Page 27 of Fire And Ice

Milo grabbed his shirt with his bloody hand. “I need that gold! The loan sharks aren’t going to stop until I pay them off. Hell, even a nugget would make you a rich man.”

Kinsen grasped Milo’s hand and ripped it from his shirt. “There is more to life than riches and gold. It’s too bad, you never figured that out.” Looking over at Griffen, he snorted. “But seeing who raised you, I can understand why.”

Griffen snarled. “Oh fuck you, Kinsen. I did the best I could all these years for the pack.”

“Yeah?” Kinsen asked. “The best you could? Really? That’s what you’re claiming? We all know what you have done, Alpha. Everything you did only seemed to benefit you and your friends and your family, now didn’t it? It NEVER benefited the pack!” He looked around at the group of Weres who laid in the dirt, broken, bloody, and dying. “What exactly did you promise them if they came here with you? Gold? Gold that doesn’t belong to you, gold you would have had to steal and hope you got away with it? Who’s the fool now, Griffen? Your son has done nothing but lie to your face all his life. And you knew it. He made promises that he knew he would never keep every single day. He just took and took and never gave a damn thing back.”

Kinsen stood to his feet and turned to walk away from them.

Chapter Fourteen

Milo called out to him, “Get me some help here. I’m bleeding!”

Kinsen turned and shook his head. “Oh, hell no. You got exactly what you deserved, get your own medical help. You would have burned us out and left us here to die. That is something I already know. I’m not helping you get better to try it again.”

Kinsen went back into the clubhouse.

When the door shut behind him, Griffen looked over at his son. “Well, that didn’t go the way you said it would, now did it?”

Milo growled back. Then he groaned and pressed his hand against the new wound. “I need a fucking doctor old man.”

“Don’t we all boy, don’t we all,” Griffen grimaced in pain.

Billy Joe and Herman were trying to reach them. Both men were crawling over the ground.

While gasping, Billy Joe turned over onto his back and looked at Griffen. “Now what? These guys aren’t so easy to get to now are they? They caught us with our pants down and I don’t mean our wolf form. This is a god damned disgrace!”

Herman flopped over on his back too and snarled, “This is turning into a nightmare. You said it would be so easy to get to her and make her do what you wanted.”

Milo groaned. “She was supposed to just do what I wanted and show me the way inside the mountain. I expected some resistance but nothing like this. I had her under my control for years and she never showed any sign that she had any powers.”

“Yeah well, this cost us badly so far and the rest of us are all shot to hell,” Herman grumbled as he coughed and groaned at the pain he was in. “One of the dead was my own brother and I owe Kinsen for that.” He groaned again. “Before this is over, I’m gonna kill that bastard.”

Billy Joe looked over at Milo. “What I want to know is how the hell did she stop that bullet in midair?”

“How the fuck do I know?” Milo growled. “I know her grandma was some kind of shaman or medicine woman but I didn’t think Amira was.”

“A shaman?” Billy Joe exclaimed. “What kind of fucking fool are you, man? Shamans are known to have powers normal people don’t.”

Milo shook his head. Then he looked over at the burnt ashes of Rammish’s body. “I didn’t think she had any powers but she told me if I harmed Amira, I would burn in the fires of hell.” Shaking his head he admitted quietly, “I never thought she could do anything like that. I’d thought it was all talk.”

“Milo, you are a fool and so are we. She made a whole damn mountain invisible for fuck’s sake!” Billy Joe snarled. “We came here expecting to be rich and now, we’re either dead or shot up. I quit.”

Griffen snapped his head around and snarled, “You can’t quit. You will be a marked man if you walk away from us now. The pack will never let you back in.”

Billy Joe slowly raised his head and stared at Griffen. “What the hell did you do?”

“I left a letter behind, telling the pack that they were on their own,” Griffen admitted. “I told them that I was moving on to find a better pack, one that wouldn’t be so needy. I was only taking a few members with me, the ones that deserved a better life than we had there.” He glared at the few Weres who laid on the ground with them. “And that is all of you! I told them I was so disappointed in the fact that they let me down and I was glad I was leaving.”

“You backstabbing Alpha.” Billy Joe growled. “Of course, they would know exactly who went with you too. Did you name us all?”

Griffen didn’t answer him.

Billy Joe could read it in the Alpha’s eyes. “You marked us all for death. We can’t go back even if we wanted to.”

“You’ll be able to go anywhere you want if we can get to the gold,” Milo promised them.

“We aren’t going to get to that fucking gold, you fool!” Herman snapped at Milo.

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