Page 3 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

Vengeance.

I shoot her hand next. The same one that held the gun and pulled the trigger. I aim carefully because ruining things too quickly is amateur work, and I am nothing if not a professional.

She screams again.

Still nothing.

My chest stays hollow. My head stays quiet. Blaise stays gone.

I tilt my head, studying her. "You’re really bad at this."

She sobs something through chattering teeth.

"No, see, if you’re going to scream, you need to mean it. Commit to the performance."

Prime Alpha is with me, quiet and pale with shaking hands. He kneels beside her, bandaging the wound in her foot, then her hand, methodical and grim.

Keeping the blood inside.

That is good.

He understands the game. She doesn’t get to leave early.

She doesn’t get an easy exit, or mercy, or the soft, quiet nothing she handed to my Omega.

Because Sparkles didn’t get to choose.

Sparkles didn’t get to call for her Pack.

Sparkles didn’t get to—

No.

I don’t like that sentence.

I grab a fistful of the murderer’s hair and yank her head back until her throat arches. Her pulse jumps under the skin, frantic and alive and insulting.

Alive.

Still alive.

"What was I doing?" I whisper.

Prime Alpha’s head turns toward me. His eyes are red-rimmed, but he says nothing.

I grin at him.

He doesn’t grin back. He doesn’t say anything either. He just looks lost, confused, and torn from the inside out.

Right.

Punishment.

The murderer’s eyes flick toward the tent flap, toward the camp beyond it, toward freedom or help or death. I don’t know which one she’s hoping for anymore.

Wrong answer, whichever it is.

"You killed her," I say, and the words come out too calm and flat for the agony splitting me right down the middle. Maybe they belong to someone else. Maybe I’m Blaise standing two feet to the left of my own body, watching Blaze do what Blaze does best.