Page 114 of Sovereign Oaths

“What about us?” Derek mused.

“The Pack is holding a memorial. No one around to plan a funeral or burial for us.” Javi shrugged as if that wasn’t super depressing.

“So they bought it?” Cruz demanded.

“Yes.” Javi grinned. “The bodies were identified and confirmed.”

I narrowed my eyes. “How?”

“Magic.” Marco waggled his brows.

The reality of what they’d done, what they’d pulled off, sank in. “You guys really faked our deaths?”

“Yes,” Javi replied simply.

So the corpses, the explosion, our underwater escape, and the global travel were all a part of their plan, but why?

He either read my mind or knew what I was going to ask next.

“It was the only way out,” he explained. “None of us wanted to go home. We didn’t want you going back to the Velez headquarters any more than you did. Going back to our lives, separated, controlled, miserable… We couldn’t do it.”

“The only way out was death,” Marco repeated what I’d always known. I just never considered it as a solution.

“So we’re free?”

Marco grinned. “We’re free, princess.”

I dropped back, crushed between Derek’s and Cruz’s wide shoulders.

My family thought I was dead. Coach, my training team, and even El Lobo.

I never had to go back.

I never had to kill again.

I never had to leave the guys.

The magnitude of what they’d done, for us and our future, slammed into me, and I gasped. I would never, could never, go home again.

I should miss my family. I should feel upset or at least a bit guilty.

But I didn’t.

We were out.

“They won’t look for us?”

“Nope,” Javi assured me.

“But we still have to hide, right?”

Marco shrugged. “The Velez Pack is banned from Italy, Switzerland, Austria, France, and Spain. No members have been in this area of Europe for over sixty years.”

“But other supernaturals live here,” Derek pointed out. “Won’t they be suspicious of five shifters suddenly arriving?”

“Five shifters with approval to relocate here from the Supernatural Council.” Javi leaned to the side and pulled something out of his back pocket. He tossed the folded papers onto the small coffee table between us. “Marco and I shared everything we had on the Pack with the Council in return for immunity, new identities, and protected status.”

Cruz jerked forward. “You risked reaching out to them?”

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