Chapter 131: Chapter 130

Xander Iran Zane and | ran as soon as we heard the crash.

My first thought was that my father had come back to finish what he’d started with Katie, but that didn’t make any sense. I’d sent Maxim out to trail him and report back if he even thought about coming to the mansion again.

So when we ran into Katie's room and saw Mason’s wolf crouching over a bleeding man, we were confused, to say the least.

“What the f uck is going on here?” | asked as | surveyed the scene.

Zane took Katie by the shoulders and walked her over to the bed to sit, but she shook her head, her eyes wide with shock. “I have to get Stella.”

She was wailing in the other room.

“I'll do it.” Zane said, running to go grab her. Her cries stopped a moment later.

And then Mason was shifting back to his human form, crouching naked on his knees. He took one look at the man bleeding out from his side and scrambled back against the wall.

All the color drained from his face.

“| didn’t mean to.” he said in a dazed voice.

“Braden?” Katie said, walking over to the hurt man. His face was twisted up in pain.

She lifted his b loody shirt, to expose a nasty-looking wolf bite, and suddenly, | caught a whiff of the guy.

| locked eyes with Zane.

“Vampire,” he said.

If Katie didn’t know they existed, then why was she acting like she was old friends with this guy?

| took a closer look at the bite. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, which made sense now. If the stories I’d r about vampires were true, then that meant he could control the way his blood flowed through his body.

| thought they could heal themselves, too, but the bite was wet and deep and angry-looking.

“Why isn’t he healing?” Katie asked desperately, speaking my thoughts aloud.

| looked to Zane for an answer, but he shook his head. We’d only recently learned vampires even existed, and we'd been too busy with Alice and then the twins to study up on them.

“He can’t,” Mason said in a choked voice. “Wolf bites are deadly to vampires. There’s no healing, no cure.”

He blinked hard a few times as if trying to wash away the scene in front of him.

“So he’s just going to die?” Katie screeched. “That’s it?”

“Yes,” Braden said weakly. “Not immediately. It’s a couple of days of intense pain, and then I'll start literally losing my mind. After that, I'll go. It's slow and torturous, like the worst kind of poison.”

Mason stood up slowly, and like a zombie, he walked to the door and plucked a robe off a h ook, draping it over himself.

us?”

He really was acting like a f ucking zombie.

“Why did you do this?” | demanded, stepping in front of him.

He shook his head, a baffled look on his face.

| planted my hands on his chest and shoved him hard.

“What the f uck were you thinking?” No response. | shoved him again. “What if more vampires come after | shoved him a third time, and he stumbled backward.

“Xander!” Katie cried. “Stop!”

Tears were streaming down her face and her eyes were darting around the room wildly “| don’t think Mason meant to do it,” she said desperately. “There has to be some way to fix this. We have to fix this.”

Go ds, how had everything gotten so f ucked up?

“| don’t know if we can, Katie,” | said solemnly.

“He’s right,” Braden nearly whispered. Everyone froze and looked at him. “Xander is right. If | die, other vampires will come looking for you.”

Zane and | locked eyes. That couldn’t happen under our watch.

“If | die, then you’ve broken the treaty we established after the great wars, and all bets are off,” Braden said ominously.

He locked eyes with me then.

“Your pack and all the packs in this territory will never be the same again.”