Spiral of Need (The Mercury Pack 1)

She shook her head. “That’s not me. I’m Beta too, remember? If nothing else, I should be there with you.”

“I think this is something everyone here should get to see,” stated Dante. “They were all targets, they all have their own share of anger toward the two females in the toolshed. They want closure as much as we do.”

Nick thought on that for a minute. He addressed the whole room as he announced, “We’ll take the captives into the woods behind the toolshed. If any of you wish to watch them be dealt with, meet us there.”

Only Kathy, Caleb, Kent, and Willow stayed behind. The rest gathered behind Derren, Nick, Trey, and Dante as the captives were brought out by Jesse and Zander.

Nick groaned at the sight of the females and then glanced at his mate over his shoulder. “Shay, was that really necessary?” She simply shrugged, grinning. His gaze flicked to his sister. “You helped, didn’t you?” It was more of an accusation than an enquiry.

“I thought you hid the shears,” said Marcus, a smile playing around the edges of his mouth.

A muscle in Nick’s jaw ticked. “I did.”

“Not well enough,” commented Roni, smirking in supreme satisfaction.

Marcus toyed with his mate’s hair. “When you and Shaya went inside the shed, and I heard those two shrieking and cursing, I hadn’t guessed this was why. Though I probably should have.”

Jaime pouted. “I wish I’d been there. We had so much fun the time we played with the female jackal that Roni caught.”

“The girls like to give their captives a makeover,” Eli explained to Ally as he came to stand beside her.

She bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing—both Kerrie and Miranda had nothing but tufts left of their hair. “Well, I can see that.”

Jesse and Zander shoved Miranda and Kerrie to their knees and stood behind them, on guard. Only Kerrie looked scared. If Ally hadn’t been able to feel Miranda’s fear scuttling across her skin like beetles, she would have thought the woman was completely indifferent to her situation.

Miranda’s scowl deepened as her attention turned to Dan. “I’m sure you’re enjoying this.”

He pursed his lips. “Since your actions placed Ally in danger . . . yeah, this has some entertainment value.”

Kerrie’s fearful gaze turned ugly and malicious as it found Roni and Marcus. The couple was standing side by side, their bodies intimately close and their stances protective. Their bond was so solid and strong, it seemed to throb between them.

Roni tilted her head as she regarded Kerrie with a blank look. “All this because he rejected you?”

“He didn’t reject me.” Kerrie smirked. “We had a lot of fun together. Didn’t we, Marcus?”

“Sure,” allowed Roni, “for, like, two minutes. It was short and casual—nothing to write home about.”

The smirk vanished from Kerrie’s face. “He would have come back to me. When he was ready to commit, when he saw that other females would never know him and care about him like I do, he would have come back.”

“Yeah, in an alternate reality.”

Kerrie’s words came out fast and furiously. “Marcus would have mated me. I would have become part of the Phoenix Pack, we would have been happy.” Her gaze turned faraway. “He was good to me. He wasn’t like the others. It didn’t matter to him that I was a Seer—he wasn’t prejudiced against my kind. It didn’t matter to him that my father was known for being a bad drunk and an even worse mate. None of it mattered to him.”

“What about your own mate?” Dante asked. “You didn’t think to wait for him?”

“He died when I was fourteen. He was seven years older than me; he’d said he wouldn’t touch me until I turned eighteen. He was an enforcer like Marcus.”

Now Ally understood. Kerrie had wanted to create the future she should have had with her mate. She’d chosen Marcus, decided he was what she needed, and had relished his acceptance of her Seer nature. She’d made plans for their future, believing it was only a matter of time before those plans became reality.

Kerrie’s eyes slid to Roni. “But then you came along.”

Bemused, Roni snorted. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of home wrecker. He’s my mate. He’s mine. He was never yours.”

But Ally could sense that, to Kerrie, Roni truly was the interloper—she’d ruined everything for Kerrie. For a second time, the female’s plans for the future had collapsed as, once again, she’d lost the wolf she’d expected to mate. Kerrie’s emotional state had no doubt been deteriorating for a long time, probably as a result of losing her true mate before they’d had the chance to claim each other. Many shifters lost their way after such a painful situation.

“You’re not good enough for him,” Kerrie sneered.

Roni snickered. “Yeah, you’re a bitter, unhinged bitch, and I’m a socially challenged tomboy. Go judge me.”

Trey looked at Kerrie curiously. “If you care for Marcus so much, why did you want him dead too?”

“He betrayed me,” she replied, but her eyes were on Marcus. “He chose her over me. And he needed to know how it felt to lose a mate, to lose everything.”

Looking murderous, Marcus growled low in his throat. “And that’s exactly why you’ll die today.”

Ally’s head began to badly pound as Kerrie’s emotional state repeatedly swung from enraged to bitter to confused to pained to disoriented. The female was, in a word, lost. In which case, Ally had to wonder if they were looking at this from the wrong angle.