CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 22
People shouted, and murmured to each other, no one stopping me. Someone lunged for me and missed. My breath came in animal pulls. Lenny fell backward, hitting the ground with a heavy, defeated thud. 

He didn’t move like he should. There was no dramatic gurgle, just the awful finality of him gone still.  “Stop!” Raven’s voice cut through the noise like an axe. Wow, what a great time to pitch in, Alpha. He was suddenly there, inches from me. 

I looked up into his face and misread it for one dizzy heartbeat. I thought I might see pride. Then I saw the rest: the raw, ragged thing underneath. Rage, yes, but not the good kind. 

“Elara!” Suddenly, someone was on me, hands trying to drag the knife free. I didn’t fight them back; instead, I softly let the knife go. I have achieved what I swore to do. Now Kade can rest in peace knowing that I killed the man who took him away from us. When they finally wrenched it away, I slumped, and the room spun.

Raven’s hand closed on my shoulder so tight it hurt. “Aine,” he said, but the sound broke. “What did you do?” I couldn’t answer him; he knows what I did and why I did it. 

I could only stare at Lenny’s still chest. The real world lurched forward, people moving, someone calling for blood cloths, another person running for Kai. I felt like I had been dropped into a pool and could not surface.

“He said it out loud,” I heard Elara say somewhere close, her voice raw. “Right in front of her.” Her hand held mine, trembling. Raven moved as if a string had pulled him. He was over Lenny in two strides, checking for a pulse like he knew exactly where it would be. He looked up at Kai, whose face had hardened in a way I’d seen a thousand times in the field. Kai’s jaw was tight. He looked at me, then at Raven.

“You move,” Kai said in that low voice that told the pack to silence. “Now.”
Raven’s eyes flicked to me, and something that could have been mercy passed through them. He touched my face once, cruel and judging. “You need to go,” he said to me, and it was an order I could not argue with.

“He’s dead?” I heard someone whisper. Raven didn’t answer. He bundled me in his arms fast, efficiently, and walked with me through a blur of bodies and cries. 

I heard people calling my name, or maybe someone crying out for Lenny; the sound folded over itself. We went into the mansion, down the hall, and Raven shoved me into a room that he locked behind him.

I could feel the shake in his hands through the fabric of his jacket. He sat on the edge of the bed and folded his face into his hands for a long moment. When he finally looked up, his eyes were on me, staring intently.

“You need to tell me everything,” he said, his voice flat. “Why did you do it?” I looked at him, taken aback. Didn't he hear what he said to me? He looked at me with a straight, serious look. It seems like he didn't hear him.

I could not find a truthful answer that didn’t sound like an excuse. “He—” My voice came out thin. “You know what he did to my brother, your brother killed my brother.” My throat closed on the rest. I had considered Kade my partner in crime; the way he died still gives me nightmares. Raven ran a hand through his hair and swore under his breath. 

Then he swallowed and pulled his phone from his pocket. He spoke once, quietly, and a tone went through him that said he was changing schemes, covering tracks. He looked back at me with a face I did not fully recognize, one that wanted to both destroy me for what I’d done and hold me because his hands shook with fear.

“You have to stay down,” he said finally. “No one comes in here. Kai will handle the outside. I’ll—” He stopped. I watched his jaw work. “I’ll take care of what I can. But you must not leave this room.” I nodded because I could not do anything else. My hands would not stop shaking.

Minutes later, the door opened a crack. Elara slipped in, eyes red. She put both hands on my cheeks and searched my face like she expected to find some cuts.

“You stabbed him,” she said flatly, and I could hear disbelief, rage, sorrow all folded together. “I know,” I said. “I know.” I will never regret trying. I had to do it for Mary. I did it for Mary's dead baby, for my dead best friend.

She sat on the bed beside me and let out a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “You could have been killed for that.” Her nails bit into my arm. “You could have been put down.”

“I know,” I said again, like a broken record.

The door opened, and Kai stood there, silhouette dark. “I’ve secured the yard,” he said. “The boss will be here. We have to talk about protocol.”
Raven’s face went white at the name. “Don’t,” he warned. “Not now.”

Kai shrugged, then reached out and placed a folded cloth in Elara’s hands. "I have been in the same space with a murderer, but none of you said anything. Now that I killed him, you suddenly have something to say to me," I said, looking at Kai, the one person who had looked at me with a judging look on his face.

I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to crawl into myself and not exist. I wanted to tell Raven that the knife had felt like a terrible relief. Instead, I clung to the thin fact of him there, a man who had been my enemy and was suddenly the only person keeping me from everything else. When the door shut and the room was left to our breathing, Raven sat very still. “We’ll handle this,” he said finally. “But you must understand this changes things.”

Elara curled against me, and for a moment, the three of us were a small island in a sea of consequences we couldn’t yet imagine. Outside, the pack moved like one body. I had done something terrible. I had saved myself in a way that might have ruined everything. And Raven, the man who should be hating my existence right now, was already moving to clean the wreckage. He walked and asked Kai and Elara to exit the room. I looked at him, bracing myself to be kicked out of the pack once again.

But does he have the power to kick me out? I am already the Luna of the pack. "I have to tell you something," He said as he sat beside me on the bed. "Lenny has been wanting to die for a long time and i can't balme you for trying but you have to know that Lenny is immortal, no one can kill him."