Keeping Secret (Secret McQueen) - By Sierra Dean Page 0,96

dress. The hem was soaked with blood and the whole front was stained red from where Desmond had bled out on top of me.

“No,” I replied flatly.

It had taken almost twenty minutes to bind me into the dress, and to be honest, short of cutting it off there was no easy way out. I didn’t want to waste any more time than was necessary. I stepped up onto the façade of the fireplace and grabbed my katana off its wall mount.

Safe. Not sorry.

“Secret, what’s the plan here?” Holden had hoisted the duffel bag onto his shoulder. Next to him Shane was down to a white tank top, his shoulder expertly bound. They both waited for my word.

I stared at the sheathed blade in my hand.

“We find the bitch.”

“And then?”

“And then I kill her.”

I let Holden drive because he was a vampire, and vampires drove like maniacs.

I couldn’t be certain my guess on Morgan’s destination was going to be right until we got there, but I had a gut feeling about where a werewolf would hide if her life was in peril, and I was willing to trust my gut on this.

Besides, I wouldn’t stop hunting her until I found her. If this idea didn’t pan out, we would turn around and go back, and I would start from square one.

I’d keep starting from square one until she was dead.

The highway from New York to Lucas’s upstate mansion was practically abandoned this time of night, yet I found my anxiety was higher than usual for the whole trip, my gaze constantly checking the rearview mirror for signs we were being followed.

Paranoid? Maybe. But once you’ve survived a near-death shootout on a state highway, you tend to be a little wary.

Shane didn’t argue about Holden driving and didn’t ask any questions about why we were taking a two-hour road trip in the middle of a manhunt. I liked him all the more for his willingness to go with it.

I also appreciated that Shane didn’t say a damned thing when I explained why Morgan wanted me dead. I was marrying a werewolf king. I was part werewolf. He’d just nodded. I didn’t love having to tell him the truth, but it would be asking too much not to explain what Morgan was, and telling him the truth meant there were no unanswered questions.

When I’d told Holden where to go, he’d given me a look like he meant to make a stink about it, but he didn’t.

The gate of Lucas’s estate was unlocked and ajar. A scan of the lawn told me my gut had been right. Morgan’s hunter-green Porsche was parked at an odd angle in front of the main steps.

“She’s here,” I said, barely believing it.

“Unreal.” Shane leaned forwards and squinted to see the car through the darkness. “How the hell did you know she’d come here?”

“She’s a wolf,” I said with a shrug. “This is home. Werewolves tend to go back to their pack’s safe place when they panic. I’m betting she didn’t count on me knowing that since she always thought I was such a fucking outsider.”

“You think that’s why she was gunning for you?”

“No.” I climbed over Shane, careful to avoid his injured shoulder, and awkwardly straddling him on my way out of the car. He followed close behind me, and Holden brought up the rear. “I don’t think she ever planned to make such a scene of things. She probably figured once I found out Lucas wasn’t coming, I’d run off somewhere to bury my head in the sand and she’d be able to take me out.

“You can’t blame her for the thought process,” Holden said. “I mean, you do sort of have a history of making a run for it when things get tough.”

Shane must have seen my shoulders tense because he quickly asked, “But how does that benefit her at all?”

I continued. “With me out of the picture, she could be queen. What I don’t get, though, is why she didn’t just tell me in the first place…” Maybe she thought if I’d known ahead of time Lucas wasn’t coming, I’d go to him. I was finding it hard to track the logic of someone who was clearly fucking nuts, though. “I guess when she realized it wasn’t going to go as planned, she decided to finish the job anyway.”

“Women,” Holden huffed. “Push come to shove, it’s always about who gets to wear the tiara.”

I stopped walking and turned back to him. “I didn’t ask for