Bellamy smirks at her. Then she says mockingly, “The unvarnished truth will truly set you free.”
Doc Z swallows, glancing at Presh. The young awry has both hands pressed over her mouth, as if she tried to stop Doc’s words even though they weren’t her own.
“I … that’s not … I didn’t mean …” The pegasus shifter shudders, angling her gaze toward me but looking at the gravel under my feet, not anywhere near my face. “You just … you’re just letting her walk around … what am I supposed to think?”
“That it isn’t any of your business,” Cay says quietly. “That we’re supposed to be guarding Presh’s and DeVille’s asses when they aren’t at the pack house, not harboring hate for the subset of essence-user who’s the focus of our protection detail.”
Doc Z squares her shoulders, preparing to defend herself.
Cay cuts her off before she gets started. “Fuck me, Zephyr. Zaya is standing right fucking next to you. You can feel the power she wields. You can feel that she is power. If our pack ties weren’t so strong, we’d probably be groveling at her fucking feet right now. Just walk it off.”
Doc Z shakes her head. “That’s not … this is not justice.”
“So sheltered, little horsey,” Bellamy purrs maliciously. “Never had to truly fight to survive. Always been handed everything because you’re just that extra bit special, aren’t you, pegasus? Never had to make a choice at all, I bet. Just attached yourself to the strongest shifter you’d ever met and tried to ride him all the way to a mythical white-picket fence.”
“You’re so not helping,” Cay snaps.
“You did kill Kris, though,” Presh says quietly to her newfound sister.
Bellamy snaps her mouth shut on whatever she was going to say next, her face blanking. She looks at Presh for a long moment, then she nods. “She was dead the moment she sat down at the table. Could have been either of these two.” She inclines her head toward Doc Z and Cay. “But Kris was closer to your age, so I followed that thread.”
“And it led you all the way to me.”
“Yes.”
“You could have spared her.” Presh’s voice cracks. “Once you saw the fight with the Outcast wasn’t going the way you wanted … the way he wanted.”
“It went exactly as planned,” Bellamy says. “It exposed the cracks in the Outcast’s security, the complacency. And taking the club would have made the intersection point more vulnerable.” The former dire awry glances my way. “You’ve figured out that part? That he wants the intersection point? That’s why he took your aunt and tried to …”
“Drain her power,” I say. “Like he drained mine.”
“What?” Presh’s lower lip trembles. “He … killed your aunt?”
“Yes. I have no idea how he managed it …” Well, I have part of an idea. Or rather, two parts of an idea. Rejected or not, Disa had been vulnerable to her soul-bound mate, and the universe made a choice when its Conduit was trapped. It chose me over my aunt.
Presh takes a long, slow breath in, then blows it out. “Still doesn’t change your actions, Bellamy.”
“It doesn’t. Nothing altered my world view at all … until I found you.”
Doc Z scoffs.
“And then …” Presh prompts.
Bellamy looks at me, as if I might understand her more than anyone else tucked into this small parking lot. “And then … I covered my true intentions with as much brutality as I could wield.”
“So … it was Kris or me,” Presh says. “You kill Kris, or my father puts me in a cage.”
Bellamy doesn’t answer, looking out at the view instead.
Presh nods. Then she looks at Doc Z, her hard expression so foreign on her normally sweet face. “So blame me, then,” she says. “Since I’m at the root of Kris’s death. Since you hate all the awry already.”
Doc Z starts to shake her head.
“Or,” Bellamy drawls nastily, though she doesn’t bother looking at the shifters, “maybe you should look at yourselves first. Since the two of you pampered fucking princesses just sat there chattering about who had the bigger dick between our brothers. Nattering about all the ways you’ve fucked them while getting your fucking nails painted as I coerced your supposedly fucking treasured sister.”
“Ew, Bellamy!” Presh gags affectedly.
“That’s enough,” I say, slightly annoyed that it’s the references to my soul-bound mates’ sexual pasts that irked me enough to interject. “Bellamy is with me now, and that’s perhaps a fate worse than feigning being locked away by the Outcast. Or dead at the Authority’s hands.”
