Page 80 of Reaper's Pack

I slowed my march through the soggy trees with a sigh, wishing those two would just drag their intoxicated asses to bed. But to see them roughhousing, playing, nipping and snapping their teeth at one another, Declan’s tail up and wagging, Gunnar’s encouraging barks bouncing off the landscape…

Well, it made my heart full.

I couldn’t remember the last time they had felt free enough to just—be. Hellhounds. Members of the same pack, bonding, strengthening their connection through a bit of rough-and-tumble play. Like two pups who had finally found each other in their shadowy den, I’d never seen them act this way.

So, I let it go. Inside the ward, they were safe, contained. They’d find their way back to the house eventually, when the liquor left their system and their bellies howled for food.

I already dreaded the impending headache. While I had downed more than the rest, it seemed I could handle my alcohol better than all of them—and that included Hazel. Who knew a reaper could get drunk? Not me.

With Declan and Gunnar off to fend for themselves, I looked to the last member of our group, eager to herd her inside and into bed.

Especially with that fuck lurking in the celestial plane. He couldn’t cross the ward, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. And in her current state, Hazel was no match for blood magic, scythe or not.

And that scythe was precisely what I found where I had last seen the white-haired reaper. Leaning against a barren cedar trunk, the hook forged in starlight looked so inconspicuous. Safe, powerless without its soulmate. My brows furrowed. Where the fuck had she gone without it? Not that it mattered—no one could touch it in her absence if they wanted to keep their hands. But after that thing had followed us to the nightclub, I certainly didn’t like the idea of her wandering off, drunk and alone, unsteady on her own two feet.

Her two bare feet.

Because there were her fucking shoes, twin black heels, tucked neatly beside her scythe and already filling with rainwater.

“Hazel?”

The pitter-patter of rain answered, and my frown deepened. A flash of red suddenly caught my eye, teased me, darting between the trees, up and down like she was climbing through the underbrush. Honestly, it was like minding a bunch of pups…

“Hazel,” I called, voice drowned out by what felt like a purposeful clap of thunder. I glared skyward, then started off toward her. Faintly, the smell of ocean spray and salty sea air tickled my nostrils, her scent calling me home.

I found her headed east, cutting clear across our territory to nowhere. Her scent snagged on trees and scrub, a beacon through the storm, a dotted path for me to follow even when I couldn’t see her. Eventually, she must have grown tired of wandering, because she stopped in a slanted clearing, standing atop the scraggly grey boulder in the dead center of the lopsided circle—dancing. Arms up. Bare feet threatening to shred on the rockface.

Her smile was beautiful, her laughter like a hymn.

But given the hour, the weather, I wasn’t feeling all that worshipful.

“Hazel, get down,” I boomed over the roar of rain, catching her eye with a wave from the tree line. She paused her dancing for a moment, hair slicked down her neck, her back, that sinfully snug red dress of hers drooping to expose a black lacey cup over her right breast. I swallowed hard, my mind darting to salacious places—like what was under that lace.

“No,” she called back. The reaper threw her hands up in time with the next lightning strike. Brilliant white light illuminated the clearing, cast her in an angelic glow. When it vanished, she was a temptress once more, a dangerous creature in red, a threat to my self-restraint.

Fighting a smile, some traitorous part of me loving her defiance, I stalked into the clearing, careful over the slippery patches, the forest floor turned to muck. “We should get out of the rain. Come along.”

I motioned for her to get down, but she shook her head, rising up onto her tiptoes, graceful as a ballerina.

“I love storms,” Hazel insisted, running her hands up her neck, over her face, into her hair. “They’re so… powerful. Don’t you feel it?”

“What you feel is drunk,” I said flatly as I picked my way around a few other rocks, mindful of the slope that led down into a shallow ravine—which the storm would flood within the hour, if it hadn’t already.

“What I feel is alive,” she countered, “and it’s amazing…”

Yes, I imagined it would for someone who dealt exclusively in death. But the charade had become tiresome. When I finally made it to the boulder, I could just reach her ankles.

“Hazel, get down and let’s get out of the rain.” As soon as I had her, I’d teleport us straight to the house, shove her inside—see her to her bedroom, where she would undoubtedly crash. I was doing this for her own fucking good.

Yet she still scampered out of reach, defiant to the last. “Why? Because the wet will make me sick?” She snorted, her face lighting up. “I’ll catch a cold?” Another snort, one that sounded more mad cackle than anything. “You’ll catch a cold?”

“Yes, yes, hilarious,” I muttered. Lightning seared across the black, and I used Hazel’s intoxicated fascination with it to finally snare her. With her eyes up, I lashed out and caught both her ankles, then yanked her off the boulder. Light as a feather, she tumbled and squealed into my arms, then wiggled out in a fury immediately after.

Before I had the chance to really feel her. Hold her.

“Knox!”

“I’m not in the mood for you to be difficult,” I growled, catching her by the elbow before she scampered off again. It was a bald-faced lie, of course; the alpha in me adored her fire, just as I had from the first day we met. But I couldn’t give in to that, couldn’t let myself succumb like Gunnar and Declan. I had to be stronger—for them. “Let’s go.”

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