Beneath the Dust (Force of Nature #4) - Amber Lynn Natusch Page 0,1
me why, then?”
I let out a sigh. “Liam…”
Her hand stopped halfway to her mouth. “The psycho who tried to kill me? The fey king’s pet? You want to go back there for him?”
“I don’t want to—”
“But you are?” she said, interrupting me. She turned her attention to Grizz, who was hovering near the island. “And you’re good with this—going back there?”
The man-bear shrugged.
“I’m doing it for Knox—”
“The Liam he knew is long gone, Piper. I don’t care how you think he’s changed—what shred of humanity you saw in him before you escaped—he’s tainted. You can’t bring him back here.”
“I’m doing it for Knox,” I repeated, my hands balling into fists at my sides.
She shook her head and took another bite of her peach.
“You two…you’ve lost your fucking minds. It’s one thing to go there for Merc, but it’s another to go there for the memory of a being Knox once knew, who’s probably dead anyway. What if this is exactly what the fey king is counting on? Have you considered that?”
“That is what the meeting is for,” Merc said, entering the room from the hallway. His dark presence carried a weight with it that I didn’t remember him having until he became the vampire king; a power he hadn’t previously possessed. Kat stared at him for a moment before heading toward the door he’d just come through.
“You need to talk some fucking sense into her,” she said as she passed.
“I plan to,” he replied.
Kat disappeared, leaving the three of us alone in the kitchen.
“Are we ready to start?” I asked. I picked at the wrapper in my hand nervously, its crinkling the only sound in the room.
“This will not go well,” he said. “This meeting—this plan. Neither will end as you hope, especially not once they all know who you truly are.”
“I was hoping to shock them all with that and then follow up with the plan. Hit them while they’re stunned.”
He smiled at my idea, knowing I wasn’t kidding at all. “A solid tactic, my love, but not foolproof.”
I shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“No,” he said, heading my way, “you have me. And you have Knox and Jase and Dean and Grizz—Kat, too, once she calms down. You have the pack—though I fear this decision may divide them. I do not envy Knox’s predicament in this.”
I didn’t either. Liam had killed many of his boys. To risk others to save the one who’d murdered their brothers was a big ask at best. At worst, it was a total slap in the face.
“Shall we?” he asked, giving me his arm. I took it, and he led me down the hall to the room where the others had congregated. I could hear the ruckus growing as we neared, and I wondered if the discussion had started without us. The second I set foot in the room, I knew it had. Liam’s name was being flung around like an insult, and I could see Knox struggling to keep his composure. It seemed like it was him, Foust, and Brunton against everyone else. Jagger was uncharacteristically silent.
I hated seeing the pack at odds. It hurt my heart. They’d been through so much already. They didn’t need another obstacle to overcome.
“I’m the princess of Faerie!” I shouted over the din. The room went silent in an instant; so quiet I could hear Kat take a bite of her peach and chew it methodically, like she was trying to figure out how best to strangle me for not telling her that detail before that moment.
“I guess we’ll have to get you a Fairy Princess mug now,” Dean said with a smile as the rest of the room gawked at me in silence.
“Well that’d be great since the other one broke. Again.” Since I had the floor, I went ahead and told them everything I’d learned from my time with the fey king in Faerie. How he wanted to use me against the queen. How he’d turned against Liam when Liam had attempted to help us escape. How absolutely batshit insane he was at his very core. And how he’d dropped the ‘mom’ bomb on me. By the time I was finished, most of their mouths were hanging open while they stared. “So…I’m going to go back there because we need information about how to undo this magical spell or curse or whatever it is that prohibits me from killing the bitch.”
“Well when you put it that way,” Kat said, smiling with a cheekful of peach,