Page 59 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

Death has already had its turn with me, and I do not fear it.

And there is only one thing I fight to protect now. Her name is Halley Sparks, and he just threatened her life.

"Viper, stop," Knox says, moving to stop me because he knows what I've already decided.

I understand why he wants me to back down. Knox is thinking about the fortress, the witnesses, the soldiers I can hear coming down the corridor as Stone's backup, and the war waiting beyond these walls. He has to think about all of it. He’s our Prime Alpha, and holding the whole damn world together is what he does.

But I'm thinking about our future.

If Stone lives, Halley will never be free of him. She will always be his to manipulate.

I walked into death's waiting arms because I failed to protect what mattered most. I won’t waste the life I got back by letting this Alpha breathe another threat against our Omega.

Knox reaches for me.

I move faster.

My hands close around Stone’s head, and his eyes widen with the first honest fear I’ve ever seen in him.

Good, let him be afraid.

I twist.

Bone cracks beneath my grip, but I don’t stop there. I wrench harder, past the point any Alpha can heal from, until his spine tears loose with a wet, final sound.

General Stone drops dead at my feet.

The corridor goes silent.

Every person in this fortress will know now: Pack Scorch will burn the world down before we let anyone take our Omega.

Chapter Fifteen

Shade

Stone’s body hits the floor with a heavy, final thud.

Fuck.

Fucking Alphas and their fucking possessive instincts.

Viper just killed the leader of the rebel army. With witnesses.

"Oh, we've really done it now," I breathe, staring at the lifeless body of the resistance leader. The rut-damned General of Blackgate Fortress. The Alpha in charge of the last defense of the Demi-human race.

Viper is breathing heavily, but he doesn't seem chagrined. There is nothing in our bond that suggests he regrets his actions. In fact, he feels a little smug.

Strangely, despite the chaos about to descend on Blackgate Fortress, I can’t find it in myself to regret the death either. Stone was a visionary once. He saw the writing on the wall for Fathim decades ago and began planning. He hacked into Demi-human biology to create a weapon to save our species, unraveled the mystery of Packs, and understood strategy better than any commander I’d ever studied.

Or he had.

It is damning that the Pass, such a crucial key to our survival, was left without secondary defenses or barricades. Prime Alpha Zero was left to do his best to compensate at the cost of his troops' lives.

His war strategy was sloppy. He delayed the evacuation of civilians until their towns were already overrun with Human soldiers. He banked the future of everyone and everything on a single untested Omega to save us all. I would have failed my officer training for even proposing such a poorly conceived operation.

And then there's the mess he made of Halley and her Omega Command. If he'd just told us from the start what the objective was, we could have avoided all the miscommunication and formed our Pack months ago.

It was all about control. His inability to relinquish it and his desperate need to hold on to power led us here.