Chapter 20: Epilogue

The dirt had grown grass over it long ago, and the headstone was hardly visible through the snow piled around it, half melted with the late arrival of spring. Candy’s name, the dates that she’d lived and died through, are etched into the surface of the shiny marble stone. I have to wonder if she’d like it, the marble; black and white at war, the letters gold plated. Maybe she would have preferred white and gold, a clean cut look.

“I’d hardly known her three days,” Dante’s voice is quiet, hoarse, as he stands to my right. He looks like shit, and I can’t blame him; dark circles have made themselves at home beneath his eyes, his face overrun with a beard, and his skin is stained a few shades darker from dirt.

He’d spent much of his time in his wolf form since she died, apparently. Letting the animal take over, trying his best to numb the ache of the loss. Five months, and the grief didn’t stop hurting for him, it was obvious in his eyes.

“She would have loved you.” I say quietly, my hand cold as I slip one from my pocket, give his arm a pat, the other holding some flowers we’d picked up on the way here. I don’t know Dante well, but there’s a kindness in his eyes that tells me he’s a good man. He’d been a voice of reason to Nick through the years. I remember the little memories of Nicholas’s that had slipped through the boundary between our minds, the little moments. Watching sports together, debating decisions, moments when it was all too heavy and Dante was an air of comfort. They were best friends, and I saw the best of Dante through Nick’s eyes.

“I’ll never stop loving her.” He says this quietly, and I can see in the shine of his eyes that tears are threatening to fall. There’s no choice in it, not for him. He’d never have a choice but to love her.

My eyes shift back to the headstone, the new residence of everything that was my sister. “We’ve got to make sure that bitch suffers for what she’s done,” I murmur to him, my hands clenching into fists. Nineteen was too young, too young.

“Nick’s gonna want to go the political route.” There’s something quiet in the way he speaks, and he takes a step forward, sets the bundle of flowers he’d brought down. “Physical torture, that’s how these things go. A bitch like Mila won’t give a shit about it.”

My heart is thundering in my chest at his words, at the quiet implication behind them. I seal shut the boundary between my mind and Nick’s, I can’t let him hear. Forgive me for this, I pray, but I keep it from him for now. It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

“If we do this, no one can know. Not until it’s done and over with.” I say a little quieter, shifting in my stance toward him. My eyes shift around the graveyard, landing on the SUV across the field and the three men standing patiently outside of it. The security detail escorting us here, far enough that they wouldn’t be able to hear.

“No one else will understand, save for maybe your family.”

“Mom and Tyler are too impulsive,” I say quickly, shaking my head, “they’ll never have the resolve for the long game.”

“You’ve always been a bit impulsive yourself.”

My eyes shift to him, surveying the beta’s features, and I’m left to remember all the times before. Every display of anger and emotion, every time I’d reacted with anger instead of biding my time, going for the long game. “This isn’t about me. I’ll do whatever it takes for vengence.”

He looks at me for a long moment, as though testing my resolve, before nodding slowly. “Alright, I’m in.”

I nod back, turning back to the grave as I toss my flowers beside his. “We’re going to ruin this bitch.” There had to be some crack in the mystique of Mila, and I’d find it. Whatever had broken her, ruined her, made her this way— I’d find it, and I’d use it to make her burn.

She fucked with the wrong Alpha.