she spoke, as though afraid to show even the slightest hint of defiance. Everything in her posture screamed submission. “The government is up to something. I wouldn’t be surprised if the OPA is just trying to get us to collect in public places so we can be killed more easily.”
“That’s stupid,” Deirdre started to say, but a look from Stark stopped her.
She shut her mouth.
“We are beasts of the forest and mountain and desert,” Stark said. “We aren’t ruled by votes or electoral colleges or politicians. We’re ruled by instincts and our individual packs. That’s the way it’s meant to be. We won’t settle for less.”
The shifters in the back of the room stirred, making sounds of assent.
Deirdre clenched her jaw, forcing herself to remain silent.
“By participating in this system they’ve set up, I’d be giving complicit approval to a perverse bureaucracy.” He slammed his fists on the table. “We won’t settle for that!”
The sounds of assent were becoming cheers.
Stark was amazing to watch. He was pure, unbridled confidence, raw and magnetizing.
He lowered his voice, forcing the others to quiet down to hear him.
“If Rylie Gresham puts a puppet in her place as Alpha, I’ll kill that Alpha, too.”
The pack erupted into cheers.
Fists thrust into the air. People howled.
This was what rebellion looked like, roaring and angry and thirsty for blood. And only Deirdre remained silent.
XIII
Deirdre’s quiet dissent didn’t go unnoticed. She should have known it wouldn’t.
Stark made her leave the basement by telling her that he wanted help opening the lethe storage closet. But he jumped her the instant she stepped into the hallway, out of sight from the larger group.
He slammed her into the wall. His elbow dug into her throat. His knee pressed into her thigh.
At this point, she wasn’t surprised. Deirdre wasn’t even sure she was afraid.
“Whose side are you on, Tombs?” he asked.
Tombs. He’d gone into the Middle Worlds to save her, kissed her senseless, and kept her as Beta despite her betrayal. Yet still she was only Tombs to him.
“I’m on my side,” she said. “I’ve always been on my side.”
The door opened. Lucifer stepped into the hallway.
Stark released Deirdre.
“I thought you might like help opening the storage closet,” the vampire said. He smoothed his hands over his hair as he strolled toward them, slicking his dark locks back.
“You don’t trust me to give you a fair share?” Stark asked.
“I would never dream of mistrusting you, Everton,” Lucifer said.
“How could you? I mean, he’s such a friendly guy,” Deirdre said, rubbing her sore throat.
Stark shot a look at her. “Don’t push it, Tombs.”
“Don’t push me,” she said. “And don’t forget which one of us can incinerate people with a touch, huh? Let’s go find this storage closet.”
She strode up the hallway, leaving the men behind her.
Deirdre’s hearing seemed to be improving now that she’d shapeshifted once. At any other time, she didn’t think she would have heard Lucifer whispering to Stark. “Are you sure you can handle this bird you’ve hatched?”
“Not at all,” Stark said. He sounded kind of pleased.
The promise in his voice made chills ripple down her spine.
Chadwick’s storage closet wasn’t a closet so much as a vault, reinforced with magic and steel in much the same way that the cell upstairs was. Deirdre hung back, letting Stark inspect the runes that protected the drugs within.
Stark took a few minutes to read the runes that bordered the door, smashed his fist through two of them, and then forced the lock open easily.
“I’ll look for other traps,” Lucifer said.
The vampire vanished inside.
“How do you always know how to do that?” Deirdre asked, hanging beside Stark. “You did the same thing at the detention center when we freed Vidya, and you knew how to use Brother Marshall’s staff thing, and…how?”
“Rhiannon was a witch before Genesis,” Stark said. “She taught me a lot.”
“You can’t cast magic, can you? How much could she really teach you?”
“I know enough to deconstruct it. You don’t need to know the full language of runes to figure spells out. Witches are showy. They want to demonstrate their skill. They’ll always put the most complicated elements of the spell front and center, and complication signifies importance. It gets easy the more often you break their spells down.”
Lucifer poked his head out the door. “You guys should see this.”
“Is it a trap?” Deirdre asked.
“That would depend upon how strong your willpower is.”
She stepped inside. The storage closet was much deeper than Deirdre would have guessed from the outside—a long, lightless hall of