Page 87 of Ruthless Reign

…even if the idea of having to watch him die made something tear in my chest. Made my fingernails bite hard into my palms.

He tipped his head to one side, considering, his eyes going distant as if he were listening to someone else speak even though the only sound in the yard was the soft rustle of the vines on the fence.

“Okay,” he said, finally.

“Okay?” Hardin pressed? “Okay what?”

“I’ll help you.”

The breath I’d been holding stuttered from my lips.

“What do you need?”

“Ideally for him not to be alive,” Kaleb put bluntly, shrugging as if he was asking Aodhán to order a pizza instead of commit murder against a blood relative.

Aodhán shook his head. “I…I can’t. Even if I could, he won’t see me. That last time he and I were in the same airspace was out in the canyons. I’ve requested an audience twice but he’s otherwise occupied.”

“Occupied doing what? Slaughtering babies?” Kaleb asked, getting impatient.

Aodhán didn’t take the bait, simply pursing his lips. “Honestly? I don’t know. I think he’s angry with me for not aiming true that night. I’ve been sidelined until further notice.”

“Fuck,” Hardin hissed.

“What good are you, then?”

Aodhán didn’t like what Kaleb was implying and he rolled around his reply before offering it to me. “Other than my father’s timely demise, is there something else I can do?”

“We need information,” I said. “And time.”

“Time? For what?”

I wasn’t stupid enough to tell him Damien and the Thorn Valley chapter of Saints along with the Crows were mobilizing to come help us. Kaleb and Hardin didn’t offer him the information, either. For all we knew, there was a chance he could go running back to Séamas with anything he learned here.

Somehow, I knew in my bones he wouldn’t, but my brain begged to differ. It whispered that I could trust no one. Not entirely. Not ever. No matter how badly I wanted to.

“Just time,” I reaffirmed. “Can you give us that?”

“I can try,” he offered, looking over his shoulder to the fence, the way he’d come. “I should go. There are a few things I might be able to do to slow them down but I’ll need to move now if it’s going to work.”

“If you tell us what you’re planning, maybe we could help you,” Kaleb stepped forward, but Aodhán stepped back.

“No. You’d never get close enough. But I can.”

He turned to leave, but something pulled in my gut like a hook. “Wait,” I all but shouted, reigning in the pitch of my voice. “You can’t go back to them.”

Aodhán froze.

“Your Dad didn’t ambush me for intel on the Saints,” I admitted. “He wanted information…about you.”

He turned around slowly, and I watched as the color drained from his face. “What kind of information?”

“Hawk,” Hardin warned, and I knew he wasn’t exactly cool with me sharing any more information with Aodhán that I absolutely needed to, but he needed to know this. How could he help us if he didn’t?

“He knows you’re been trying to protect me. He’s putting two and two together about Gilligan’s Finch. And?—”

“And?” Aodhán gritted out, as if he were shocked there was more.

“And he knows that the two graves you dug for the Sons are empty.”

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