Outlaw (Wolves of Royal Paynes #4) - Kiki Burrelli Page 0,89

that gate, and will. All the creepy crawlies of the underworld will swarm to the gate like moths to a lamp. Basically, fuck off equality, let those scales tip." He picked the book up, holding it at the spine with one hand as he slid his clawed finger across the page. "The entry describes the location and ritual. This thing wouldn't have been hard to close. We happen to have just the thing available here. A partial opening requires only a partial sacrifice. It's always harder to open a thing than it is to close it."

"What sort of sacrifice?" Storri asked.

"A full blood offering, given from the vein, that is equal parts nephilim and demon blood. The entry is very clear—the mixture must be exact." Claus's gaze settled on my mate, and I snarled.

"My blood?" Quinlan squeaked.

I stood, taking my mate with me. I didn't know if he wanted to stand on his own, but I couldn't put him down anyway. "No," I barked over Quinlan's head. "No fucking way."

"Diesel," Knox grunted, getting to his feet. He approached slowly, and it was only then that I realized I'd carried Quinlan to the door. "You're right. That isn't happening."

"If I don't, everyone in the world dies," Quinlan said in a soft, high-pitched voice. "The whole world, Diesel."

The words dripped from me like venom. "Then the world fucking dies."

Quinlan smiled, but it wasn't happy. That fast, he'd already started saying goodbye in his head. We couldn't let the world end if we knew a way to stop it. But this wasn't a way.

"We go now, bring the book, figure something out. You said the longer we wait, the harder it is, so let's stop waiting. We can do a transfusion." I reached for our jackets.

"Because you have a large supply of type AD blood?" Claus called out from the other side of the room.

The motherfucker was casually discussing his half-brother's death. I'd let his helpfulness eclipse the fact that Claus was, and would continue to be, just a demon.

"Even if you did," he said, the combative tone leeching from his voice, "it wouldn't matter. Once the third blood offering has been given, and we can likely assume it was given the day the nephilim went missing, the gate cannot be closed until the moment before it fully opens, when it will be at its weakest—for the last time." He consulted the page. "And that will only happen after the raven caws twice around the world, which is an ancient measure of time. Roughly translated, about a week, give or take a few minutes."

"Fine." The only thing keeping me from shouting was Quinlan in my arms. "We have a week to figure out another way."

"I am telling you there is no new way," Claus snarled, raising the temperature in the room with his anger.

Knox reached for his knives the same moment the twins grabbed their swords, but Claus closed his eyes, visibly attempting to calm himself.

"No matter what you might think of what I am, Diesel, I am not apathetic at the prospect of losing my brother. I'm also not the one who will be dying shortly after the gates open completely. Let me be clear. The entry does not only say equal blood offered from the vein—it explicitly states a full sacrifice. No matter how you get the blood into the gate, someone must die to close it."

It wasn't supposed to be a last meal, but it sure as fuck resembled one. The pack sat in a loose circle around the coffee table that Sitka had scrubbed no less than one hundred times since we'd arrived. Pizza boxes covered the table. Greasy white paper was all that was left in some of them, while others went untouched.

Knox went overboard ordering the food, but we all knew what he was compensating for. Despite Claus saying it was a lost cause, we'd spent the days since devising an insane, last-ditch, Hail-Mary-type of plan—I despised it. It went against everything I was as an alpha, and the parts that I didn't find outright repugnant required everything to go exactly as we needed. All the working parts had to line up to line up, or the whole thing would crash over our heads.

Quinlan ate his slice with a knife and fork. He was trying his hardest not to let his nerves show, and it broke my heart. There wasn't a fucking thing I could do. To get out of danger, we had to put what we