aimed to keep them that way.
Jono strode forward, his footsteps ringing loudly against the old flagstones that led to the dirt circle. The surrounding tiers of seats were also carved from stone, encircling the dirt ring. Space was tight, with alphas from every pack who called the five boroughs home crowded shoulder to shoulder in the audience.
Members of the god pack took up the first row of stone seats, their rank earning them ringside positions to what was happening. Sage stood alone in the dirt ring before the god pack alphas and their dire, while Emma and Leon were on their knees between two god pack werewolves. Despite the shifted claws digging into their shoulders to keep them there, Emma and Leon both had their heads raised high.
Sage’s head snapped to the side, her agonized brown eyes meeting his as Jono stepped forward, leaving stone behind for bloodstained dirt. His fury had settled beneath his skin like hot pinpricks, the buzz in his nerves the precursor to a shift Jono knew he couldn’t give in to yet.
