Page 53 of Fall of the Alpha

Her mate…

Her mate was not a kind male. Not anymore. Sometimes, she wondered if he ever truly had been or if she’d only seen what she’d wanted to see.

Paldon blinked. Shook his head. Reached out and took her hand.

“Brianne,” he said so gently, she wondered how she must appear to him because he seemed to be afraid she was going to shatter apart. “I just told you, remember? Grigori has been executed for crimes against the zone.”

“Oh.” He had said that. After what he’d said about Alek. It just… somehow, it hadn’t stuck in her head. She’d been too focused on her son. It had been too unbelievable.

Not so unbelievable that Grigori had committed crimes. That she believed.

It had been hard to believe that he’d been caught. Stopped.

Executed.

Her mate was dead.

Brianne sagged as some of the tension holding her upright released. Her mate was dead, and her son was alive. Tears of relief and joy sparked in her eyes.

“I want to be with Alek.”

Nodding slowly, Paldon squeezed her hands. “Then you shall be.”

Malachi

Pale eyes stared back at him.

The face was older, but the features were unmistakable, even in death.

The sight of Grigori’s head did not give him everything he hoped for.

There was satisfaction and a sense of vindication, but…

The peace he’d wanted, the peace he’d hoped for, he now realized he already had. He’d found it while Grigori still lived.

How very strange.

“Are you going to keep it?” Jordan asked. The blond Alpha studied the head with the same intensity Malachi did. His tone was even, nonjudgemental. The other two Alphas in the room, Zadia and Marek, both looked on with the same kind of intense curiosity. They’d all waited so long for this moment.

“No.” He’d thought he would want to, as a trophy, as a reminder, but now that it was here in his possession…

He didn’t want it.

Grigori was nothing. He meant nothing. Now, he was gone, with almost no one to mourn him, and he would soon be forgotten. Tatiana would be remembered.

As it should be.

“Get rid of it.” Malachi waved his hand.

Nodding, Marek stepped forward and lifted the head by the hair, dropping it back into the bag it had been delivered in.

“I have my mate to return to.”

His mate.

Saying that was where the true satisfaction lay.

Tatiana would likely not have approved of his thirst for vengeance against Grigori, but he liked to think she would approve of Bella. She would have wanted him to be happy. She would have approved of the peace between the zones and the territories and the treaty that allowed the zone citizens to choosetheir path for themselves. Suppressants or no suppressants. Zones or territories.

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