My fingers traced over the items laid out in front of me, the silver blades and steel tools that Vergil had lent us the sort of imposing sight I hadn’t particularly wanted to find when we’d come here. Hunter stood next to me, we stayed in a twisted silence as I picked up a pair of pliers and looked over them with a saddened disgust. I was actually considering doing this sort of thing to Wounder, I was about to become a monster once more, and I didn’t even know how we got in this situation.

  Wounder had fucking sold me out, he’d told the man threatening me about Alpha, told him about Martin, everything he had and I needed to find out why.

  “There has to be another way to do this, I mean, I really don’t want to do this,” I muttered as I sat the pliers back down.

  Hunter nodded, and I watched the man reach out, taking a silver knife as he announced, “I do.”

  We turned back to the room, the main part of Vergil’s fourth floor having been cleared out for this moment, the man himself now waiting on the floor below after a hasty closing. Vergil’s poker table and chairs gone, as was any other furniture in the main part of the room, with only a coating of plastic covering the floors, closest walls, and the ceiling above, with a wooden chair in the center of the room. In that chair, tied in ropes, with a metal collar around his neck lined internally with dull silver spikes, Wounder sat with a black gag in his mouth.

  The collar was barbaric, Vergil must have gotten it from Purists or someone who found their old tools, and I only recognized it from a single encounter with a Purist elder. It was what you used to punish those who left, how you kept a werewolf in human form until death took them. All forms had a neck thicker than a human’s, all forms moved the veins and spine farther out. You’d pierce your spine, your veins, your airways, and in the end die without anything to show for it.

  I’d never thought that Wounder would deserve being forced to wear it.

  Hunter stepped forward, with no real fanfare behind it as he unbuckled the gag and tossed it aside, Wounder letting out a choking cough as Hunter held up the knife a moment, looking ready to use it already. Turning the silver blade in the light, looking over its glint, he finally brought it down to his side once more.

  I had a feeling Hunter was as conflicted as I was, and twice as nervous to show it.

  Wounder seemed to not notice, his coughing barely stopped as he asked, “what the fuck is this about? I’m not interested in getting fucking dragged into your sex games again, and this is weird even for you two.”

  “This isn’t a game,” I said, stepping forward as I gripped the man’s hair, tugging it back to stare down into his eyes, “you’ve been talking about Alpha.”

  The color drained from Wounder’s face at my words, and he looked up at me in a barely contained horror. There was a nervous gulp, the flesh of his neck moving in such a tempting way, and he declared, “you can’t just kidnap me. This is a misunderstanding, I would never-”

  I punched the man, the bones of his face cracking under the blow, and his chair nearly fell back as Hunter reached out to keep him standing. My blood boiled, and I felt the hair standing on the back of my neck as I barked, “drop the fucking act and tell me what you told him! Why is someone coming after me for killing that fucking bastard?!”

  Wounder coughed, spitting out a glob of blood onto the plastic coated ground just to cough out, “I didn’t fucking sell you out, bitch! Get me out of here!”

  He was fucking lying: he’d gotten me killed, he’d threatened Martin, and he was lying to me. I let out a growl and walked to the table, picking up a screwdriver I drove deep into the man’s thigh, extracting a yowling scream. The man nearly doubled over in agony, and I punched him another time as Hunter held the man’s chair in place.

  “Get me the fuck out of here!” the man yelled, his eyes turning to a wolf’s as I tugged his head back by the hair. He glared at me, fury in his eyes, and growled out, “what the fuck do you want from me?”

  “I want to know what the fuck you told Alpha’s dad,” I said, holding my hand out to Hunter as he passed me the silver knife. My blood was pumping, my eyes felt focused in the way only a wolves could, my teeth were hungry as I looked our prisoner over. He’d taste delicious, he’d taste wonderful, and I’d eat his fucking heart. “He told me you delivered the package, and if you weren’t the one to tell him about Alpha there’s pretty much one more option.”

  “You traitorous bitch,” Wounder muttered, shaking his head with a surprising disgust in his eyes, “look, I didn’t have a fucking choice, he was going to kill me. He found me, he caught me alone, he told me he’d fucking spare me if I told him who killed Alpha.”

  “We ate his heart together,” Hunter growled, going to the table as he started picking up tools in preparation, seeming unable to decide on anyone as they kept falling from his hands.

  “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do,” Wounder said, struggling against the ropes as I watched the desperation grow in his eyes. “What the fuck else as I supposed to tell him?!”

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  “The truth!” I growled, stabbing the silver blade into the man’s shoulder. He let out a scream, and I twisted the blade around and ripped it out, looking down at the steaming blood on its blade in disgust. “I thought you’d fucking understand, you knew what Alpha was like, and you fucking sent his dad after me?”

  “You left us!” Wounder snapped, nearly falling forward as he tried lunging at me, “You left the Purists, that’s a fucking death sentence! It was better for you to die than any of us, okay? Look, I figured he killed you, he moved on, we could actually keep living. No one else had to get hurt, except a fucking traitor!”

  I gripped him by the neck, slamming him back into the ground with as much force as I could, knocking a few pegs loose from the wooden chair. Wounder let out a cry of pain, and I held the knife’s tip over his heart as I growled, “he fucking threatened to kill my son! Are you calling that nobody else?”

  In some good sense, Wounder looked horrified, unable to move as he looked up at me with the eyes of a captured doe. A few halting noises escaped his lips, and in barely a whisper he told me, “I had no idea.”

  I looked down at him, into the eyes I’d once known, and tightened my grip on the knife. My knuckles burned with a dull pain, white as I held them tight, sweating, and I let out a low growl as I pushed myself up and took a few pacing steps away.

  The blood on the knife was almost gone, steaming off and turning the blade red as I watched it. I tried to think of what to do, tried to clear my head, and could barely contain my rage as Hunter pulled the chair to stand once more. Wounder watched me sadly, and I knew he was telling the truth about not knowing how far Alpha’s dad had gone.

  It wasn’t enough to not know.

  Wounder sighed, and I saw him look down in defeat as he asked, “I’m not leaving this room alive am I?”

  “I haven’t decided,” I said.

  Wounder nodded, seeming content with his fate, and weakly he told me, “his name is Huntsman. He’s…socialized, for a Purist. We met at different locations each time, he left instructions at a drop near our Covenant: restaurants, parks, wherever he told me. I told him what I knew, he gave me instructions to help. We met today, he told me that we were going to-” the man stopped, his expression dropping as he continued, “we were going to decide the next course of action tonight…”

  So that was it.

  This was a fucking test, he was trying to see how I reacted to finding out it was wounder. He probably had a fucking twisted idea that I still deserved to die if I killed him, and if I spared him maybe I wasn’t as bad as he thought.

  I didn’t particularly care what he thought about me anymore.

  I nodded, knowing exactly how this night was going to end as I asked him my final question, “why did you do it? You knew Alpha, you knew the fucking creep deserved to die, why fucking send Huntsman after me? Even if you fucking told him about me, why not fucking get our help, go after him together?”

  Wounder looked down, his face scrunching up as he seemed to let the words set in the air. I thought he was going to refuse to answer before he slowly told us, “Scout’s pregnant, I didn’t want her risking her life. We found out a week before he approached me last month. We were waiting until after the wedding to announce things, though…that’s not happening, is it?”

  I shook my head, clenching my teeth as I looked down to the silver knife, “no, no I don’t think it is.”

  The man nodded, and I saw him shift in his seat, glancing over to Hunter in half-held hope, “you would have done the same thing in my position.”

  Hunter nodded, and my mate walked over and patted the man on the shoulder as he answered, “as would you.”

  Wounder smiled sadly, seeming almost content with the words like he didn’t understand the point. I walked over to him, and he bared his throat to me as he asked, “can I atleast ask two favors? Old times sake?”

  “You’re not in a place to,” I pointed out, before immediately following it up with, “what?”

  “Let her know I died,” Wounder told me, sounding on the verge of tears as his bravery briefly faltered, “don’t let her think I left her alone.”

  “You did leave her alone,” I answered, tracing the burning blade tip against his neck, “but she’ll know why you did. What’s the second thing?”

  “Don’t eat my heart,” he begged, his voice croaking as tears streamed down his cheeks, “please, let me see her again, I want to hunt the fields of the afterlife with her.”

  “I don’t want to see you there,” I answered, and I gripped his hair as I drove my knife into the man’s throat.

  Wounder let out a gurgling noise, and I withdrew the knife and drove it again into his chest, once, twice, and a third time. Eventually I lost count of the stabs, and all I knew was I was stabbing him until his chair fell flat on its back. Blood shot up, stained me, forced me to squint my eyes until I wiped them, rang out gently against the plastic on the floor as it fell in a mist.

  Hunter crouched next to me, watching my work, even as I drove the knife a final time into the top of Wounder’s chest. I dragged the blade down, twisted it, wedged it, pried it, and eventually pulled it out and tossed it aside. My fingers dug into the wound, and I ripped bone and flesh apart, my fingers found their way around a mess of freshly-stopped red meat, and I pulled upon it.

  My teeth tore at the connections, my grip pulled it free, and my tongue savored the taste as I held it to my mouth. Wounder’s heart sliding down my throat in thick chunks even as I felt Hunter’s hand upon my shoulder.

  A part of me worried he was trying to stop me, as late as it was to do so, and instead he took my hands and pulled the heart to his mouth to join the feast. I chuckled, pulled the heart away long enough to hold the remains in my mouth and pull him to me. We both ate it that way, and when it was gone we kissed like old times as I felt myself pressed back onto the plastic floor.

  I punched him, the man falling off me with a surprised gasp not entirely complaining, and I let out a low laugh as I rolled on top of him. My vision shifted to that of a wolf, and as much as the wolf itself wanted to go feral a nagging thought held it back as I wondered if the silver knife and collar would start a fire with how much blood had gotten on them.

  It was a barely held together thought, but a thought all the same, and I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped through my contacts, having some trouble with the touch screen as blood smeared across it with each touch.

  Vergil answered after half a ring, and the man immediately asked, “Is it done?”

  “Yeah, it’s done,” I said, giggling as Hunter leaned forward to lick the blood from my collar, “You need to get the blood off this silver fast. I’m going to be in the guest room tonight.”