So I kicked him again.

“Let’s see how much you can bleed before you die,” I wheezed, my voice hardly over a whisper but still projecting the anger I felt. My throat screamed in protest as I spoke.

I kicked him twice more before remembering there was a gun in my hand. When I rolled him onto his back, I made sure he was looking at me so he could see the weapon.

“You fucked with the wrong goddamn princess today.”

I raised the gun to fire, but a strong hand on my arm stopped me. Desmond lowered my arm for me and pulled me away from Hank, who watched with wide-eyed wonderment, still curled into a fetal ball.

“Enough,” Desmond whispered.

“I want to kill him.”

He turned me to face him, and when he saw me, his expression changed. Anger, sadness and fear ebbed and flowed over him, and given the twitch in the corner of his eye I half-expected him to take my gun from me and kill Hank himself. I must have looked as good as I felt.

“No one dies tonight,” he said.

Delicate fingers smoothed my hair away from my face, and when I winced, he did too. “Let me kill him.”

Desmond shook his head. “We can’t give Mercy permission to retaliate.”

God, he was right. One dead werewolf, even a sack of shit like Hank, would be all Mercy needed to lash out against my people. Against Lucas’s pack, or my human friends. I imagined her sending a pack like this to Mercedes’s door, attacking her and her boyfriend Owen. I pictured Detective Tyler Nowakowski being hunted down in the streets and shredded because he knew me. Nolan and Shane, both tough guys but both human—they would become targets.

I saw a knock on my grandmere’s door in the night, and knew perfectly well Mercy was wicked enough to stoop to those levels.

Desmond must have seen resignation in my face, because he pulled me farther away from Hank, and I didn’t protest. He took me to Holden, who was watching a writhing group of werewolves peel themselves off the concrete, and said, “Watch her for a second.”

Holden—typically a master of hiding any emotion other than annoyance—took one look at me and his face fell. “Holy shit, Secret.”

“You should see the other guy,” I tried to joke.

Holden turned his face from me and watched Desmond go back across the street. My werewolf dragged Hank off the ground and into a slouched stand. At first I thought he was helping him to his feet so Hank could run away. Then Desmond hit him. He hit the scrawny wolf so hard when Hank fell back on his ass, he spit a tooth out into the gutter.

Once again Desmond yanked Hank up, and again he hit him.

The third time, I wanted to tell him to stop, because the rage he was displaying could only get worse, and he’d just told me I couldn’t kill anyone. This time, though, he didn’t punch Hank. Desmond got two fistfuls of the other man’s shirt and lifted him clean off the ground.

“You shouldn’t have touched her,” Desmond growled, loud enough I could hear it from across the street. “And if you ever go near her again, I will kill you.” There was no flowery language, no subtle violent threats. Just a clean-cut promise of death.

Desmond hurled Hank into the wall of a nearby building hard enough the brick cracked.

When he returned to us, both Holden and I were silent. Desmond grabbed me, trying to be gentle, but there was a neediness in his touch making him rough. He pulled me into him and wrapped me in a hug that was equal parts that of a lover and that of a protective parent. I let him hold me because it felt good to be protected, and right then I needed it. The werewolves collected themselves, and I could hear them running away.

I wanted to cry, but it hurt too badly.

Holden chimed in after a long, long while, and the seriousness of his voice gave me renewed chills. “Why isn’t she healing?”

Chapter Forty-One

Blood was disgusting.

I tried to wrench my head away when Holden stuffed his wrist into my mouth, but he used his free hand to keep me from moving. “You need it. Stop fighting me.”

He was right, of course. I’d seen my face when we got back to the apartment, and I looked like I’d been in a head-on collision after getting the shit kicked out of me by six big dudes. It was bad, maybe even worse to see than it felt. Part of that could have been I wasn’t used to seeing bruises on myself, let alone welts, cuts and huge goose-egg bumps on my forehead.

Desmond was holding a bag of frozen peas—a holdover from his time living with me—to my most swollen cheek. I’d long wanted these two men to get along, but this wasn’t how I’d pictured it going. Not that I’d imagined it as some sexy three-way—I swear I hadn’t—but I also hadn’t thought about them playing mutual nursemaids to me.

Okay, maybe sexy nursemaids.

I grimaced when Holden’s blood touched my tongue. My whole life I’d survived on the stuff and even loved the taste of it, but now that I was human, it felt thick in my mouth and the copper flavor was so overwhelming I gagged.

“Jesus Christ, Secret, you’ve had it before.”

The acknowledgment of our sharing blood made me think about our night together in Aubrey’s palace and the way Holden had bitten me. The orgasm that had followed. My cheeks flushed, and I couldn’t meet his gaze, though he was mere inches away and my mouth was latched against his skin. I was far too aware of Desmond’s presence at my side.

Awkward.

“Tell me again what happened,” Holden said to Desmond. The vampire made sure he held my head in place so I couldn’t interrupt. “And you keep drinking.”

I swallowed obediently, but I wasn’t happy about it.

Desmond adjusted the frozen peas higher on my forehead, accounting for a huge knotty lump blooming by my temple. “She’s human,” he said, although we’d already covered that on the way home.

“Which I can smell for myself. How did it happen?”

“That’s what we’d like to know. I wasn’t in the best position to see what was going on, but you were. We think the fairy king took her…gifts.”

“How is that possible?”

I gave Holden a loaded stare. Perhaps he wasn’t the best person to question what the fairy king could and couldn’t manipulate, considering how he’d played us like chess pieces.

Sexy chess pieces.

I blushed again, not used to how easily my cheeks flared red now.

“We don’t know,” Desmond admitted.

“But she’s human.”

“She’s human.”

Holden, who had previously been staring at my face, let his gaze draw down my cheek and to my neck. That single glance was more intimate than anything he could have done with his hands and brought visceral memories of the things he had done to me with his hands. And mouth. And…

I squirmed uncomfortably and tried to push his arm away.

“No. You still look like you were run over by a bus full of domestic-abuse arrestees. You’re going to keep drinking until I can see both your eyes again.”

I held up my hand and demonstrated how I could still move my fingers by lifting the middle one.

“Charming,” Holden replied.

“Delacourte told her he was going to take her greatest weapon,” Desmond continued. “That’s the wording she said he used.”

“And you agreed?” Holden said to me, giving his head a shake. “Why would you agree to that?”

This time I forced him away, licking blood from my lips. “I’m sorry, do you remember my other option? He was going to make me leave one of you behind. Are you suggesting I should feel bad I didn’t abandon you to be some fairy lord’s bitch?”

“Who’s to say you would have left me?” When his stare lasted too long, I had to look away.

“I wasn’t leaving anyone. I did what I had to do.”

“By letting a fairy ask for something as vague as ‘your greatest weapon’?”

“I thought he meant my sword. The fae have been making such a big deal about it. And it’s…special. I assumed it was what he wanted.”

Holden sighed and shoved his wrist back in my mouth. “Are we going with the notion this is a permanent change?” This was said to Desmond, as though Holden was tired of listening to me.

“It’s hard to say, but yes. That’s what we’re assuming.”

“She isn’t safe.”

Desmond bristled, visibly offended. “I think I can take care—”

“No.” Holden shook his head roughly and pulled his wrist out of my mouth when I was in the middle of another swallow, coating my chin in blood. I swore. “If she’s human, she’s in more danger than just a sad little rogue pack. She’s Tribunal. Her death means someone else replaces her. There are people in the vampire world who will see this as a perfect opportunity to challenge her.”

“Fuck,” I choked, wiping the dribble of blood off my face. “Fuck.”

How had I not thought of that? He was absolutely right. So many people wanted me out, and this was the opening they needed. I couldn’t hand the position off to anyone else either, because the only way to take a Tribunal seat was to kill the person who held it.

“Still excited about your newfound humanity?” Holden asked.

I wanted to punch him. I had been excited about it. There were so many things it meant I could do, and opened up a life I’d only dreamed of having. The problem, though, was I’d forgotten about the life I already had. A life where people would rejoice in seeing me dead and now had a golden opportunity to make it happen.

“This fucking sucks,” I said.

“I need to tell Sig.”

“No.”

“Secret—”

“No.”

“Listen to me,” he continued. “I have to tell him. He’s the one person who can keep you alive—in whatever capacity—and he will have my goddamn head if he finds out I knew about this and didn’t tell him. And let’s not kid ourselves, he will find out.”