“Why?” Tendons writhed beneath the skin of his forearms. “You think I’mlying?”
A nerve ticked in Liam’s jaw. “Greg will be over soon. He can test your blood to see how much Sillin’sleft.”
Wishing those two could bury the hatchet, I sighed and returned my attention to Cole’s computerscreen.
“So . . . anything?” Matt asked, slinking toward me as though to move as far away as possible from Liam andAugust.
Windows were popping open on the computer, one over the other, and then a map appeared. Cole zoomed in, then clicked on something that turned the flat map 3-dimensional.
He squinted at the screen before leaning back in his chair and clucking his tongue. “So Ness is a littlegenius.”
My skin prickled. “There’s amine?”
“There’s a mine. A silver mine. And a bunch of class action suits filed to have it shut down by a certain HenryMorgan.”
“Was that Cassandra’sfather?”
“Uncle.” Liam’s breath burst against mytemple.
So concentrated on the screen, I hadn’t heard him come up behindme.
“He was the Creek Alpha at the time,” Lucasexplained.
I turned toward my Alpha, goose bumps scattering over my arms from the thrill of our discovery. “Liam, you realize this means we can call the dueloff?”
His eyes gleamed as brightly as his teeth, which were on fulldisplay.
His smile unsettled me. “What?”
“Babe, we’re not calling it off. Thanks to you, we now know how to defeather.”
My stomach hardened like a fist. “Thanks to me, we know how she cheated. We have no clue how to beather.”
“Of course we do. By not getting any of her silver-tainted blood in us.” Liam backed up and started pacing the cowhide rug. “Julian bit her. That was the beginning of his end. I won’t biteher.”
I gasped, not okay at all with the turn of events. “How are you going to kill her if you don’t biteher?”
“Claws. I’ll use myclaws.”
“What if she wounds you and rubs her blood into yourwound?”
“I healfast.”
“You said wounds inflicted by Alphas take longer to heal,” Isputtered.
“I’ll make sure to keep away until my skin seals shut. Besides, you saw her. She’s slow and not particularly strong.” He stopped pacing, beelined toward me, and then scooped me up and spun me. “Fuck, Ness, we gotthis.”
When he set me down, my head spun, but not only from the sudden movement. It spun from dread. There were still so many risks . . . And then, because having a headache wasn’t bad enough, my navel began to burn as though someone were jabbing it with a fierypoker.
August pushed off the wall and shot toward Liam. “You’re a selfish prick,Kolane.”
Liam wrenched his shoulders back and got into August’s face. “A selfishprick?”
“You think you got this, but what if you don’t? You won’t be the only one in that ringtonight.”
“Seconds don’t engage,” Liam spatout.
“Have you fucking met Morgan’s Second?” Augustsnapped.
