“Fill me in” He walked toward Archie who grabbed his shoulders.
“My Alpha, the True Believers are in the building. We are battling. Max texted me.”
This far underground he couldn’t smell it. The True Believers were in his building? On his pack land?
He ran for the elevator and got slammed into by the force of Archie getting in his way. “My Alpha. No. You are not running up there. That is what they want.”
“I will not stay in the basement while my people fight and die upstairs.” His wolf prowled to life, and he growled, his body ready for the shift. He would protect his pack.
“It is my job to protect you.” Archie snarled.
No. “It is your job to get out of my way.”
“Don’t worry.” The singing True Believer stopped. “They’re coming down here anyway.” He held up his watch. “They know I’m here. You’re going to be getting plenty of time to fight. And die Savage.”
He stared at the man’s wrist. All jewelry, watches, everything but the clothes should have been removed. Why was he still wearing it? Alex had put him in the cage.
They either had a betrayal or a huge mistake. Either way, as the elevator dinged, he knew it wasn’t his pack coming down.
The smell of humanity wafted in the room. He needed to shift. Reaching out, he grabbed Archie’s arm. As he had done with Stanley, he sent shifting energy to Archie. He wouldn’t leave him unprotected even though it pulled at his own energy to do so.
“Savage.” Archie never called him by his first name. “No.”
“It’s done.” He nodded to his second.
Sydney was okay. She had to be. George and the others understood. They would keep his mate safe. He would see her later. Pet her, make sure she was okay, let her feed him as much as she wanted.
Gun-wielding lunatics tore from his elevator, and he changed to four legs.
****
“They’re back.”
Max bled from his head, and Sydney wished she had healing powers to help him. Or George who had a knife sticking out of his arm. Piles of bodies lay on the floor, some of them human, some of them pack. She’d lost track of how many. They’d never made it out the door. The humans had barricaded them. The kids had been kept safe, huge numbers of the dominants sticking themselves between the pups and the crazies.
Yet she hadn’t fought, not one minute. George was a true hero.
Her head spun. Savage, the reason she breathed, was nowhere to be found.
Sydney had stayed quiet, not wanting to screw anything up during the battle. Except the fighting seemed done. No Savage. No Archie. They must be together, and the knowledge brought her hope. The Alpha’s second would never let anything happen to him.
“Max.” She called out and he turned to her. Sydney wasn’t a mind reader but she would swear she saw her own questions echoed back to her. “Where is he?”
He walked past her without answering and went to the main office. She followed close behind him even as George moaned for her to stay with him. Some of the dominants pulled the barricades down, and more pack rushed in. Her protectors’ complaints were lost in the chaos. Among those rushing in were the Healers; the ladies would have George fixed in no time.
Max flipped on a video screen, and scenes from around the building streamed in. Room by room the cameras searched. Nothing on the top floor. Everything toppled over in the file rooms. The next floor was cleared; she knew because she had been there. Sydney rubbed at her eyes. Then the main club rooms.
Savage wasn’t anywhere.
Max plugged in a code on the keyboard, and the basement popped up. She gasped as Max swore. Savage was down there, surrounded by humans in his wolf form. Next to him lay a dead wolf. She gasped as three humans surrounded him. The video was silent, but even without sound she knew what had happened.
One by one, the True Believers fired into her beloved’s body.
“No.” She rushed forward toward the elevator. She had to get to him. He needed her. Max directly behind her she ran for the elevators. They would stop them, they would save him. The healers were there. She pushed the button, it would take her down.
Life had slowed. Everything seemed to be taking too long.
Then nothing happened. The elevator didn’t ding. It didn’t come. What was going on? She whirled around. Standing in front of her with tears in his eyes was Max. It took her a moment to realize what she saw.
He’d pushed the button. The red one. It cancelled the elevator. Stopped it from moving. Trapped them all downstairs. Left them without any help coming.
“How could you?” She launched herself at Max, pounded on his body. “He needs help. He’s your Alpha. What kind of man are you? They’ll kill him.”
Max gripped her shoulders as she pounded on his chest. “He’s already dead, Sydney. He’s already gone. We have to stop them from coming up. He’s dead. Bullets in his brain. We don’t live through that.”
A thought dawned on her. “The Healer Prime. Call Lake. Lake will fix him.”
A strong arm wrenched her backwards, pulling her off Max. George, he held her against him, his body shaking. “Not even if she were here could she fix this. She doesn’t bring back the dead. I’ve seen it.”
She hated George then. Hated Max. Hated all of them. No. Savage was not dead; he wouldn’t leave her. They’d lived through the Garto, lost a baby as some kind of sick punishment. The Moon couldn’t be so cruel.
The scream which came out of her throat sounded animal. She didn’t care. Her wolf was in agony too. Slowly but surely, the pack surrounded her. News must have spread, or maybe her grief told them all they needed to know. Howls sounded around, her but it wasn’t enough.
Sydney fell to her knees, George next to her.
Savage was dead. She knew it because the world turned black, and all the color vanished. The humans had killed him.
“Why didn’t the Garto kill me, George? Why leave me for this? Why take him from me? No world without him. No way to live.”
She couldn’t breathe.
****
Her tears had stopped. She sat in Savage’s office and stared outside. Grief had given way to nothing. Funny how nothing was actually something when it came down to it. She’d never understood before…the beauty of nothingness.
She stood, looking to Max. With Savage and Archie dead, he was in charge. Sydney still hated him, even amongst her nothingness, and even knowing it wasn’t fair to do so. She hated every breath he took.
“Has anyone called Hayden?” She spoke directly to him.
He blinked a couple of times while he stared at her. Max wasn’t really there either. Had he found his own brand of empty to spend time in?
“I….”
She pulled out her phone. It would fall to her then, as was right. “I’m going to make this call. When I have finished, the humans in the basement have to be handled. We cannot wait for them to all starve to death. It’ll take too long, and I want them dead and away from Savage.”
So she could go to him at last. Hold his dead body.
George walked in the room, and she almost snarled. Plenty of hate to go around.
“Sydney?” His voice was soft. “Can I get you anything?”
“Privacy to deliver news to Hayden that his brother died would be nice. Do you know the last thing I ever said to Savage was about a butterfly tattoo? How was that only last night?” She shook her head. What did time mean anyway? The Moon was a cruel bitch to all of them. Why bother being happy when it all ended in nothing at all?
George nodded and Max followed him out of the door. It clicked behind him. She held her phone in her shaking hand. No matter how much she tried she couldn’t make it stop. Her tears ceased, maybe her shaking would too at some point. In a few hundred years.
She bit down on her lip with her last thought. Unless someone killed her, she had so much time to live without Savage. So much pointless time….
Not letting herself think about it anymore, she dialed
Hayden’s number. For true emergencies or if she wanted to complain about him, Savage had said with a laugh when he plugged his brother’s number into her cell phone.
“Sydney?” Hayden answered. “I’m getting word you’re under attack. What does Savage need?” He practically shouted his question. So unlike the cool Alpha who had told her to feed Savage. He’d been calm in the storm around them in Idaho.
“Hayden.” Her throat was dry. “He’s gone, Hayden. They took him. The humans. They shot him over and over and over and….”
She thought her tears were done. She was wrong.
Chapter Sixteen
Sydney pressed the button to gas the humans in the basement. With their Alpha dead, no one had thought of it earlier. A safety measure for this kind of situation Savage had of course thought of at some point during his time as Alpha. Sydney wasn’t surprised. Her mate had been good at imagining horrific eventualities. She wished he’d been wrong.
“Leave him.” She spoke to Max as he cued in the code on the keyboard to release the elevators. “Take them out. All of them. I don’t want to look at their filth. But leave him. I want to say goodbye. Alone.”
He nodded once. “Sydney, you’ll never know how sorry I am.”
“I suppose the right thing to do would be for me to tell you it’s okay. That I understand. Maybe I actually do. You trained for this. Pack members who went down there had to know, given the right set of circumstances, they wouldn’t come back up. But you stopped me from going. If you hadn’t, I could have at least died too. For that I won’t forgive you. Not ever.”
His hug shocked her. She hated Max. Except she wept on his shoulder, big, shocking, gut wrenching tears. The elevator dinged open, and members of the pack filed by them into the space. She sobbed until once again she was so cried out she had no more to give.
Finally, she raised her head. Max was crying too. Grief scented all around them, and her wolf howled. Without Savage to calm her, her canine half made Sydney’s insides ache. She wiped at Max’s tears. “I’m sorry, Max. I’m saying terrible things.”
“No. Sydney. I loved Savage. I love you. We all do. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to push the button. Not ever. I wish I had been with him and Archie. I wanted to die down there, too.”
The cold empty ride of the elevator took an hour. Or a minute. Or a lifetime. Time didn’t matter anymore. It would all be pointless, all wasted days without him.
Savage’s body was so still. The death shift which happened minutes after they left the world had healed most of the wounds from his death. Still, red marks marred his lifeless body in all the places where the humans had destroyed his precious skin with their bullets.
Sydney kneeled next to her love, then finally gave up and sat. Her knees couldn’t keep her up anymore.
She ran her hands over him, pressed her forehead to his in the way he always did with her, kissed his lips one last time.
“I…I’m not being kind to our pack. I think wherever you are, up there with the Moon, who I truly hate by the way, I’m sure you’re upset. You’d expect better from me. You want to know we’re all okay. Everything was planned. Hayden stepping in, who would go where, how it would happen. You told me so. I barely listened. We survived the Garto. Should have been easy after.”
Sydney shook her head. “I keep expecting you to answer. I’m such a foolish girl. This isn’t over Savage. There will be justice for what happened to you. Part of me wants to go away. Stay with my mom. Put my head down and knit for the rest of my life. Watch the children grow old and wait for the Moon to call me. That’s what I should probably do. Only I’m not going to. Not yet. There will be justice, Savage. I swear it.”
She hoped the stupid bitch from her place in the celestial sky heard her. No more prayers. No more thankfulness. She was getting justice. As was her right.
****
“You can send me back. You sent back Alexei. You returned Barrett. You sent back Lake. You can send me.”
Savage had never really expected to speak to Lily, not face to face. Lily was an idea. He accepted she probably lived and the stories about her were true. Speaking to her one on one? The thought never dawned on him.
Yet there she was weeping on her mate’s shoulder and seemingly not hearing a word he spoke. “Hello.” He tried again. “You can send me back.”
Lucian walked up next to him. Waking up dead and seeing Lucian as his first vision hadn’t been wonderful. Being dead didn’t stop him detesting the man.
“They can’t send you back. The Moon sends you back. So stop pestering Lily and the Alpha. She has a hard time when this happens.”
He shook his head. If he were alive, Lucian’s words would give him a headache. “She has a hard time when this happens?”
“Lily thinks of us as her children. We are. All the descendants of her babies and her nieces and nephews.”
Savage didn’t want to discuss anything other than getting back. “What does the Moon want from me to send me back?”
“We never know. In a million years I never would have thought Alexei. Yet he came howling back to life. Barrett’s a nice man, a good Alpha. Why was his time not up? I have no idea. Your destiny kept shifting. You were to die, then you didn’t, and now here you are.”
His whole body ached for Sydney. “Is my mate okay? What about Archie?”
“No.” Lily sniffed and wiped at her face. “She is most certainly not okay. Archie has moved on. He’ll wait for his mate by the Moon’s side as you could if you chose.”
His mate stopping her tears, the Alpha stood. “I’m sorry this happened. If the Moon doesn’t return you, you’ll be sent on. Away from here. To spend your time waiting for Sydney with her.”
He shook his head. “I don’t accept waiting. I’ve never been good at it.”
“If it means anything.” Lucian stood next to the Alpha. “Hayden is giving you every chance to come back. He’s not conducting the Moon Ceremony for five days. That’s how long it took for Lake, Alexei, and Barrett to be reborn. I can see it. They’re waiting.”
“Tell me what Alexei did to get sent back and I will do it.” End of story. There was always a price to pay for what he wanted, and he would gladly give anything to return. Sydney needed him. He couldn’t see the world like the three around him could, yet he could feel her anguish.
Lily walked toward him. “Time moves differently here. You understand? What feels like hours can be minutes, and what feels like minutes could be days.”
“I didn’t actually know that. No one has explained to me the rules. I asked a question. Answer it.”
Lucian spoke instead of Lily. “Alexei was complicated. I…I killed him. The Moon wasn’t pleased with the turn of events. So when he came to life, he turned and killed me. I can’t say for sure why the Moon decided that was the right thing to do since I eliminated Alexei for the indeterminate amount of killing he was doing.”
Well. There were some answers to questions everyone pondered. What had happened to kill Alexei and who had murdered the Alpha Prime. Savage should have been shocked, but he wasn’t. It all made a weird sort of perfect sense.
Lily placed her hand on his arm. “Things were complicated then, Alpha Prime. You did as you did; he did as he was bound to do. You raised the Alphas so they could fall. You did as the Moon wanted, and then your time ended.”
“That sounds like that song the kids kept singing in Idaho. The many stopping the fallen. What does it mean?”
“It means there is a bad Alpha out there helping the True Believers, and, if he isn’t stopped, the children of the Moon are going to die. All of them,” the Alpha answered. Out of all of them, he communicated the least. “The Moon has sent her chosen Alphas in the hopes they can stop him. No one knows what will happen. We don’t even know who the Fallen Alpha is. We’re limited.”
Savage stepped away and threw his hands in the air as he shouted at the giant Moon, larger than he’d ever seen it, in the sky. “Who is more powerful than me? Send me. I’
ll stop him. I won’t even lay claim to be Alpha Prime. I don’t want to be. Alexei. Barrett. They can have it. Send me and I’ll find your Fallen Alpha. I’ll stop him. Send me. You gave me a Mate. That was your gift to me. I don’t accept leaving her, I don’t accept waiting while she grieves me for a hundred years. She’s too kind. This will destroy her. Send me. I’ll save Sydney. I’ll save them all.”
****
His moon ceremony had been beautiful. Sydney smiled sadly at the pack as she stood with Hayden and Chelsea off to the side. Each pack member came by to say their respects. She took their hugs and their wishes. Sydney pretended to hear their words.
Hayden had held out hope for a rising. When day five came and went he’d finally given up. Seeing grief strike him down had been miserably hard. His mate was strong; she’d held him when he wept. All the Alphas from around the country had called. Some from other places as well. She’d taken all of their condolences.
Alexei’s had been the strangest. “You could come here.”
His words had shocked through some of the numb. “What?”
“Live with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Sydney hadn’t been sure she’d heard right. “Why would you want to?”
“Savage was a great man. I’d rather think of you here than alone in California.”
“I have plans.” Revenge was a great motivator, justice even more so.
Alexei had sighed. “Be careful with those plans.”
The final griever passed through, and Sydney nodded to them, following them out the door. It was time for Hayden to take the pack. It was time for her next phase to start. It was time for the Sydney she had been to be over.
George’s presence by her car halted her for a second. ‘If I went in there and told Hayden you weren’t simply driving home but were leaving, he’d stop you.”
“Your tendency to somehow know what I’m doing is annoying. And none of your business anymore.”
“It took a little working out. I had to figure out what papers you pilfered from the Alpha’s desk. Then when I realized it was potential locations for True Believer bases, it all worked out.”