Estelle’s shoulders drew up to her ears, and he half thought he’d have to haul her to her feet, when she finally staggered upright, pushed along by pride. She still wouldn’t face him, keeping her back to him as the people she had failed to protect drew even closer, prepared to see judgment handed down.
Jono licked his lips, tasting blood. “You’ve done a lifetime of damage to the packs and this city. You failed to do your duty by them. You failed to keep them safe.”
“I kept them safe from humans,” Estelle argued in a raspy voice.
“You sold them when you didn’t outright murder them by having someone else do it for you. Because that’s how you kept your hands clean all these years, isn’t it? Paid someone else to dirty theirs. You couldn’t even kill your own husband. Had to have an Erinyes do it for you. Youssef died to keep you in power, and he died for nothing.”
She turned to finally face him, chin held high, defiance in her amber eyes. It was all a lie, the truth in the way her hands shook by her sides, and the sour fear in her scent that drifted on the muggy evening air. “Keep my husband’s name out of your mouth.”
“I’ll say what I like. You have no authority here. Not anymore.”
Estelle flinched at his words, but she didn’t lower her gaze, didn’t show throat. “I will always be a god pack alpha.”
“You aren’t anything if you’re dead.”
He could see it in her face, in her eyes—the terror of a trapped animal with no way out. And like anyone else when faced with death, she tried to bargain her way back to life.
Estelle spread her hands in a beseeching manner that was all an act. “If I stand down, I have the right to exile.”
“Bollocks. We owe you no mercy.”
Estelle glanced around at the crowd surrounding them, looking for support she would never find again in the eyes staring back at her. “Is this how you’ll start your rule? On a pile of bodies?”
“We’ll bury the ones that matter and leave the rest to rot in unmarked graves. No one will claim you, if that’s what you were hoping.”
“Some alpha you are.”
“I’m better than you’ll ever be, with or without Fenrir.”
“I knew we could never trust you.”
“Fenrir never trustedyou,” Patrick called out in a raspy voice that made it clear he’d been screaming, long and loud, at some point that day. “None of the animal-god patrons did. You weren’t worthy of their blessings, so you went looking to demons instead.”
“Don’t stand there and talk to me about making bargains when yours are the only reason you made it here today.”
“Maybe so, but those bargains will keep our people safe. Yours only put some quid into your pockets,” Jono said.
Estelle shifted on her feet, nostrils flaring. She wasn’t nearly as bloody as others who had followed her into the fight and survived, which was typical of how she’d wielded her position all these years.
“Do you expect me to lie down and die?” she asked.
Jono stepped forward, spreading his arms wide. “You’ve spent months trying to kill me. I’m right here.”
Estelle had no chance against him, not after everything she’d done, the side she’d chosen, the bargains she’d made. In the end, Jono’s god pack had beaten hers through sheer political outmaneuvering, and Estelle was left in the unenviable position of choosing to die standing or on her knees.
Estelle chose to go out fighting, like Jono knew she would. One didn’t become a god pack alpha by letting a chance to change the narrative—however minuscule—slip through their fingers. For Jono, it had been taking a meal with Marek and crossing an ocean to find where he belonged.
He refused to give up what he’d fought so hard to keep.
Estelle went for his throat, like Jono knew she would, and he was ready for it, Fenrir slipping through his soul and mind to guide him. Jono used his longer reach to grab her by the shoulder with one hand and her throat with the other, claws sinking into pale, thin flesh that would never carry a demon again.
Jono yanked her close, claws meeting within the warm flesh of her neck, blood flowing down his hand and wrist. Estelle’s mouth moved around silent words as she stared at him with wide amber eyes, her own claws scraping over his arms with little strength.
“Stay human,” Jono said, Fenrir’s power imbuing the order with a command she couldn’t hope to fight.
Estelle shuddered in his hold, amber eyes going wide as she realized his will, backed by Fenrir, was something that would break her. Then Jono tore out her throat so deep he could see the shiny white vertebrae of her spine before blood bubbled up to cover the bone.
Jono dropped Estelle like the rubbish she was, watching as she fell to her knees, hands rising to her throat and the blood pouring out of it, jaw tipped down at an unnatural angle with no muscle to support it. Estelle slumped to the side, gravity pulling her down, until she lay on the ground, adding her blood to the mix that had already spilled.
