The corpses in my mind multiplied, stacks upon stacks of bodies. Little bodies. The Shadow would kill me, and then he’d move on—to Caroline and Jed, Chase and Lake. To humans who never stood a chance. To children.
There was nothing we could do to fight back. Nothing.
To kill a Shadow …
I couldn’t afford to follow that thought to completion. In my mind, I saw Devon’s face. I saw his smile, the way he could look utterly ridiculous one minute and like a lethal fighter the next. I saw Sora, who had his eyes, but none of his humor.
No.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Sora was this monster’s twin. It wasn’t fair that stopping him should fall to us. But most of all, it wasn’t fair that being alpha had turned me into the kind of person who could think the unthinkable.
I didn’t want to be that person.
“We don’t know how to kill him, Callum.” I swallowed, hard. “All we have is a theory.”
What we had wasn’t a theory. It was unspeakable. And there I was, saying the words.
“Now that he’s tasted my blood, he’ll be hungry for more. He’ll kill me, but it won’t stop there.” I paused, wishing that my life was the only one on the line, that this was my sacrifice to make. “It won’t ever stop.”
“No.” Callum wasn’t telling me I was wrong about this monster. He was saying what the voice in my head kept saying, over and over again.
No. No. No.
“Tell me there’s another way,” I pleaded. “Tell me there’s something I can do, somewhere I can go to look for answers. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Callum didn’t say a word.
“Tell me.”
Nothing.
“We have no way of fighting back,” I whispered. “Once he gets done with us, who’s next? Ali? The twins? Human children who don’t understand that monsters are real, any more than I did, cowering underneath that sink?”
Even if there were another option, another way of fighting back, there was no guarantee that we would find it in time—and while we looked, more people would die.
No matter what I did, people always died.
“You do not know what you are asking, Bronwyn.”
For the first time, Callum’s use of my full first name didn’t affect me at all. I knew exactly what I was saying, and he was the one who’d raised me to be the kind of person who could say it.
“Sora’s his twin, Callum. He’s a Shadow because he’s shadowing her. She’s his link to this world.”
Get rid of the link, get rid of the Shadow. I wanted him to tell me there was a flaw in my logic. I wanted to be wrong.
“You’ll hold the knife, then?” Callum asked. “You’ll look into Sora’s eyes and cut out her heart?”
Devon had his mother’s eyes.
The temperature in the room around me seemed to drop ten degrees. My face felt clammy and flushed. The brutality of what I was suggesting hit me full force.
To kill the Shadow, we might have to kill Sora. Sora, who’d bandaged my cuts and fed me cookies when I was a kid. Sora, who’d taught me to use a slingshot. Sora, who for better or worse, was one of Callum’s most trusted soldiers.
Devon’s mom.
“I’ll have no part of this,” Callum said. “If you’re certain it’s the only way, you’ll do it yourself.”
I hadn’t expected this from him, hadn’t imagined he would put this decision in my hands. Sora was his wolf. At one point in time, our killer had been, too. Everything Callum had done in the past few years had been aimed at protecting me, shaping me. But this?
This wasn’t a choice the Callum I knew would ever have put in my hands. I still dreamed about Lucas, still thought about him, still felt the weight of snuffing out his life, and that had been self-defense. He’d been a danger to the pack, a loose cannon, and he was the one who’d challenged me.
But Sora wasn’t a danger. She wasn’t evil. This wasn’t self-defense. This was me, sitting on a ratty bed in a motel room, thinking about sacrificing her life for the greater good.
This was me, talking about murder like it was an option.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, and I waited for him to say something to make this—any of it—better.
“What would you do if it were Lake?” Callum asked finally. Something in his tone made me feel like, this time, he was looking for something from me—absolution, understanding? I wasn’t sure which.
“If it were Griffin that was the killer, and the only way to kill him was to kill Lake, what would you do?”
I’d thought that Griffin might be the killer, but I’d never let myself follow that thought to completion, because the idea of hurting Lake, sacrificing Lake—I couldn’t have done it.
Could I?
That was the position I’d put Callum in. He was so old, so powerful that it was easy to forget that he had emotions, that his pack mattered to him, that there were people—other than me—who he loved.
“Three hundred years,” Callum said softly. “She’s fought by my side for three hundred years, Bryn. I wouldn’t see her dead on a theory, and neither would you.”
Three hundred years? Sora had been a part of Callum’s life longer than the United States had been a country, longer than any human would ever live.
And still, if it wasn’t just a theory, if he were sure that this would work and there was no other way—he would have done it. That was what it meant to be alpha.
That was what I was becoming, even now.
“You wouldn’t have to.” Lake came to stand next to the bed, and I realized she was talking to Callum as much as to me. “If it were Griff doing the killing, if we thought me dying might make a whit of difference, Bryn, you wouldn’t have to kill me.”
I read between the lines to what Lake wasn’t saying.
If it had been her, if her death was the way to stop the monster, she would have killed herself.
“This isn’t your choice,” Lake told me. “It’s not his,” she continued, jerking her head toward the phone. “You two don’t just get to sit there and talk it out and decide that she lives, no matter how many other people have to die. You don’t get to keep this from her.”
I realized suddenly how Callum and I must have sounded, talking about Sora like she had no stake in this. I wondered if this was what being alpha would ultimately turn me into—a person who was so used to making hard decisions that she assumed every one that came along was hers to make.
“Bryn.” The voice on the other side of the line wasn’t Callum’s, not anymore.
“Sora.” For the first time, saying her name didn’t take me back to the night when she’d beaten me. I didn’t see her driving her fist into my rib cage. I saw her the million times before that, taking care of me like I was her own.
I saw Devon—the way she looked at him, the way that, once upon a time, he’d looked at her.
“You’re sure the killer is my brother?” Sora sounded younger than I’d ever heard her—like Lake when she’d realized that Griffin was here, that he was real.
I thought of the bodies, the blood, the breath on my neck. “I’m sure,” I told her.
Sora didn’t hesitate. She didn’t stutter, she didn’t even breathe. “If the only way to stop him is to kill me, then you kill me.” She paused, and I could picture her sharp features settling into a mask, every bit as unreadable as Callum’s. “I’d prefer not to have to kill myself.”
But she would—that was what she was telling me. If one of us didn’t kill her, Sora would kill herself. She’d die to stop her brother.
“I’ll meet you at the border,” she said. “Three hours.”
That didn’t give her much time to say good-bye—to Callum, to her husband, to Dev.
“Sora—” I wasn’t sure what to say, but it didn’t matter. The line was dead.
She’d already hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE WEREWOLVES IN THE ROOM WERE SILENT—they’d heard every word Sora, Callum, and I had said. They knew what was coming. Jed and Caroline were another story.