I kept Margot close to me, her head pressed to my heart as she cried herself to sleep. Her body shook until it stopped and sleep claimed her, the only thing that would pause the grief for the moment. And it would just be a pause. Even if she managed not to cry anymore she was going to hurt for a long time. We all were. But Margot most of all. She’d held most of them while they bled to death on her tables. She’d been the one to tell their families.

She had to carry that.

Eventually, when she was still and even, my practically useless nose told me that she rested without pain, I closed my eyes. I followed her into sleep.

I walked through my high school. I recognized the lockers and the smell coming out of the lunchroom. It must be tater tot day. I’d hated those fucking things. The oil had a particular odor that said it was cheap and that the food would give you indigestion. My Wolf in particular had hated that shit. But he was never happy back then unless we were eating meat.

Why was I dreaming of high school?

I smelled Margot, her dreamy, soothing aroma hit me, and I picked up my pace, dodging the football players who always seemed to be taking up three quarters of the hallway. I found her standing in an empty classroom. She was younger than she was now. But then I looked sixteen, too. In that weird way of dreams I just knew that.

I walked toward her. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She didn’t look at me which I hated, keeping her gaze on the board, which I could now see was covered in math problems. I wanted her eyes on me. “Margot.”

She turned around before she leaned against the blackboard, rubbing some of whatever those calculations were away with her back. Margot lifted her eyebrows slowly. “I’m trying to figure it out, Jace.”

“What’s that?” I stepped toward her, placing my hand on her cheek to feel her skin.

“Why you are letting them regroup?”

I sat up in the bed. My mate hadn’t moved, but when I jolted she rolled onto her side, not rousing. I placed a hand on her back while I made myself calm down. She’d been right in the dream. Why were we letting them regroup? Just because we needed a minute didn’t mean we should give one to them.

I got out of the bed as quietly as possible and left her sleeping. I’d be back, hopefully, before she woke, since I thought she’d be out cold for a while, and in the meantime we could make a real dent in things. We could turn this tide in our favor.

I hurried outside and nearly collided with Chad. The breeze blew the wrong way but still I shouldn’t be this out of touch with my senses. I really had overdone it in the last battle. But as dream Margot had asked me, why was I giving them time to regroup. I wasn’t.

Chad grabbed my shoulders. “We have to…”

“Bring it to them,” I finished his sentence. This man and I had once hated each other. Or at least other versions of ourselves had. Now we were in sync and battling together. The world was strange. “You came to me.”

Chad nodded. “I sort of think of you as our new general. Maybe that’s wrong but…”

“No, that works. Come on. Let’s get the pack. Keep it small. We aren’t going to battle the originals. They’ve gone to regroup. We don’t need a lot. Precision strike. Hey, question. When I got back here you were never worried about me. Not once. I couldn’t smell an inkling of anxiety. Why was that?”

He held up two fingers. “One, I love and trust Rachel. She holds my soul. Nothing would ever separate us, not while either of us lives. I didn’t intend to let you kill me. She’s pregnant with my baby. I think Wolves get that. Family. You’re big on Pack. If you still wanted her, you’d back off because of that, but really, I wasn’t worried because of the second reason.”

I lifted my brows. “Which was what?”

“Margot came back from meeting you, humming. That’s very un-Margot. She smiled at me. I… I can’t help it. I’m a romantic at heart. I knew right there that you were going to be with her. And that all would be well in that regard.”

I blinked. Well, I wouldn’t have given Chad so much credit for foresight. As it was we were on the same page and that was a bonus. “One thing my father taught me was how to hit hard and never look back. Let’s do this thing.”

Hours later we stood in front of the compound with the Doubledays and the Vampires. They didn’t know we were there. They had to think we were licking our wounds because that is what we had always done.

My pack was with me. Well, most of us. I’d left some of the elderly and injured behind. We had two thirds of us with us. We actually made up the majority of the fighting force and that was because of my choice to do so. Humans were wrecked. Some of the Warriors could still fight but they’d probably do so until they died. That left us with Chad, Micah, Brynna—who was not being left this time, Deacon, Glen, Brian, Tony, and Taylor.

I looked at Matt, my pack mate. “I don’t want to engage. As much as possible, we burn them out.”

They’d come to our home and prepared to destroy us. We would now do the same. I looked at Micah. “I know you guys aren’t big on killing humans. I can do this.”

“Things have changed. I’m not big on killing those who don’t deserve to be killed. Humans who do? Yeah, I’m not so much discriminating on that anymore. We’ll do it together.” He looked over his shoulder. “Deacon, you’re with us. Chad, Glen stay here.”

Chad rolled his eyes. “This was my fucking idea. I don’t have to be protected from it.”

“Stay here.” Micah nudged him. “You don’t kill people. You’re Chad. You stay far away from what Jason and I are going to do. Rachel? She could kill people. That’s why you’re the yin to her yang.”

Deacon looked between us. “What is that?”

“Never mind,” Micah and I answered together.

Deacon sighed. “Should I be insulted you think I kill people?”

“We know you do.” Micah walked past him. “Brynna, could you scout around? Make sure we’re not about to be ambushed.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Micah, that is you trying to get me out of doing anything. Yes, I’ll look. Then I’ll come help you. Be back.”

“The rest of you,” I pointed to the outskirts of the place. “Spread out. There will be some people rushing out. I want to speak to the first few. We’re going to let them go. All the Vamps die. And the rest of the people who make it outside? Well, that’s up to you I suppose. If you have trouble killing humans who had no trouble sending Originals to kill you or your families, stay back.”

The buildings were old. I’d seen the boxes in the basement. If all of them were the same then this would go easily. If not, well then we’d improvise. I was burning this fucking nightmare to the ground.

It turned out that Micah and Deacon were actually much more proficient than I was at lighting fires. They’d done it a lot more. Torching old housing developments was one way to reclaim land that would otherwise lay destitute from not being used. Genesis had done this many times.

If they’d ever burned buildings down with people in them, I didn’t know.

There were certain things I just planned on never asking.

Old wood burned fast, and they’d not constructed these places with the idea that someday a Werewolf and a bunch of Warriors would come by to do this. I stood back, my hands crossed over my chest. I felt… nothing.

Was that odd? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I’d always been the bad guy. Perhaps that hadn’t changed. But when the few people—all of them some cloned version of my mate—ran from the building I watched, feeling nothing about the fact that they’d escaped fire at all.

I grabbed two of them by their collars. One might disobey. Two would not. “You go tell whoever is in charge that we have destroyed the cloning machine. It’s gone. Everyone is fair game now. You send them after us? We come after you. No more victims here. Got it?”

They fell to the floor. It was funny. They were supposed to be exactly like my mate. I’d always thought they smelled different, but now I could see slight alterations in their faces, too. One of them had the slightest wrinkle next to her left eye and the other a mark on her lip. Yes, I’d never mix them up. How did anyone?

I let them go and stepped back. A whistle sounded, so low I might have missed it if not for my super Wolf hearing. I swung around and sniffed the air. It was Brynna. She was alerting us to something. I turned to Micah, and he nodded. “I can hear better since my Vamp bite. Don’t ask.”

I wasn’t going to. We all had our shit to deal with that was for sure. “What is she alerting us to?”

“I sent her to watch for trouble. She’s found some.”

“What…” I never got to finish that thought. Out of the building where the originals must stay between destruction they streamed. At least fifty of them. That was more than I’d thought. Some of them were on fire. All of them were roaring. It was a deafening, mind numbing sound that made me actually want to vomit. I couldn’t say I’d ever had such an experience to auditory stimulus before but there it was.

We couldn’t fight. But I didn’t think that was what they’d come here to do. Vamps died from fire. I had to believe, Original or not Original, some things were the same. If things could bleed, if they could burn, they could be killed. That was true for all of us.

My mouth watered. My Wolf had always liked taking down enemies. I didn’t care whether it was their fault or not. They’d attacked my mate where she lived. They had to be gotten rid of.

I yanked Deacon and Micah, pulling them out of the way. “Trust me. Stay low. Stay out of the way. All of us for just a few seconds. Can Brynna hear us?”

Micah nodded. “If she’s tuned in. I bet she is. She’ll take cover.”

That was good. I poked my head around the corner and watched the Originals burn. It wasn’t pretty but death never was, not even when it came to circle of life stuff, which this was not. Whatever or whoever they’d been before they were this, I could feel sorry for how they ended. That didn’t mean, however, that I would in any way allow them to continue to hurt my pack.

I met Matt’s eyes in the distance. My pack mate nodded at me. He understood what I’d come to discover right in this moment and maybe, even though he’d distorted things until they were no longer recognizable, my father had grasped as well. Sometimes you did whatever you had to do whenever you had to do them.

Even burning your enemies to the ground.

I was so glad Margot wasn’t there to see it. This was the worst of me. I would save her from this. That was just how I was made.

The walk back was quiet. There wasn’t much to say when you’d burned an enemy to the ground and left ashes of the dead behind you. I didn’t feel bad. Once again, I wondered if Margot had made a terrible mistake aligning herself with me. I sniffed the air. It was hard to read how anyone around felt emotionally. It was possible to close yourself off, even as a human, and sometimes deep internal conflict could do just that. If the person didn’t know how they felt about something, neither did their scent.

Brynna gasped and then covered her mouth. Micah put a hand on her arm. “What is it?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s obviously not nothing.” He pulled her against him, leaning in toward her, and I missed Margot with the power of ten thousand suns. She was all I wanted in the universe.

Still, I remained where I was. “Are we in trouble?”

Brynna looked at me with pain in her gaze. “No, Jason. We’re not. It’s just…” She nodded behind her. In the distance were regular Vamps. They’d poked their heads out since we burned the originals. They’d have to leave soon, the sun was going to come up.

But they hadn’t been bothering us, and I wondered if there was some sort of unspoken agreement we’d get the rest of tonight off since we’d taken care of what might have been an issue for them, too.

Nothing good could come from having those originals around.

I followed where she stared, yet it took me a moment to believe what I saw. My mother was in the distance. Not too far but not close enough to touch her. The scent of the woman who had loved me from the moment I was born and somehow managed to raise me despite crippling Werewolf odds to give a shit about humanity was gone.

The thing about a mother’s love… I shook my head. I really didn’t know what I thought about a mother’s love. It had been gifted to me as though it were my right to have it simply by being born. She’d adored me and my sisters. There had never been a day I’d questioned her adoration of me, even in times when she’d had to correct or punish me.

And then it had been gone. She’d been among the first to get sick. So much had happened right away. Icahn had started cryogenically freezing people to wake up later. I’d had my girlfriend and her family dragged off into the process to save them, half wondering if they would ever wake up at all. Or if I’d be around when she did.

My father thought the virus affecting the Wolves halted our aging. But for how long? What would happen?

I’d obsessed for a week. Icahn promised us if the whole mess turned out to be nothing he’d wake them right up. Only that’s not what had happened, it hadn’t turned out to be nothing, a whole lot of something had taken place instead.

My mother had gotten sick. The virus spread. I wiped her brow, tried to bring down her fever, but one evening she opened her eyes and she was a Vampire. No one had bit her—although lots would succumb that way. She was one of the first Vampires in our area.

We should have killed her right there. Certainly, my father the Alpha Werewolf should have had the balls to help his human wife from staying a Vamp. He hadn’t. He’d opened the front door, gotten out of her way, and let her terrorize the street. When the same virus, working differently on us than regular humans, finally took us under, I’d been grateful for the nothingness.

Until I woke up in this time. Changed. Lonely. Scared. And not better off than I’d been in the world before.

And there she was. The woman who had bandaged my knees when they were skinned, sat with me through fevers, laughed with me, disciplined me, and generally made me feel like I mattered all the time stared at me through Vamp eyes.

“Can she see me? I mean. Does she know who I am right now?” I asked Brynna. Never would I have this opportunity again.

Brynna sighed. “That’s a complicated answer. Yes and no. She has your memories right up front in her mind. Hard to explain. It’s like there are front and center memories and backdoor ones. You and your sisters are right up front for her. Does she know this very second? No. But you being here has triggered a slideshow of them.”

She was right. I didn’t get it. Didn’t want to. I just knew that once again I was being presented with the chance to prove I wasn’t my father. I wouldn’t hesitate, wouldn’t falter.

I looked at Micah. “Sometimes there are things we just have to do alone. Would you guys go on without me?”

He nodded once, and the group left me standing there. For a Vamp, she was very still. Usually they ran from Werewolves. Well, unless they were told by their makers to work with them. I walked toward her, slowly. I would shift and chase her if I had to but I’d rather not have to do it that way.

“Well, it’s nice to see you, Mom.” I talked before I could overthink it. I could do this whole thing in silence, but I had things to say. She didn’t really see me? That was okay. I had my eyes on her. I’d always know what I’d told her. These sorts of situations, like funerals, were really for the living anyway. The dead and the mindless Vampires didn’t know what we were and weren’t doing. Or at least that’s how I felt.

She didn’t budge. Was she frozen? Was Brynna wrong? Did she know I was there? “I’ve had a heck of a time, Mom. I’m back from the dead. Cloned. Different body than the one you took care of. Can you tell?” I shook my head. No questions. That would only make me nuts. “Dad is gone. Autumn and Luna are, too.” I choked on their names. Interesting. I hadn’t really let myself be sad about them very much. My sisters would always be fourteen in my mind, never becoming the power mad eighteen year olds I’d last known them as. “Anyway, I’m glad to see you. I’ve fallen in love. For real this time. Not like what you knew was too much and not right when I was in high school. My girl, her name is Margot, she’s a doctor. Super smart. I think we get each other. With her, I feel very… human. Love you. Sorry it went the way it did. If I’d been stronger back then, you’d never have had to suffer like this.”

My mother didn’t budge or indicate that she heard me and that was a good thing. I didn’t have a stake. And the only other way to kill a Vamp that didn’t involve me shifting and mauling my mother was to take care of her like I had the originals. Did I want to burn my mother to death? No, of course not. Would I? Fuck, yes. She should have been dead hundreds of years ago.

I wished she’d close her eyes. The universe didn’t tend to grant me wishes. They’d already given me a second chance to have a great life with Margot. I’d take this pain. I’d live with it.

I set my mother on fire.

She didn’t even scream.

Sometimes Vamps did. But not my mother.

I would have expected to have some great moment of clarity, to be rushed with memories of her scent, her touch, making cookies or some shit but nothing happened. I just stood there. And burned my mother to death.

And then after that I just stood there. And stood there. And stood.

The sun was high in the sky when Margot’s scent hit me, drawing me from the nothingness that invaded my mind. I sucked in a breath. Had I been holding it?

“Hi. What are you doing here?” She was supposed to be safe in bed where I left her. Or maybe not. That was hours ago. Too many. Why had I stood here so long? I didn’t know.

She wrapped her arms around my waist. “You left me asleep in bed while you burned the enemy to the ground. And Deacon thought maybe killed your mom, too.”

I nodded. “That about sums it up.”

“Why didn’t you take me?”

That was an easy answer. “You’d had enough trauma. I wanted you to rest.” I smoothed her hair off her forehead. Margot was so beautiful in daylight. None of us spent enough time outside in the sun. We lived fearful of the night. “I think we made a dent. I can almost guarantee there are more Originals but they know now we can end the clones. That’s something.”

She kissed the bottom of my chin. “Are you going to really not talk about what happened like both things were a super big deal?”

I searched for the right response and it didn’t come to me. What was there to say? Yes, both events had been horrific. “Did you walk here alone?”

“No, Matt brought me. Jason? Deflection much?”

I didn’t scent Matt so that meant my pack mate kept his distance. She was right. I would love to deal with just about any subject in the world than the ones we should talk about. I choked on the first sob that hit me. The problem with losing it is that I never saw the breakdown coming. The good news was Margot seemed to have. She wrapped her arms around me tighter and just held on.

She didn’t let go when my knees gave out but sank to the ground with me.

She didn’t let go when I ran out of tears.

She didn’t let go when the shaking stopped.

She didn’t let go when the nothingness hit.

That was the thing about Margot. She never let go. Ever.

I should feel embarrassed but my mate’s holding me in the worst moment of my existences didn’t bring on those sensations. Instead, she was warm, safe, mine, and the best thing that had ever happened to me.

I really, really loved her in this world where there shouldn’t be this kind of love.

One year later…

I ran my hand over Margot’s belly. We lay stretched out on our bed. Having moved into a family cabin in preparation for the baby, we had more room. The baby kicked under my hand, and she grinned without looking up. At this point she was well versed in how much I liked when the baby moved for me. I guess he or she wasn’t technically moving for me but it felt that way so what difference did it make?

A knock sounded, and she yawned. The proposal she examined couldn’t wait til the next day since the council had to vote on Micah’s request. Truth was, she and I both knew I was going to help Micah get the men he needed for the wall to keep the Originals out, even if they said no. It would be easier if they said yes. She and I both understood how these things worked.

“You or me?” She set down the paper.

“It’s Chad so it could go either way.”

I jumped up and made my way to open the door. An exhausted Chad Lyons leaned against the door waiting for me. His daughter never slept. I tried not to dwell on that fact too much considering I was in for just that sort of thing very soon. Three more months.

The idea still blew me away.

“Medical or Wolf?”

He pointed at me. “We have another arrival.”

Wow. That was three this week. We’d sent word out. Young Warriors liked to travel. I didn’t blame them. Being cooped up in the same spot all their lives was a lot to ask of them, even if we needed their help. When appropriate, if they ran into Werewolves, they told them that we were a place Werewolves and humans lived together. If they wanted to.

Some of them seemed to want to. Young families of Wolves and humans were coming. And as long as they swore allegiance to me as their Alpha and through me Genesis, we were all working this out. There was a future.

A future that meant fighting Vampires and mad scientists. That was never going away. At least not in my lifetime. But this was my life. The world we lived in. I looked over my shoulder at Margot. She nodded at me.

I didn’t deserve her. I’d always be sort of an asshole, kind of the bad guy. But my girl didn’t mind. That was how these things worked out sometimes.

There are life and death things to do and important things like loving on my wife.