“You’re damn right we did!” Giorgio howled, his voice tearing from his throat. “And now you’re dead! You’re all dead—!”

Kitchi’s backhand just about took Giorgio’s head off his spine. I looked at him with surprise, and opened my mouth to scold him, but thought better of it. He’d only done what I wished I had.

“Fuck you!” Giorgio snarled, spitting blood onto the floor. He was dazed, but still in a fury, and I saw the bite marks on his legs from where we had taken him down. “You think you can – you can just leave Sonny!?”

Giorgio collapsed into hysterical laughter, like a man that was out of his mind on drugs. It was a combination of exhaustion, terror and Kitchi’s slap, and I could see he was right on the verge of panic. If he didn’t calm down, he might end up dead.

I looked over at Casper to see how he was doing. He was afraid, but not as bad as I had expected. He actually appeared to be more upset – almost sad. I realized what it was.

He blamed himself for this. He thought that Sonny sending men after him could have somehow been avoided.

“Casper,” I said, getting his attention. I shook my head. “This isn’t your fault.”

He nodded, but I knew it was going to take more than that to get him to accept the truth. I turned back to Giorgio.

“How did you track us here?” I asked him.

“You really are clueless!” he cackled. “You really think Sonny would be dumb enough to let Casper get his hands on pheromone blocker? It was water! You were just too dumb to notice!”

I felt my heart skip a beat as I thought back to the night we escaped Sonny’s home. Was that really possible? Had I been too caught up in the events taking place that I hadn’t even noticed the pheromone blocker wasn’t working? I’d had so much of Casper’s scent up my nose already that maybe I just didn’t even realize…

I looked at Casper who looked like he was on the verge of breaking down.

“You guys hold him,” I told the rest of the pack. Bryce and Tate each took a leg as I got to my feet. I moved over to Casper and tried to take him into my arms, but he pushed me away and turned back into the hall. I followed.

“I just – I just need a second,” he panted. I could hear the strain in his voice and the pain it brought to my heart was unbearable. I wanted to fix it for him, but right then, in that instant, there wasn’t much I could do but try and comfort him.

He put a hand against the wall and leaned against it, taking deep breaths as he tried to calm himself down, and I had to fight against every urge in my body to stop myself from running over to him. I could hear Giorgio cursing the boys in the living room, but I knew they could handle him for the moment. Finally, Casper turned around with tears in his eyes.

“This is all my fault,” he whimpered.

“No!” I replied quickly. “No, it’s not! You can’t say that, Casper. You can’t even think that!”

“It is!” he protested. “If I hadn’t – if I hadn’t gotten involved with Sonny, none of this would be happening! You and I would have fallen in love back at the orphanage and we wouldn’t have been apart for ten years…our lives would have been perfect!”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I raced over to him and caught him just as he was about to collapse to his knees. I pulled him back to his feet and held him in my arms. It was like the past was coming back to haunt is.

The last ten years had been hard, but life had reunited us, given us a gift, and here it was putting another obstacle in our way. I felt my fangs begin to extend and my fox stir, begging me to shift again and tear Giorgio’s throat out and end it all, but that wasn’t the right move.

Sonny would send more men. If they had picked up the scent, there was no way he’d just sent one scout without giving the information to the rest of his crew. They’d come back, and in greater numbers.

“Casper, look at me,” I said. I waited, while his head hung and his eyes remained locked on the floor. But eventually, he brought his eyes to mine. I smiled and stroked his hair. “This is just another hiccup in our life. I promise you. Not only will we get through this – we will conquer it, just like we will conquer all of the other things that get in our way. We will be together, and we will raise our children together, and we will be happy.”

“You – you mean that?” he sniffled. I wiped a tear from his eye with my thumb and nodded.

“Of course I mean it,” I replied. “Do not fear. We are fated, and nothing in the world will break us apart again.”

I kissed my mate, closed my eyes and inhaled his scent again. It was like a drug whose effects never seemed to diminish. His body was warm against mine, and as fired up as I was, all I wanted to do was take him into the bedroom and ravage him. But there would be time for that later.

“Let me go handle this,” I told him. “And do not blame yourself for the actions of others.”

I turned around and left him with that to think about as I marched back into the living room and stood tall over Giorgio. He was smaller than me, and I was poised above him, naked and strong, showing him who the real alpha was. Beneath me, I had complete power over him, and he needed to know that.

“Giorgio, Giorgio, Giorgio,” I mused, placing one foot on either side of him and crossing my arms. “What do we do with you? What – do – we – do?”

For the first time since he’d arrived, Giorgio actually kept his mouth shut. That was a good sign. It meant we actually might be able to talk things out as opposed to immediately resorting to violence.

“Kitchi,” I said casually. “You think we should kill him? Or maybe torture him for information?”

Kitchi knew I was playing a game, and played along. He smiled broadly so Giorgio could see it and nodded. “I could take him into my room with the boys and work him over if you’d like. He’ll talk.”

“Wait – wait, what are you saying!?” Giorgio began to stammer. Using the heel of my foot, I pressed against his lower jaw and pinned his mouth together, shutting him up. He strained and grimaced, but I held him like that as I spoke.

“Listen to me, Giorgio. And listen well. Hear me. I do not want to harm you, or kill you for that matter. But this is unacceptable. We cannot have you returning to Sonny and bringing more men here. Blood will be shed on both sides, but I assure you – we will win.”

I released him, resting my foot on his chest. He spit more blood and licked his lips as he looked up at me with a mixture of contempt and fear.

“Sonny isn’t going to just let you go,” he said. “I don’t know what you think is going to happen.”

“This is what is going to happen,” I told him. “You are going to return to Sonny and tell him you tracked Casper’s scent to the airport. He must have gotten on a plane and you don’t know where he went. You’re going to tell him that, because you don’t want us coming to pay you a visit. The members of this pack that you see before you are simply a fraction of the numbers we have. There are more, many more, and if you do not do as I say, we will be forced to retaliate. And that, you do not want. Nod if you understand me.”

Giorgio stared up at me and I could practically see the gears in his mind turning. He looked at the rest of the faces in the room, then over to Casper, and then back to me. Finally, he nodded.