With Ties That Bind: Book 3 (The Broken Bonds 6)

Lesson number four: when all else fails, fight. Attack your attacker.

The Alpha put me in the corner with his letter, and Quinn trained me to attack. Decided, I suck in a full breath and move toward the laptop. I pull up the last message I sent, where I goaded the Alpha with the trophies. “I’m waiting for a response,” I tell her.

She sidles up beside me. Her stillness is almost disturbing as she reads the message. I cross my arms, awaiting her scolding. Finally, she says, “He made contact with you.”

All the fortitude I built up in preparation to her reprimand deflates. I sink against the table. “Yes.” My eyes ask what I’m unable to voice. What does that mean?

Her eyebrows draw together, lips thinned. “There was no need to send him a message.”

It’s not a reprimand. My friend is trying not to tell me something. “Because Quinn will lose his shit?”

She huffs a laugh. “That’s a given.” For a second, the tension subsides. I bask in the lightness of it. Then her demeanor shifts, serious. “There was no need, because he’s coming for you.”

I shake my head. “How can you know that. You didn’t read the letter he sent—”

“I don’t have to,” she says, reaching out to me. Sadie doesn’t touch people. If she feels I need comfort, I should run. So much for all my bravado. “The Alpha may not be our typical offender, but he’s a psychopath all the same. If he’s made personal contact, he wants you to know who he is.”

I wonder if Sadie is thinking back to when Wells first contacted her. I am. She must’ve known then that her relationship with her own stalker wouldn’t end any other way.

“Have I made it worse?” I ask. “By validating him with a response?”

She shakes her head. “A narcissistic psychopath doesn’t need validation from anyone, Avery. He validates himself. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not then—” she stresses “—not now. And we can use this.” She turns to the laptop. “Once Quinn gets all the angst out of his system, we’ll prep for an op.”

I could do this alone, I might even should—but Sadie’s telling me I don’t have to. That I haven’t crossed the point of no return.

I bow my head, exhaustion an anchor weighing down my bones. “I can’t have anyone get hurt, Sadie.”

“If that’s true, then you can’t do this alone. Quinn is strong, but he wouldn’t survive if anything happened to you. Don’t hurt him.”

All I can offer is a nod. “I love you, too, ya know.”

She gives my hand a consoling squeeze. “And I love your morbid little heart, but you’re not getting the trophies,” she adds. Her tone leaves no room for debate.

“Can I ask why?”

A moment of consideration,

then: “Wells stole those verses from his victims. I’m going to return them.”

“When all this is done,” I say, squaring my shoulders, “I’m helping.” I make sure my tone leaves no room for debate, either.

The side of her mouth kicks up into a smile. “Skulking around graveyards with a morbid medical examiner. Be still my black, beating heart.”

I free a tight smile, and realize the transfer crew still hasn’t arrived. I check the time. “Was Quinn following the vics here?”

“He’s with Colton, examining Maddox.” She checks her phone for updates and then says, “Is Carson aware that you’ve called the Alpha out?”

The way she puts it sounds like I’ve thrown down gang signs, daring his crew to step to mine. Actually, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Except for I used myself as bait. “I’ve been trying to leave Carson out of most of everything,” I admit. “He doesn’t have the most stellar track record for keeping secrets.”

“And he felt you up during the op,” she says with a curl of her lip.

“Oh, and there’s that.”

Her smile puts me more at ease. Since she’s been with Colton, there’s a new playful side of Sadie I never knew existed. I like it. “I should tell Quinn first,” I say, rubbing my forehead, feeling every bit my lack of sleep.

She closes the laptop, then turns to me. “We have five hours. That’s plenty of time.”

Five hours. The time I gave the Alpha to man-up and confront me himself. I doubt he would’ve kept to my rules for him to meet me alone. But then, I had no intention of going alone myself.