Page 21 of Reaper's Pack

I shook my head. “I don’t… own you.”

“Bullshit,” he parroted back to me, mirroring my previous inflection with uncanny precision. “We’re your property, your pets.”

“You know, some humans love their pets more than other people.” I bit the insides of my cheeks, wishing that hadn’t just tumbled out unchecked. Knox rolled his shoulders like he was gearing up for a fight, his expression suggesting I’d slapped him. Clearing my throat, I forced a strained smile. “Sorry, I just… You’re not my pets. I was just saying… Look, we’re supposed to be a team here—”

“We’ll never be a team,” Knox snarled back at me. “We’ll never be more than that scythe, just a tool at your disposal, and no number of niceties will make us forget.”

I gripped my scythe harder—for support, mostly, when I realized I was shaking. “Knox, I’m doing my best.”

The hellhound glowered at me briefly, mouth twisted in a sneer that I felt in my bones.

“I’ve no interest in your best, reaper.” He took a half step toward me, his size more pronounced, his heat suffocating. “All that matters to me is my pack and their security, their freedom. You… are inconsequential.”

Oh. Wow. Inconsequential hit harder than I’d expected. For his stature, Knox seemed like the type to bellow whenever anger struck, all animal fury and blinding rage and bulging muscles. But he was calm as he said it—inconsequential. Calm and stiff, the word a perfectly aimed dagger. The quiet, decisive strike hurt a lot more than some shouting display, and my vision blurred temporarily with unshed tears. I sniffed and blinked them back, hardening every part of me so that a single word from this hellhound could never strike so deep again.

“I’m not inconsequential.” Suddenly that was my least favorite word. I kept my voice even as best I could; this was about him and his issues, his baggage. “And neither are you, or Declan, or Gunnar. Maybe they made you feel that way, like you’re all just dogs that should be kicked, that should live in a filthy kennel on scraps of nothing until you’re needed, but that’s not how I see you.”

He had trimmed his beard recently. I blinked, only just noticing the neat edges, the smooth, almost glossy sheen—like he had taken a comb to it. Strange, to fixate on such a little detail. That was inconsequential, not me, not him, not the others. All of this mattered, and the sooner he realized we were in this together for a greater purpose, the better.

Knox risked a full step toward me, his dark gaze sliding from my scythe to my face, my hair—briefly down to my chest. Swallowing hard, I held my ground and stiffened when he stole another few feet away from us, so close now that his earthy, musky scent struck like he had slapped me with it. Conflict ripped across his features, unreadable and beyond frustrating to anyone who didn’t share that intrinsic pack bond with him.

And then it all stopped. The tension humming between us, around us, fell away when he let out a sharp breath and relaxed.

“I don’t care what you think, reaper,” he said, his words low and harsh. “I just don’t care.”

And with that, he shifted back to a great black hound, eyes red, every inch of him dismissive, then padded away into the forest. Trembling, I lilted to the side, into the thick, smooth trunk of a red cedar. That… hurt. A lot. Pain sliced through me like it never had as a reaper, disappointment coursing through my veins, a cold, cruel fist twisting in my gut.

This time, when the tears welled, I brushed them away with a scowl. I could have just let them fall—there was no one around to see.

Except there was.

Through a dense patch of foliage, I spotted an enormous black shadow and brilliant red eyes. No longer dismissive, they watched me, silent and unblinking. My head tipped against the bark, throat exposed, wordlessly asking for a damn truce already.

Knox disappeared amongst the trees a few moments later, and my knees finally gave way. I sunk to the forest floor, staring at the hole he’d dug at the base of the ward, and then closed my eyes with a long, weary sigh.

* * *

I couldn’t sit in the woods and wallow about inconsequential forever. The pack needed lunch. Sticking to a schedule was one tactic Alexander had recommended to get everyone used to what was expected of them, and so far, I had adhered to our house schedule as rigidly as I could.

Except today.

Today I was late as I dragged myself up the stairs to a manor whose physical flaws still glared at me whether I acknowledged them or not. Over the last three weeks, I’d prioritized food, comfort, and things over cracked windows and cobwebs and missing roof shingles. But if the guys were just going to ignore me, hate me, then maybe I could take a few days off and fix the damn thing already.

No. That wouldn’t solve anything. Running from my problems had never been my way, and I wasn’t about to start now just because a certain alpha was being a difficult asshole.

Scythe over my shoulder, I pushed open the unlocked main doors, a gust of humid August wind ripping through the foyer. Dust flew up with it, then slowly trickled back down when I kicked the doors shut behind me. My feet were ready to veer left toward the kitchen, but the uneven plunking of piano keys stopped me dead in my tracks.

Someone had found that old, woefully out of tune grand piano in the glass-enclosed sunroom on the far side of the first floor. I’d played when I was human and had decided to keep the instrument that came with the house for the nostalgia. Only I hadn’t plucked up the nerve to lift the hood and play anything more than the odd note or two. Whoever sat at the bench now was experimenting with pitches and pedals.

My gut told me to just go to the kitchen and make lunch.

But my feet did a one-eighty, veering right instead of left, and carried me all the way to the sunroom. Back to me, Gunnar sat at the piano, tapping at various keys, the notes painfully familiar. A little smile graced my lips when he played the F-sharp chord, probably without even realizing what the combination of keys produced. To his credit, he had swept the dust off, those black and white teeth the cleanest things in the room.

I could have backed away, allowed him this moment of sweet solitude within the warm room, sun beaming through the dirty windowpanes in all its golden glory. Instead, I slipped inside and listened for a few moments, watching him work it all out for himself, his expression serene but focused. The hellhound was so smart, maybe even too smart for someone like me, but it was what I most admired about him. Declan’s eagerness to learn paled in comparison to Gunnar’s natural ability to just do.

Still, for all that innate talent, it would take him ages to master the piano.

“I can teach you to play,” I offered, and his long, lean fingers clunked down heavily across a plethora of keys, the tuneless, mismatched combo swelling up to the domed ceiling. He didn’t jump or flinch; I hadn’t surprised him, but he suddenly wore the same tension that Knox always did across his face, in his shoulders, when they all interacted with me. That insane sense of smell, ears that could detect a mouse skittering across the attic from here—Gunnar had known of my presence, probably well before I’d walked through the door.

---