The one who’d been through some of the worst personal pain, dealing with the loss of his father and his mate.
“Yes,” Liam managed. “I’ve been wrestling with this, Vice. I didn’t know the right thing to do, but after hearing about the baby having bonded with you . . . I knew the right thing, for both of you.”
Vice blinked and cradled the babe in his arms. Wanted to say,
The wolf before him was nearly there. Would be, once Vice agreed and so he did. “I’ll keep the Were and raise him as mine. When he comes of age, he can choose to pack with the Weres or the Dires. No matter what, he’ll always have a home with us.”
“Thank you, Vice. I can never repay you.”
“Good thing you don’t need to try.”
It was done. How hard could raising a babe be, after all? Couldn’t be any worse than a Were’s teenage shifting years, right? And he’d made it through Cyd and Cain’s general insanity.
The baby woke then; his eyes were shining bright and a laugh emerged from his throat as he stared at Vice. And just then, Vice knew exactly what his name should be.
Chapter 40
It had been forty-eight hours since Jez walked the hellhounds and dragged the monsters kicking and screaming into that hole in the earth. Gillian still couldn’t get the image out of her mind, and she knew Jinx and Rogue weren’t faring much better.
“Do we have to contact his brothers?” she asked now. Jinx had told her and Rogue and the others about the other eleven vampires.
“I tried his computer but it was wiped clean. He said if we needed them, they would come,” Jinx said. “Maybe they just sense us?”
“According to Jez, they all knew what he needed to do on his end,” Rifter reminded him. “I’m sure it’s a blow to them as well.”
Rogue had his head on the table, was staring into space. “We have to get him out of there.”
“I know.” Jinx put a hand on his twin’s arm and Gillian’s stomach twisted as she thought of her own twin out there, confused and alone.
“As much as I hate to say it, we still have a pressing problem,” Stray reminded them. The TV was on mute behind them and Gillian knew if she turned around, she’d find news of her parents upping the ante on the reward. They’d gone into overdrive since her escape but from what she’d seen, they hadn’t mentioned having her in their grasp. The thoughts Kill tried to plant hadn’t worked exactly as they’d hoped, since her parents were now saying things like, “She’s been seen in the vicinity of this house. We think she may be trying to hurt us.”
She would make them believe she was innocent. Had to. She put her fingers on her temples and massaged them now, thinking about everything that had happened. The memory Jez had triggered was still there, and she could access it over and over, although it was still like watching a TV show. It was still as if it hadn’t happened to her.
Huddled against the wall, refusing to get up. Whatever the wolf had planned, he wouldn’t just stop, right? The Greenland pack had to have been following her—or that wolf had, at least.
Was he out in the woods looking for her? Surely the Dires wouldn’t have given a thought to scenting another Dire in the woods. But how else would he get to her?
“My parents,” she breathed.
It was so obvious, she didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it sooner. Gillian knew she had to go back to the Blackwell mansion, had to go to her parents to try to warn them. Jinx and Vice were with her in the woods; the others were in the area, waiting for the signal.
She wasn’t sure what she would say to the Blackwells, but Killian and Stray promised they could change her parents’ memories if things got bad and they discovered she was a wolf. Since that would be a new memory, it could be easily discarded.
Now, in the woods, she could still smell the blood. The hellhounds must’ve completely obliterated the bodies, because as far as Stray could see, there had been no reports of any of that.
There was no real plan of how she was going to tell them. Gwen had suggested using the phrase,
She would not bring up wolves.
“Killian and Stray took care of the press for now,” Jinx told her. They’d been camped outside the gates ever since the reward got upped—she was now worth ten million dollars.
“Suppose they don’t believe me?” she asked.
“We’ll make them,” Jinx promised.
“I like believing you.”
“You always should, mate.”
“I like that too.” She flung her arms around him, nuzzled against his neck. Neither one knew if the mating would be accepted officially by the Elders, but in her heart, it had been official from almost the first time she’d laid eyes on her warrior.
“You just keep yourself safe, Gilly. No matter what—you keep yourself safe.”
Hours into the stakeout outside the Blackwells’ mansion, Sister Wolf smelled the danger and Gillian took off at a dead run toward the house. The other Dires were behind her and she jumped onto the front staircase between the columns, lunged over the dead security guards. The smell of blood lay thickly metallic in her mouth and she broke through the locked front door like it was butter.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the man said. Not man—Dire. Like her. Just like her.
His eyes were the same unmistakable aqua blue. He had a gun to her mother’s head. Both parents were side by side, tied to chairs. Neither was gagged but her mother appeared frozen with fear.
Did they remember what they thought Gillian had done? Even with Killian’s help, she couldn’t imagine that this wouldn’t trigger some memories. But her parents weren’t looking at her with hatred in their eyes. Come to think of it, they never had.
And this time, the fear they had wasn’t directed at her.
She glared at the wolf holding them hostage and fought the urge to run at him. It went against everything she wanted to do by simply standing there, but she did. She would take her opportunity when it arose, and it would.
“Gillian, have a seat.”
“Who are you?”
He jammed the gun hard against the side of her mother’s head. “Sit. Down.”
She complied, tucking her hands underneath her. Hopefully, the others wouldn’t slam in here the way she had.
“I’m your uncle. Call me Uncle Sam.” He pointed to her parents. “You knew you were adopted.”
“I did.”
“You don’t look happy to meet your biological family,” he said, almost mournfully. “Didn’t you want to search us out?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I’m happy with the family I have.”
Her father gave a tenuous smile in her direction and her uncle growled.
“Ungrateful. Just like your mother.”
“Where is she?”
“I killed her maybe a month after she gave you and your twin away. Abominations, both of you,” he spat.
