Chapter 43
I wake to the smell of wet concrete and my father's cologne.
Not possible. My father is dead. I watched them lower his casket into frozen ground five years ago, watched my mother collapse against the grave marker, watched the pack disperse like smoke because without an alpha, we were nothing. I was sixteen and alone and he was dead.
But the cologne is unmistakable. Terre d'Hermès. He wore it every day, said it reminded him of the forest after rain, and I have not smelled it since the funeral because I threw out every bottle in the house the week after we buried him.
My eyes open. Concrete ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The chemical taste in my mouth from whatever they used to knock me out again. My wrists are zip-tied to a metal chair, the plastic cutting into skin already raw from the first set of restraints. My head pounds. My face throbs where they hit me.
Declan was flatlining. Iris was bleeding out. I was being dragged away and someone said—
"Hello, Sloane."
The voice comes from behind me. Male. Familiar in a way that makes my wolf claw at my ribcage, desperate to get out, desperate to run or fight or do anything except sit here and listen.
"Not real," I say. My voice cracks. "You are not real."
Footsteps. Slow, measured. The kind of walk that says I have all the time in the world and you have none. They circle around the chair until I can see him.
My father looks exactly the same. Same dark hair threaded with silver at the temples. Same sharp jaw. Same eyes—my eyes, the pale gray that every Carrigan has carried for six generations. He wears a black suit, perfectly tailored, and when he moves closer the cologne intensifies and I am sixteen again, sitting at the breakfast table while he reads the pack reports and my mother makes coffee and my little brother steals bacon off my plate.
"You are dead." The words come out flat. Factual. "I went to your funeral."
"You went to a funeral." He pulls up a second chair, sits down facing me like we are about to have a pleasant conversation. "There was a casket. There was a body. But it was not mine."
My nails dig into my palms. The zip ties do not give me enough room to make a proper fist but I try anyway, plastic biting deeper. "Who did we bury?"
"Does it matter?" He tilts his head, studying me the way he used to study pack challengers before he tore their throats out. "He was no one. A vagrant. Roughly the right build. Dental records are easy to falsify when you have the right connections."
The fluorescent lights hum. Somewhere in the building, water drips. My heart is doing something complicated and painful in my chest, a rhythm that feels like it might shake me apart.
"Why?"
"Because I needed to disappear." He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. "Because the pack was compromised. Because there were people who wanted us dead—all of us—and the only way to save what mattered was to let them think they had won."
"They did win." My voice is rising now, control slipping. "They killed everyone. Mom. Jamie. The entire pack. I was the only one who—"
"Survived." He finishes the sentence like he is proud. "Yes. You did. Against all odds, my daughter survived."
The way he says it makes my skin crawl. Not relief. Not gratitude. Satisfaction.
"You knew." it dawned on hers like cold water. "You knew they were coming."
"I orchestrated it."
The room tilts. Or maybe I tilt. Hard to tell when your dead father just admitted to murdering your family.
"You—" I cannot finish. Cannot find words big enough for this.
"Not personally." He stands, starts pacing. "I hired the hunters. Gave them the location, the timing, the security codes. Made sure you were out of the house that night—do you remember? I sent you to Portland for that pack meeting. You argued. Said it was pointless, that the Portland alpha was a blowhard who would never agree to an alliance."
I did argue. I remember. He insisted I go anyway, said it was important for me to build relationships with other packs, that I would be alpha someday and needed to understand politics.
I left at sunset. The attack happened at 11:47 PM.
"You sent me away so I would not die with them."
"I sent you away because you were the point." He stops pacing, turns to face me. "Everything I did, I did to forge you into something stronger than I ever was. The pack was weak, Sloane. Soft. Your mother wanted peace, wanted to integrate with humans, wanted to pretend we were not predators. She was making us vulnerable."
"So you killed her." My voice sounds distant. Detached. Like it belongs to someone else. "You killed your mate. Your son. Thirty-seven pack members. Because they were soft."
"I killed the weakness." He crouches in front of me, eye level now. "And I saved you. Gave you a purpose. Gave you a target."
"Garrett Voss."
"Garrett Voss." He smiles, and it is the smile I remember from childhood, the one that meant he was pleased with me. "I have been pointing you at him for five years. Every clue, every lead, every convenient piece of evidence. You have been my weapon, Sloane. My perfect, angry, relentless weapon."
The pieces slot together. The hunter I tracked to Seattle who conveniently left a paper trail leading to Voss Industries. The informant who gave me Garrett's schedule. The security footage that showed his people near my house the night of the attack—footage I now realize could have been doctored.
"Iris did not kill them."
"Iris Volkov is a mercenary who works for the highest bidder. She has killed plenty of people. Just not your pack." He stands again, brushes invisible dust off his pants. "But she made an excellent red herring. You were so convinced, so focused. It kept you from looking in the right direction."
"At you."
"At me."
My wolf is howling inside my skull. Not words—she does not do words—but pure rage, the kind that makes vision go red and teeth ache to shift. The zip ties are cutting off circulation to my hands. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, too fast, too hard.
"Declan," I say. "What about Declan?"
My father's expression shifts. Something colder. "Declan Thorne was an unexpected complication. I did not anticipate Garrett sending someone competent. Most of his people are thugs. Thorne is something else."
"He was flatlining. When your people dragged me out, he was—"
"Dying, yes. Unfortunate. He would have been useful." My father walks to the far wall, where a table holds a laptop and several file folders. "He was falling in love with you. Did you know? It made him sloppy. He was supposed to be gathering intelligence on Garrett's enemies, and instead he was following you around like a lost puppy."
The words hit wrong. Too accurate. Too close to the truth I have been avoiding.
"He took a bullet for you tonight." My father opens one of the folders, flips through pages. "Threw himself in front of you when my people opened fire. Very heroic. Very stupid. Love makes people stupid."
"Yeah, no." The words come out automatic, defensive. "He was not—we were not—"
"Please." My father does not look up from the folder. "I have been watching you for months. I know exactly what you were. What you are. What you could have been, if he survives."
If he survives.
The hope is a knife. I do not want it. Do not want to care whether Declan Thorne lives or dies, do not want to remember the way he looked at me in that hospital room, the way he said my name like it mattered.
But I do care. And my father knows it.
"Why?" I ask. "Why any of this? If you wanted me to be stronger, you could have trained me. You did not have to—"
"Yes, I did." He closes the folder, finally looks at me. "You were too much like your mother. Too soft. Too willing to see the good in people. I needed to burn that out of you. Needed you to understand that the world is not kind, that mercy is weakness, that the only way to survive is to be harder than everyone else."
"You made me a monster."
"I made you an alpha." He says it like a gift. "You have spent five years hunting, killing, surviving. You have become exactly what I needed you to be. Strong. Ruthless. Unbreakable."
The fluorescent lights flicker. My head is pounding harder now, the drug still working through my system. I need to think. Need to find a way out. But my thoughts are sluggish, tangled.
"What now?" I ask. "You have me here. You have told me everything. What is the point?"
"The point is that you have a choice." He walks back to me, stands close enough that I can see the gray in his eyes is exactly the same shade as mine. "You can accept what you are. Accept what I have made you. Join me, and together we can build something greater than the pack ever was. Or—"
"Or?"
"Or you can refuse. And I will kill you. Quickly, because you are my daughter and I do love you, in my way. But I will kill you."
The choice is not a choice. He knows it. I know it.
If I say yes, I become him. I accept that my mother died for nothing, that Jamie died for nothing, that thirty-seven people were slaughtered so I could be forged into a weapon. I accept that love is weakness and mercy is failure and the only thing that matters is power.
If I say no, I die. And Declan dies, if he is not already dead. And Iris dies. And Garrett Voss, who I have spent five years trying to destroy, who is apparently innocent of the one crime I wanted to punish him for, wins by default.
"Not my circus," I say.
My father blinks. "What?"
"Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Not my problem." The words feel good in my mouth. Solid. Real. "You want me to choose between being you or being dead? Yeah, no. I choose option three."
"There is no option three."
"There is always an option three." I lean forward as far as the zip ties allow. "You made a mistake. You told me everything. You explained your whole plan, laid it all out like you are some villain in a bad movie. And you know what that tells me?"
He does not answer. His jaw tightens.
"It tells me you are not as smart as you think you are. It tells me you need me to validate this. You need me to say yes, to agree that what you did was necessary, that you were right to murder your family. Because if I do not—if I look you in the eye and tell you that you are just a sad, broken man who destroyed everything good in his life—then you have to live with that. And you cannot."
His hand moves fast. The slap snaps my head to the side, reopens the cut on my cheek. Blood runs warm down my jaw.
"You do not understand," he says. His voice is still calm but there is something underneath now, something jagged. "You are young. You still think the world operates on fairness and justice. It does not. It operates on power. And I have it. You do not."
"Power." I spit blood onto the concrete floor. "You are hiding in a basement, talking to your daughter who is zip-tied to a chair. You faked your own death. You have been manipulating me for five years because you were too much of a coward to face me directly. That is not power. That is fear."
He hits me again. Harder this time. My vision sparks.
"You will accept this," he says. "You will accept what you are."
"What I am—" I have to stop, breathe through the pain. "What I am is someone who survived you. Not because of you. Despite you."
The door opens.
We both turn. A man enters—one of the ones who grabbed me at the hospital. He looks nervous.
"Sir," he says. "We have a problem."
My father's expression does not change but I see his shoulders tense. "What problem?"
"Thorne is alive. He stabilized. And Volkov—she got out. She is in the building."
The words land like a bomb.
Declan is alive.
Iris is coming.
My father closes his eyes for a long moment. When he opens them, they are flat. Empty. The eyes of a man who has already decided what he is going to do.
"Kill them both," he says. "And bring me Garrett Voss. If my daughter will not be my weapon, I will simply have to use a different one."
He walks toward the door. Does not look back.
"Wait," I say. "You cannot just—"
"I can do whatever I want, Sloane. That is what power means." He pauses in the doorway. "I will give you one hour to reconsider. After that, I will come back, and I will ask you one more time. And if you still refuse, I will make sure you watch while I kill everyone you have ever cared about. Starting with Declan Thorne."
The door closes. Locks.
I am alone.
The zip ties are industrial grade. I have been working at them since my father left but they are not giving. My wrists are bleeding now, slick and warm, but the plastic just gets tighter.
One hour. Maybe less. I do not have a watch—they took it, the men's watch that stopped at 11:47, the last piece of my father I had left, and now I know why it stopped, know that he set the timer himself before he disappeared.
Everything was a lie.
My whole life since that night has been a lie.
I pull harder at the restraints. The chair is bolted to the floor. The room has no windows. One door. Concrete walls. Nothing I can use as a weapon even if I get free.
Declan is alive.
The thought keeps circling back. He should be dead. He was flatlining. But he stabilized, which means someone helped him, which means there is still a chance—
The door opens again.
Not my father. Someone else. A woman, mid-thirties, wearing tactical gear and carrying a knife.
Iris Volkov.
She looks like hell. Blood soaks her left side, her arm hanging useless. Her face is pale, lips pressed tight against pain. But she is moving, and she is here, and she is walking toward me with the knife raised.
"Do not move," she says.
"Not really an option." I nod at the zip ties.
She cuts them. Fast, efficient. My hands are free and I am on my feet before I fully process it, stumbling because my legs are numb from sitting.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because Declan asked me to." She steadies me with her good arm. "He woke up. First thing he said was your name. Second thing was that I needed to find you."
"He should be dead."
"Yes. He should be." She is already moving toward the door, checking the hallway. "But he is Declan Thorne, and apparently being in love makes you too stubborn to die."
The words hit like another slap. "He is not—"
"Save it." She glances back at me. "We do not have time. Your father has twenty men in this building. I took out three getting to you. That leaves seventeen between us and the exit."
"Where is Declan?"
"Safe house. Two miles from here. He is stable but he needs a hospital." She hands me a gun—my gun, the one they took from me. "Can you shoot?"
I check the magazine. Still loaded. "Yeah."
"Good. Because we are about to have company."
Footsteps in the hallway. Multiple sets. Running.
Iris moves to one side of the door. I take the other. My hands are shaking but I grip the gun tight, finger on the trigger, and when the first man comes through I do not hesitate.
The shot is clean. Center mass. He drops.
The second man is smarter. He stays in the hallway, fires blind around the doorframe. Bullets punch into concrete, spray dust. Iris leans out, fires twice. I hear him fall.
"Move," she says.
We run.
The hallway is narrow, lit by the same fluorescent lights. Doors on both sides, all closed. I do not know where we are—some kind of warehouse, maybe, or an old factory. The floor is stained concrete, the walls bare brick.
More footsteps ahead. Iris pulls me into a side room, presses against the wall. I do the same. Three men pass, moving fast toward the room where I was held.
We wait until they are past, then slip back into the hallway. Keep moving.
"Exit is north," Iris says. "Through the loading bay."
"How do you know?"
"I scouted the building before I came in. I am not an amateur."
We turn a corner. Another hallway, this one wider. At the far end, I can see daylight through a gap in a rolling door.
Almost there.
A door to our right opens. My father steps out.
He is not alone. He has Garrett Voss with him, hands zip-tied, blood running from a cut above his eye. And he has a gun pressed to Garrett's temple.
"Sloane," my father says. "I thought you might try something like this."
I raise my gun. Aim at his head. "Let him go."
"No." He smiles. "You are going to put down your weapon. Both of you. And you are going to come with me. Or I will kill Garrett Voss right here, right now, and then I will hunt down Declan Thorne and make you watch while I gut him."
Iris does not lower her gun. "He is bluffing."
"I am not." My father's finger tightens on the trigger. "You have three seconds. One—"
"Wait," I say.
"Two—"
"I will do it." The words come out before I can stop them. "I will come with you. Just do not hurt them."
My father's smile widens. "I knew you would see reason."
I lower my gun. Start to set it on the floor.
Garrett Voss moves.
Fast. Faster than should be possible with his hands tied. He throws himself backward, slamming into my father, and the gun goes off but the shot goes wide and then Garrett is on the ground and my father is stumbling and I am raising my gun again but someone else is shooting—
Not Iris. Not me.
Declan.
He is at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall for support, pale as death, but his gun is steady and his shot is perfect.
My father goes down.
The bullet catches him in the chest. He falls hard, blood spreading across his white shirt, and I am running before I think about it, dropping to my knees beside him.
His eyes find mine. Still gray. Still my eyes.
"Sloane," he says. Blood on his lips. "I was trying to save you."
"No," I say. "You were trying to make me into you."
He reaches for me. I do not take his hand.
"I loved you," he says.
"I know."
He dies.
I do not cry. Do not feel anything except a vast, hollow space where something used to be.
Declan collapses.
I am on my feet, running to him, catching him before he hits the ground. He is burning up, fever-hot, and when I press my hand to his chest I can feel his heartbeat thudding, too fast, too irregular.
"You should not be here," I say.
"I know." He is looking at me like I am the only thing in the world. "But you were here. So I had to be here too."
"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard."
"Probably." He touches my face, thumb brushing the cut on my cheek. "Are you hurt?"
"I am fine. You are the one who is—"
"I love you," he says.
The words stop everything. The world. My heart. Time itself.
"Declan—"
"I know you do not want to hear it. I know this is not the time. But I died tonight. Or I almost died. And the only thing I could think about was that I never told you." His hand is still on my face. "I love you. I have loved you since the night you broke into my apartment and held a knife to my throat. And I will love you until—"
The explosion cuts him off.
The building shakes. Somewhere above us, something massive gives way. Concrete dust rains down. The lights flicker, die.
In the darkness, I hear my father's voice on a recording, playing from somewhere in the building:
"If you are hearing this, I am dead. And if I am dead, then everything burns."
The ceiling starts to collapse.