Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
‘Good, because we have stuff to do outside.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Now that Ripper was once more dressed, he and Emberlyn walked from corpse to corpse. Anger thrummed through his blood. Anger and a healthy dose of guilt. If he hadn’t taken the faction’s bait, if he hadn’t allowed himself to be pulled away from her, she wouldn’t have been alone when these motherfuckers came for her.
Not that it seemed to bother her that she’d mostly dealt with the faction on her own – well, if you didn’t include the goblins and animals. In fact, he got the feeling that she’d relished it. But it bothered him a fuck of a lot.
As did knowing there were goblins in the basement, along with a goddamn portal. But he couldn’t be mad about it because they’d been indispensable tonight.
Around them, his wolves were keeping watch on the Rabid they’d detained. The creatures were still sleeping, but after all the bullshit that had gone on tonight, no one was in the mood to be complacent; they were too on edge.
Pausing near the twins’ parents, she flapped a hand. The protective dome around them lowered instantly. ‘They’re in a coma,’ she murmured. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to kill them.’
He would have been surprised if she had, given how deeply she cared for Paisley and Kage. But if she had ended the couple, Ripper wouldn’t have blamed her one bit. ‘I wouldn’t have pegged them for members of the faction.’
‘Me neither. The twins are going to be devastated.’
At the break in her voice, Ripper rubbed her nape. ‘One of us needs to call them before they find out about this from someone else. Want me to do it? As their Alpha—’
‘I’ll do it. I need to do it.’
Respecting that, he nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Ward and Penelope were faction members, but seeing Ames and Ruben here isn’t surprising.’
‘I wasn’t shocked to see any of them because I don’t trust a single person in the coven. In my view, they were all possible suspects.’
‘This has to have hit Reena hard.’ Ripper looked over to where she leaned against the fence, her strength not yet fully back. Her dull eyes kept bouncing from her sister to her husband.
‘Yeah,’ Emberlyn softly agreed.
Ripper kept pace with her as she began making her way to the High Priestess.
‘I won’t ask if you’re all right,’ Emberlyn said to her. ‘It would be a stupid question.’
‘He wanted me dead,’ Reena murmured in a hollow voice, staring down at Ward. ‘As if to steal my position from me wouldn’t have been vengeance enough, he wanted me dead.’
Ripper frowned. Vengeance?
Emberlyn tilted her head. ‘He was right about you and Carver, then?’
Reena swallowed. ‘Yes. And I don’t blame him for his anger. But there is such a thing as divorce.’
‘Indeed,’ Emberlyn muttered. ‘Do you think he was always part of the faction or that they recruited him; showed him evidence of your affair so that they could use him?’
Ripper started in surprise. He hadn’t known that Carver and the High Priestess had had an affair. But, looking back on some of their interactions over the past year, a few clues had been there.
‘I suspect it was the latter, but I cannot be sure.’ Reena put a hand to her throat. ‘Why didn’t he just confront me? Yell at me?’
It was Ripper who replied. ‘Most likely because you then wouldn’t have trusted him as implicitly as you always have; you might have even considered him part of the faction.’
‘He hid his pain and rage well. It never occurred to me for even a moment that he knew. To think how much he influenced who I should and shouldn’t suspect were faction members . . . He deliberately ensured that I was confused; that I doubted my own judgement; that I turned my attention away from people like Ames and Ruben.’
Pausing, Reena shifted her gaze to her sister. ‘Penelope did the same. I trusted her. Just as I did Ethel. So when they supported Ward’s opinions on who could be part of the faction, I allowed them to slide my suspicions elsewhere.’
‘Penelope made clear that she’s the one who wanted to take your role from you,’ said Emberlyn. ‘Did you know she’d had her eye on it?’
Reena took a shaky breath. ‘Growing up, we had both talked of being High Priestess one day. But she wasn’t unkind to me when I took on the position.’ Reena flashed a self-deprecating smile. ‘She claimed to be proud of me, and I thought that she meant it.’
Hearing more vehicles approach, Ripper looked up. ‘The Watchers are here.’
The Watchers dashed out of their vans, their jaws dropping even though they’d been warned of the carnage they would find. Recovering fast, they sprang into action. Some took reports, some bagged up corpses, some moved Ethel and Thad, others piled the Rabid into the vehicles.