I Don't Need No Alpha Brothers novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Not in the Dark

Conrad didn't run.

He stood on the grass in front of my father's burned house and looked at Keir.

"Scanlon," he said. "You're on neutral ground."

Keir didn't answer.

His shoulders rolled once under his shirt, and I heard something in his back crack.

His fingers had started to curl.

The nails were going dark.

I knew that shift.

It wasn't the kind you came back from talking.

"Keir," I said.

He didn't hear me.

The bond in my chest had gone hot and red.

All of it was rage.

None of it was his.

It was mine, coming back to me through him, doubled.

Conrad took one slow step back toward the river path.

He wasn't afraid.

He was measuring the distance.

"Go on, then," he said to Keir. "Do it on her porch. Give my sons a reason."

Keir's lip pulled back off his teeth.

They weren't human teeth anymore.

I walked across the grass and stepped between them.

My back was to Conrad.

I could smell him behind me, pipe tobacco and cedar, the smell of every nightmare I'd ever woken up from.

I put both hands flat on Keir's chest.

His heart was slamming.

His skin was burning through his shirt.

"Look at me," I said.

His eyes were black all the way across.

"Keir. Look at me, not him."

Slowly, his eyes came down to mine.

"He killed her," Keir said.

The words came out of him wrong, half growl.

"I know."

"And you want me to let him walk home to his supper."

"Yes."

His whole body jerked.

"If you kill him tonight, he dies a hero," I said. "They'll put his name on a stone."

"Let them."

"Two hundred wolves will come over that river by morning. Gran's in your house."

That reached him.

I felt it go through the bond, a cold drop in all that heat.

"And nobody in that hall ever hears what he did," I said. "Not his sons. Not the pack he lied to."

I pressed harder on his chest.

"Not in the dark," I said. "He did it to them in the dark. I'm not giving him the dark."

For a long moment nothing moved.

Then the black began to drain out of his eyes, from the edges in.

His nails went pale again.

He stood there shaking, and he let me hold him.

Behind me, Conrad laughed softly.

I turned around.

He was at the edge of the trees, flashlight in his hand, its beam on the gravel.

"Thank you, little river," he said. "You always did save me."

Then he walked away up the river path, unhurried.

The envelope was still on the step.

I picked it up and threw it in the ash where the loft used to be.

Keir watched me do it.

"You promised me," I said.

"I promised nobody owns you."

"You promised I'd come alone."

"You came alone. I came after." He wiped his mouth. "I never said I'd stay in my kitchen."

"You heard all of it."

"Every word."

"That was mine." My voice cracked straight down the middle. "She was my mother. He told it to me. Not you."

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