I stood on Micah’s wall, next to the man himself, and stared down. “Where is your wife?”

I didn’t usually make small talk but it felt like I should say something. I’d lost track of how many original Vampires were coming toward us. They were lining up like some kind of medieval army, and I wondered if they were about to lay siege on our proverbial castle. Maybe I had paid attention in school a little bit more than I realized.

Micah shook his head. “I don’t know. I asked her not to be where I could see her. I’ll worry too much about her and not be able to concentrate on what I have to do. She’s tougher than me. She can handle herself. But still...”

“It’s everything I can do not to lock Margot up somewhere until this is over. I thought it was a mate thing.”

Micah laughed. “It’s a love thing and a we live in shitty times thing.”

“I guess you’re right.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “There’s no way we get through this if they make it through the wall. There’s too many of them.” My Wolves were ready but there were only so many of us. We were going to need an army and we didn’t have one.

Micah nodded. “Glen’s special arrows need to work.”

The resident inventor happened to be Micah’s brother-in-law and he’d fitted us with special arrows that were supposed to somehow pierce the extra level of protection the Originals had around their hearts. “Will they?”

“He doesn’t tend to let us down.”

I hoped that continued to be the case. “Have we seen a single regular old Vamp since this crap started?”

“No.” Deacon stepped toward us. “Since you two are cackling over here like old women I thought I’d come join the conversation. Most Warriors are puking. Our population is screaming in terror and you’re what? Gossiping?”

Micah grinned. “Jealous?”

“Little bit.” Deacon held up his fingers together to show how little he was actually jealous. Now, it was the three of us laughing. I’d missed this. Back in high school, even during my Rachel years, I’d had friends to hang out with. That had happened less and less as the Wolf had ridden me more but there had been times we’d just laughed.

“Where is Lydia?” I hoped I remembered her name right. Micah had Brynna. Deacon had Lydia. I had Margot. What were the chances in this crazy world the three of us would have anyone at all?

“I hope she’s with Margot. She’s good in a crisis, but I don’t want her wandering around and maybe getting in trouble. She’s helped your wife before. Oh wait, sorry. Not wife. Mate, right? Same thing?”

It was more than a wife to me. Or maybe not. What did I know about how full on humans felt about their wives? It seemed like we were all reacting pretty similarly when it came down to it. “I need to ask her to marry me.”

Margot was human. She should have the human ritual.

I was going to see to that. Assuming I lived through this.

Glen came up behind us, panting. “They work. I mean, I think they do.”

Well then, I supposed it was time to get to it.

“When this is over,” Glen leaned against the railing, “does anyone want to get a beer?”

A beer? I’d never gotten a beer with anyone, ever. Did he mean me, too? Micah nudged me. “Yeah, we’ll all go get a beer. After we have we survived battle sex with our wives. Except you, Glen, because that’s my sister and so I can’t think about you having sex with her ever.”

I snorted and Chad groaned. “Yeah, no sex with Tia.”

“She’s had two of his children.” Deacon held up that many fingers. “That means that at least twice…”

Micah covered his ears. “I’d rather fight original Vampires than listen to that shit.”

On that note, I turned my attention downward. “Who says when it’s time to start this show?”

Chad sighed. “You do. You’re the one putting his ass on the line first. Have at it whenever you’re ready.”

“Then I guess it’s now.” I looked over at my pack mates. They were positioned up and down the wall. They’d follow me into this mess. I just hoped we didn’t all live to regret it. “Don’t hit us with any of those arrows.”

Glen gulped. “Maybe I shouldn’t be the one shooting them.”

“He acts like he wasn’t a full-fledged Warrior for most of his existence in this version of the world.” Micah shrugged. “I’ll be doing it. To start. We won’t hit you guys. I promise you that. Jason, thanks for doing this. Seriously. I know you don’t have to.”

I pointed behind me. “As long as she’s here, I’m here. And that makes you all pack.”

I realized as I said it that I meant it. They were my pack. I’d protect Genesis until I couldn’t protect her anymore. In doing so, I was keeping Margot safe. My Wolves wanted to stay here. So that was what we would do.

I launched forward, shifting mid-air. Once upon a time scientists had observed like we were a storyline for them to read in a book. They’d lost that ability but if anyone was witnessing this now let them see me. Let them know Genesis was protected.

By me.

I hit the ground on all four paws, and for the first time since I met Margot, I let my human brain turn off. There was death to deliver but it didn’t need to be giving these creatures their end. My Wolf was better at it. He’d let me stay present since my mate arrived, understanding even before I did that I had to be aware of her all the time, even when I was wearing my fur.

But Margot had no place here, not here.

This was just… death.

I struck, my mouth watering. I would deliver the end to any who threatened what was mine. I’d been born to do this. Alphas protected. It was what we did. And for the first time ever I wore the role comfortably.

It fit me just fine.

“Jason.” Micah put a hand on my shoulder and shook. I wrenched my eyes open. Where the fuck was I? On the ground somewhere? The last thing I remembered was shifting.

“What happened?”

Micah shrugged. “I think you shifted before you passed out.”

“I passed out?”

“Twelve hours with no break? Yeah. I’d say you earned it. I was up on the ledge most of the time and I’m conked.”

He put out his hand, and I took it, letting him help me to my feet. “Is everyone okay?”

Micah himself didn’t look particularly well. He had a scratch down the side of his face that was bleeding, a black eye that was swelling up even as they spoke, and his clothes were torn.

“Don’t remember much?”

“I go blank when the Wolf’s in charge. Just part of it. I can control when the Wolf’s in charge. That’s an Alpha thing. We can discuss that later.”

Micah pointed behind him. “Your pack is fine and last I heard so is Margot.”

I could finally breathe. Those were the two most important pieces of information he needed. Micah delivered that news as a man who knew what a man in love needed to hear first. I’d have told Micah about Brynna first off if the situation were reversed.

“Thanks for that. Otherwise?”

“You and your Wolves kicked some serious ass. I don’t think you lost any. But they did get past us.” A hole in the wall caught my attention as little details of our surroundings started to filter into my consciousness. This place looked like a warzone.

I stared at the hole in the wall. “How bad?” He’d said Margot was okay. I had to keep that in my heart so I didn’t go charging in there.

“Deacon and some others drove them back. We have massive casualties. I came looking for you as soon as it was safe because I couldn’t get to you earlier and Margot is asking about you every two minutes. She needs to see you and maybe she could use some help. The only real doctor…”

He didn’t need to say anymore. I took off running. I passed two members of my pack who were helping an older woman get to her feet. They nodded at me. No one needed my attention right then except Margot. Mass casualties. What did that mean?

Margot stood, covered in blood, her blue apron that she wore in the med bay drenched with it. The stench of death hit me hard, but I covered my reaction.

She spoke to a woman who I could tell just from looking at wasn’t going to make it. She had bites all over her body, a scratch down her side. People ran about helping Margot but Margot only had eyes for the woman on her table.

“Tell me what it was like, the place you got married, so long ago.”

The woman smiled and tried to speak but couldn’t. The end was close. I approached on quiet feet. Margot met my gaze for a second before dropping her eyes back down to her patient. It was enough. She knew I was here but yes she was needed more in this woman’s final moments than anywhere else.

I could wait as long as it took to capture her attention. Actually, I could be more helpful than that. I’d assisted my father on occasion. I grabbed bandages and gauze. That was the best I could do. If she had to help people pass on from this world, then I’d see to it that she had less work when she was done.

I got busy getting busy.

I scented her exhaustion a second before she wrapped her arms around my waist. “Come with me.” She tugged, letting go of me, and I stepped away from the person I’d just finished with to follow Margot.

She didn’t speak again, just bringing me wherever it was she wanted to go. I’d follow her anywhere. We ended up going into a room at the end of the hallway that seemed to have nothing in it but a long table and some broken chairs.

Margot threw her arms around my neck. “I thought you were dead. When you didn’t come back, I thought you were dead. Deacon said he didn’t think you were. That last he saw you, you were alive and in the woods. But I was just convinced.”

I kissed the top of her hair. “I’m sorry. I went all Wolf, and I went under too long. I passed out. I don’t have clear memories of anything that happened.”

“You didn’t come back.” She shook me slightly, and I let her. There was no way she could hurt me. “Jace,” I loved when she called me that. “I think we’ve lost a quarter of the population. A quarter. It could be more. They’re all just bleeding to death.”

Margot let out a sob, pressing her head into my chest. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”

I’d noticed that, too. It was impossibly harder than it should have been to close the wounds of those who’d been bitten in the neck. “This isn’t your fault. They’re made to be lethal.” I sort of remembered that it was hard to tear them apart. My jaw ached at the pseudo-memory. “It’s our fault we let them past us.”

She shook her head against my chest. “I saw them coming, and I thought we were all dead, but the Warriors pushed them back again. Still, they got a quarter of us. I think a quarter of us. And there’s nothing I can do.”

My heart clenched both at her pain and at the sheer loss of life from a community that wasn’t very big to begin with. But this moment wasn’t about me, it was about being there for her. So I tightened my arms around her and I held on while the flood of grief struck my woman. She worried that she was made from Doubleday, that somehow she was like that person. Margot couldn’t have been more wrong.

She shook, her sobs becoming silent and something inside of me died that I couldn’t just fix this for her. Eventually with time she stopped. Maybe she just didn’t have any more tears. Maybe they would come later. I wanted her to go to bed, I wanted to take her there and hold her until morning came. Hell, until ten more mornings came. We both knew that wasn’t possible, not yet.

“I have to go see to more patients. The helpers are great but no one has my background.” She stepped back and wiped her eyes. I leaned over to kiss both her cheeks, letting the tears touch my lips. They were salty. I breathed her in. The stale smell of grief had taken hold of her scent. My Wolf reared inside of me, hating it. But we both knew that it wasn’t going to go away just because we wanted it to.

I pressed my nose against her hair. Touch was so important to shifters. I knew it was just as pivotal to her. “Soon.”

I hoped she understood my promise. Soon there would be rest, soon there would be retribution for this. Soon there would be some semblance of peace. I could promise her that.

“They have all the supplies, all the ability to just keep doing this to us. I… Why am I even going down this train of thought? Life has never been fair.” She kissed my cheek, lingering there. “Out of all of it, if you had died, I might become the monster Doubleday is. You’re here. I can breathe.”

I shook my head. “You’d never be Doubleday.”

“You’re so sure.”

I could give her a million reasons for that but there would only be one she’d accept as truth. “I can smell it, Margot. I’m all about the nose.”

“Do you think you would have liked me if you’d met me in that time you come from? The one almost everyone here can remember but I never saw outside of pictures and movies.”

I picked her up in my arms and set her down on the table so that I could hold her for another second in my arms. She pressed her head against my chest again. Sometimes you just had to make time. She wasn’t going to be a good doctor this way to anyone if she didn’t get a second.

“Would I have liked you? Are you kidding? You’re mine, Margot. I must warn you I was a little bit crazy back then. Couldn’t control the shifts. But I’d have done anything for you. You probably would have thought I was creepy. Following you around, demanding time.”

She laughed. “I’d have loved that.” She tugged on my shirt before she lifted her mouth for a kiss. I gave her one, pouring all the love I had for her into it. Eventually she sighed. “This just… sucks.”

I nodded. “It does.”

I watched her leave me, keeping myself settled long enough that I was sure she’d gone back to work. Margot was right. Enough was enough with this free fucking pass they had for us. I wasn’t putting up with this anymore. They had to be hit where it hurt and that was cloning. They had to know that they, too, could die. End of story.

I followed my nose a distance away until I reached the hall where I was pretty sure the council met to have meetings. I tried the door. It wasn’t locked, but if it had been, I’d have broken the lock. There was part of me that was always going to be nefarious. I’d domesticate for Margot but only to a point.

I knew before I entered that Chad, Micah, Deacon, Glen and Tiffani were there. I’d followed Chad’s scent so the first part, at least, wasn’t surprising. I guessed it made sense they were altogether after such a terrible battle. The council would need to regroup. But Glen’s presence made me think they were on the same page as I was.

Micah nodded at me when I came in. “I told you Jason would come.”

“It has to stop.” I didn’t pretend that they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. A quarter of our meager population was gone. Dead at the hands of original Vampires. At the very least we had to stop their creators from being able to do this endlessly.

Chad ran a hand over his face. Everyone here was utterly exhausted. Tiffani had blood on her arm. She must not have needed medical attention or she’d be elsewhere. Glen leaned on a chair in front of him like he might fall over otherwise.

It was Chad who spoke. “One of us has to hit the button to turn the cloning machines off. Icahn hid it here because he knew we’d never have the balls to use it. I’m going to do it. I just have to gear up for what it means. I can see the greater good. I promise I can. But I hit that button and there is every possibility that you, me, Margot, hundreds of us, we all drop dead instantly. I know it’s selfish, but I really wanted to see my kid.”

He was right. It was selfish, but I totally understood him because I had my own dreams I wanted to see fulfilled, and the last thing I wanted to do was harm Margot in any way. But we couldn’t just let them decimate us piece by piece, and I didn’t have it in me to shift and battle until I lost consciousness day after day. I wished I did. Maybe I was a wimp. Maybe another Wolf could do it and ask it of his pack. But in my case, understanding my limitations was something I did very well. If they came at us again tonight with that level of force, I was dead.

End of story.

“And there’s no way to prevent the potential death to the current clones. I mean, there’s no way to know for certain one way or another whether disabling the cloning machines altogether ends our life or doesn’t?”

Glen shook his head. “The amount that I understand this tech is very little. I was really good at this stuff in the world we all used to live in. Well, almost all of us. Sorry, Deacon.” The other man shrugged. He had to be used to this by now. “But they cryogenically froze us and now I’m playing catch up every day. This? I can turn it off. That’s how far I can go. I can tell you guys how to turn it off. Otherwise, yeah. I’m just dense about it.”

The door slammed open behind me and I was hit with the scent of my mate immediately. I whirled around. Apparently, the humans in here weren’t the only ones suffering from exhaustion. I’d gone nose blind. “You okay?”

She shook her head before she stormed past me and pointed at the machine in front of me. “Is that it? The cloning device that controls all others that we can’t seem to get rid of?”

Deacon sighed. “We don’t keep secrets very well around here, do we?”

Margot put her hands on her hips. “Not with Tia around. I love your wife, Glen, but she likes to talk.” She pointed at it. “I knew about it anyway. From the trip I took with Jason to the lair of the Doubledays.”

Was that what she was calling it in her head? I snorted, and she gave me a look that screamed not amused. I immediately stopped laughing. I guessed Margot hadn’t intended to be funny. I steeled my face. Maybe I was deranged. Nothing should be amusing at the moment.

Tiffani nodded at her. “This is the device. One of us will turn it off. But the idea that we’re about to potentially kill everyone is hard to swallow.”

Margot hit a key and the whole thing shut down. It made a swish noise before the green light on it turned red. I gaped at the device. She’d just flat out shut off that fucking thing without giving it another thought.

“He lied to you. Icahn lied.” She looked at all of us. “The science makes no sense. Two plus two doesn’t add up to two thousand. It just doesn’t. If you give something life you make it self-sustaining. Jason’s heart beats. He breathes. He isn’t doing so because of some connection to a machine. They told you that so you wouldn’t turn off their toy. But you didn’t. I did.”

Tiffani let out a long, audible breath. “Wow. I mean, you just did that. One. Two. Three.”

“Well, I’m Doubleday, right. Despite what my love says. I’m a little bit fucked up.”

The growl that came out of me couldn’t have been controlled even if I’d wanted to. “Don’t talk about yourself that way.”

Tiffani met my gaze. “Maybe a little fucked up is what we need around here. You can be fucked up. As long as you’re our fucked up.”

She pointed at the door. “We have to bury a quarter of our population. Let’s stop dillydallying and get to it.”

Margot turned on her heel and then stopped, looking back at me. There was vulnerability in her eyes the others wouldn’t see. She visibly swallowed. “I debated the whole way over here about whether or not I’d do it. If I had the chance. I didn’t just decide to do it willy-nilly.”

“We’re still standing here so you were right.” I took her hand in mine.

“Yeah. But what if I had been wrong?” She shook her head. “Burying bodies. Now.”

Margot let go of my hand to storm out again. I let her go. Sometimes I had to know when to let people just be. My nose was off but my sense of self-preservation was just fine. She wanted space. She was going to get it.

Yes, we were going to bury the dead. Tiffani stepped up next to me. “I’m giving Margot my space on the council.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I need off of here. It’s time. I’m beyond exhausted from it. I was only ever on because of Keith. It’s time to let this go. We need doers. Chad overthinks. Micah wants to be on his tower that we’ll now have to rebuild. Deacon’s a teacher. I’m so out of the loop that I can’t even figure out what the heck is going on in this once-again new version of our already new world. Margot is the woman for this new world. I want someone to hit buttons and stop Doubleday. I want your wife.”

She wasn’t my wife. Not yet. She would be. I would see to it. When the dead were buried, when Doubleday understood we meant business, and when the wall was rebuilt around the outskirts of Genesis.

“I think that’s a good idea.” Not that she had asked my opinion. More like informed me of what she planned on doing. I was an Alpha Wolf but in Genesis I was glad to be one of many listening to really smart people around me who knew better than I did what they were doing.

I could take down original Vampires, rip out their throats, climb through windows, and shift into fur, but I didn’t have a clue how to keep these non-furry people alive. Yes, Margot should sit on the council. And maybe someday I’d convince her she wasn’t a monster and never would be.