House of Earth and Blood

Yet Amelie plucked the radio from her belt and said into it, “Guests are here for the Prime. Come get them.”

She had once breezed through the doors beyond Amelie’s dark head, had spent hours playing with the pups in the grass and trees beyond it whenever Danika had been given babysitting duty.

She shut out the memory of what it had been like—to watch Danika playing with the fuzzy pups or shrieking children, who had all worshipped the ground she walked upon. Their future leader, their protector, who would take the wolves to new heights.

Bryce’s chest constricted to the point of pain. Hunt glanced her way then, his brows rising.

She couldn’t do this. Be here. Enter this place.

Amelie smiled, as if realizing that. Scenting her dread and pain.

And the sight of the fucking bitch standing there, where Danika had once been … Red washed over Bryce’s vision as she drawled, “It’s good to see that crime has gone down so much, if all you have to do with your day, Amelie, is play guard at the front door.”

Amelie smiled slowly. Footsteps sounded on the other side of the gate, just before they swung open, but Bryce didn’t dare look. Not as Amelie said, “You know, sometimes I think I should thank you—they say if Danika hadn’t been so distracted by messaging you about your drunk bullshit, she might have anticipated the attack. And then I wouldn’t be where I am, would I.”

Bryce’s nails cut into her palms. But her voice, thank the gods, was steady as she said, “Danika was a thousand times the wolf you are. No matter where you are, you’ll never be where she was.”

Amelie went white with rage, her nose crinkling, lips pulling back to expose her now-lengthening teeth—

“Amelie,” a male voice growled from the shadows of the gate archway.

Oh gods. Bryce curled her fingers into fists to keep from shaking as she looked toward the young male wolf.

But Ithan Holstrom’s eyes darted between her and Amelie as he approached his Alpha. “It’s not worth it.” The unspoken words simmered in his eyes. Bryce isn’t worth it.

Amelie snorted, turning back to the vestibule, a shorter, brown-haired female following her. The pack’s Omega, if memory served. Amelie sneered over a shoulder to Bryce, “Go back to the dumpster you crawled out of.”

Then she shut the door. Leaving Bryce standing before Connor’s younger brother.

There was nothing kind on Ithan’s tan face. His golden-brown hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him, but he’d been a sophomore playing sunball for CCU then.

This towering, muscled male before them had made the Drop. Had stepped into his brother’s shoes and joined the pack that had replaced Connor’s.

A brush of Hunt’s velvet-soft wings against her arm had her walking. Every step toward the wolf ratcheted up her heartbeat.

“Ithan,” Bryce managed to say.

Connor’s younger brother said nothing as he turned toward the pillars flanking the walkway.

She was going to puke. All over everything: the limestone tiles, the pale pillars, the glass doors that opened into the park in the center of the villa.

She shouldn’t have let Athalar come. Should have made him stay on the roof somewhere so he couldn’t witness the spectacular meltdown that she was three seconds away from having.

Ithan Holstrom’s steps were unhurried, his gray T-shirt pulling across the considerable expanse of his muscled back. He’d been a cocky twenty-year-old when Connor died, a history major like Danika and the star of CCU’s sunball team, rumored to be going pro as soon as his brother gave the nod. He could have gone pro right after high school, but Connor, who had raised Ithan since their parents had died five years earlier, had insisted that a degree came first, sports second. Ithan, who had idolized Connor, had always folded on it, despite Bronson’s pleas with Connor to let the kid go pro.

Connor’s Shadow, they’d teased Ithan.

He’d filled out since then. At last started truly resembling his older brother—even the shade of his golden-brown hair was like a spike through her chest.

I’m crazy about you. I don’t want anyone else. I haven’t for a long while.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stop seeing, hearing those words, feeling the giant fucking rip in the space-time continuum where Connor should have been, in a world where nothing bad could ever, ever happen—

Ithan stopped before another set of glass doors. He opened one, the muscles in his long arm rippling as he held it for them.

Hunt went first, no doubt scanning the space in the span of a blink.

Bryce managed to look up at Ithan as she passed.

His white teeth shone as he bared them at her.

Gone was the cocky boy she’d teased; gone was the boy who’d tried out flirting on her so he could use the techniques on Nathalie, who had laughed when Ithan asked her out but told him to wait a few more years; gone was the boy who had relentlessly questioned Bryce about when she’d finally start dating his brother and wouldn’t take never for an answer.

A honed predator now stood in his place. Who had surely not forgotten the leaked messages she’d sent and received that horrible night. That she’d been fucking some random in the club bathroom while Connor—Connor, who had just spilled his heart to her—was slaughtered.

Bryce lowered her eyes, hating it, hating every second of this fucked-up visit.

Ithan smiled, as if savoring her shame.

He’d dropped out of CCU after Connor had died. Quit playing sunball. She only knew because she’d caught a game on TV one night two months later and the commentators had still been discussing it. No one, not his coaches, not his friends, not his packmates, could convince him to return. He’d walked away from the sport and never looked back, apparently.

She hadn’t seen him since the days right before the murders. Her last photo of him was the one Danika had taken at his game, playing in the background. The one she’d tortured herself with last night for hours while bracing herself for what the dawn would bring.

Before that, though, there had been hundreds of photos of the two of them together. They still sat on her phone like a basket full of snakes, waiting to bite if she so much as opened the lid.

Ithan’s cruel smile didn’t waver as he shut the door behind them. “The Prime’s taking a nap. Sabine will meet with you.”

Bryce glanced at Hunt, who gave her a shallow nod. Precisely as they’d planned.

Bryce was aware of Ithan’s every breath at her back as they aimed for the stairs that Bryce knew would take them up a level to Sabine’s office. Hunt seemed aware of Ithan, too, and let enough lightning wreathe his hands, his wrists, that the young wolf took a step away.

At least alphaholes were good for something.

Ithan didn’t leave. No, it seemed he was to be their guard and silent tormentor for the duration of this miserable trip.

Bryce knew every step toward Sabine’s office on the second level, but Ithan led the way: up the sprawling limestone stairs marred with so many scratches and gouges no one bothered to fix them anymore; down the high-ceilinged, bright hall whose windows overlooked the busy street outside; and finally to the worn wood door. Danika had grown up here—and moved out as soon as she’d gone to CCU. After graduation, she’d stayed only during formal wolf events and holidays.