Chapter 189

#Chapter 189 – Unexpected Terror I stare down at Victor at my feet and then, wild, uncomprehending, I look up into the room beyond him.

There, at the door –

An absolute nightmare come true. I blink, unbelieving – it can’t be possible –

But then the nightmare speaks, my own name on its lips.

“Evelyn,” Joyce says, smirking as he steps forward. “So gracious of you, to distract him while I took aim.”

I gasp, my mind still reeling, and then I fall to my knees, taking Victor’s face in my hands. He groans, his eyes pressed closed –

“Victor,” I murmur, looking all over him – I can’t see a wound anywhere –

But of course, his back was to me when Joyce shot –

Unthinking, I pull Victor forward and he cries out in protestation against the movement. I look over his back and yes – there –

Blood is seeping, thick and heavy, from between the edges of his body armor.

“You,” I growl, the wolf raising inside me, fixing my eyes on Joyce, who stands over us now. “I am going to kill you, Joyce –“

“Careful, Evelyn,” Joyce says, lifting his gun so that it’s level with my face. “You wouldn’t want your children to see both of their parents shot dead today, would you?” My body goes still. I know he has me trapped, but my lips still pull back from my bared teeth.

“Joyce,” my mother says, coming forward a step. But she stops when he fixes her with his gaze.

“That was a pretty speech you made a few moments ago, Mrs. Walsh,” he says casually. “I caught the tail end of it as I was coming through the door, after Victor so helpfully cleared the path for me.”

My mother says nothing, and Joyce’s gun is still aimed at my face, so I can’t move to see her expression.

“Still,” Joyce continues. “It’s unfortunate that there’s not an ounce of truth to it. This pack is mine.”

The casual veneer that Joyce had been pretending breaks when he says that last word. It leaves his mouth in a vicious hiss.

“Mine,” he says again, looking between Emma, Delia, and me. “Not yours. Not his, even,” Joyce says, indicating my father, still knocked out on the ground next to my mother. “I have long been the power in this pack, and I will not have my plans disrupted by three meddling women.”

“Joyce,” I hear Emma say, her voice breaking, and my hearing is attuned enough to every change in the room that I recognize the sound of her foot taking a step forward.

“You shut up,” he snaps, glaring at her with a bare hatred I haven’t seen on his face in a long time.

Since our own short marriage.

“Joyce,” she continues, but I hear no more steps forward. “What’s the point of all of this? You have lost.

You don’t have a pack anymore – Victor destroyed it –“

“Not quite,” Joyce says, glaring at her. “You see, while Victor succeeded in getting into this room, he never broke the siege on this house. He only got a small force in the back door and down this hall. The majority of his forces are still outside, and this house holds.”

I blanche at this news – I had assumed – we all had assumed that it was over –

“No,” I hear Alvin cry out, but then his cry is muffled. Someone has put a hand over his mouth. My mother? Ian?

God, I desperately want to turn around – or, even more, to look back down at Victor, to help him –

I close my eyes, listening hard –

Is he even breathing anymore?

My own heartrate ratchets up in panic. Oh my god, is he breathing?

“And,” Joyce continues. I open my eyes to see that he’s looking back down at me, a dirty sneer on his lips. “Now that I’ve taken out Victor, his sons will inherit his pack. And since I am the regent protector of the Walsh pack,” he begins to smile now, “I’m sure I can make a neat argument for why the Kensington armies should be folded into mine.”

No. I can’t help the groan that escapes my lips at this news, this idea. God damnit.

“So despite your best efforts, Emma,” Joyce says, his voice light. “At kidnapping, torture, and murder –“

I hear my mother gasp behind me as she figures out our role in Joyce’s disappearance.

“It looks like,” Joyce continues, “everything has worked out neatly in my favor. As it always does.”

He turns his nasty smile to me as he calls out, loudly enough to be heard outside the open door to the room. “Betas!” he commands. I glance away from Joyce to see a pack of Betas enter the room – some of the same ones who were in here earlier, planning with my father. I see the surprise register on their faces.

“Take Mr. Kensington,” Joyce says, still smiling that twisted smile down at me, “and put him in the cells in the basement.”

“No!” I cry out, throwing myself on top of him. I can’t help myself – it was probably stupid to make a sudden move, knowing there’s a gun pointed at me, but I didn’t even think about it. I just moved, covering Victor’s body with my own.

As horrible as it is, I’m relieved to hear Victor’s groan of pain as I do so – thank god, he’s still alive.

“Get off of him,” Joyce growls, stepping around me and delivering a swift kick to my side.

I yell, absorbing the blow and wincing at the sharp pain that sets my ribs on fire. “Joyce!” I shout out, still clinging to Victor. “You can’t! He needs a doctor! Now!” I yell. “Or he will die!”

I hear Joyce’s low laugh and look up at him, somehow still shocked by this man’s cruelty. You’d think I’d have learned by now. I see his intentions on his face before he speaks them aloud.

“Precisely my plan, my dear,” Joyce says, leaning down to look me in the eyes. “Now let him go, so that he can die in peace.”

I snarl, my claws digging into the fabric of Victor’s clothes, determined to never let go – never –

But Joyce kicks me again. And again.

I cling to Victor, hear my mother shouting behind me, hearing Emma step forward – but Joyce shoves her away and keeps kicking –

Suddenly there are hands on my back and shoulders, beneath my arms – hands and arms wrapped in Beta black, lifting me off of Victor –

I cry out then, and realize that I’m crying real tears as they pull me away. I see Victor’s face, white with pain and blood loss, his eyes closed – as they grab him by his arms and begin to drag him from the room –

I scream and tear against the men holding me when I see the trail of blood that Victor leaves behind him as he disappears through the shattered remains of the door.

I thrash until I run out of energy, which is sooner than I’d thought possible. When I come back to myself, I see my boys also gripped in the arms of Betas who hold them back. I see my mother, sitting on her chair, her head in her hands. Emma and Delia, wrapped in each other’s arms, both crying.

“Go,” I yell to both of them, still gripped in the panic even if I don’t have the energy to fight against the Betas holding me anymore. “Go help him.”

Emma lifts her head from Delia’s shoulder and shakes her head at me. “We can’t win, Evelyn,” she says, looking towards the other side of the room.

I follow her gaze to see Joyce standing with Brent, a medic bandaging Brent’s wounded arm where he was shot – apparently less lethally than Victor. Brent winces as he speaks to Joyce but is clearly on the job again.

I grit my teeth, shaking my head as I realize that Joyce has stepped seamlessly into the void my father left. That he’d been waiting years for this opportunity and was pleased – thrilled, even – that it had finally come to pass.

I return my eyes to Emma. “You’re a coward,” I say, my words bitter. Then, I hang my head, shaking it.

I haven’t given up yet, though. Not like her. I’m still wracking my mind, trying to come up with something, anything I can do when Joyce makes his decision about how to proceed.

“Right,” Joyce says, turning to the Betas who hold us. “Evelyn, downstairs, in the cell opposite Kensington. She can watch him die, if she’s so desperate to be with him. The women, upstairs.

Separate rooms. The boys – my heirs –“ he smiles at them with no real affection in his eyes. “They stay with me.”

As one, the Betas move to follow the instructions of their Alpha.