Chapter 65

ELLA

“Luca told me you had a panic attack earlier,” Leo said, resting his hand on my back later that night.

I was brushing my hair in front of the dresser, but at his words, I stopped and only clutched the handle of the brush as my mouth dried.

I looked up at him and forced a smile. “I’m okay now.”

“Are you really?” he asked, looking at me through my reflection in the mirror.

I shrugged. “Everything’s going to shit again,” I told him. “And it overwhelmed me for a moment. I still have the incredible and constant level of fear that will not leave me until Andrea is dead, but I’m coping.”

Leo nodded, kissed the top of my head before he took the brush out of my hand, and began gently combing through my hair.

“I can’t make you any promises,” he began softly. “I can’t guarantee you that we can defeat him, and I can’t say that life will ever go back to how it was.

“But I can promise you that this entire pack is working tirelessly to put its everything into making those things happen. We are doing everything we can, and no matter what he throws at us, we will not give up.

“Allies all around the country are sending us supplies and men, the base is being fortified as we speak, and the men train through the night. This pack is no stranger to war, Ells.”

“But you’ve never fought a war against Andrea Martinez,” I said. “Your men are used to battlefields and force against force war. Andrea does things differently.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“He doesn’t play fair. Assassination, ambushes, machine guns, planting bombs,” I listed.

“Planting bombs…,” Leo repeated under his breath.

“He used to do it all the time. At parties, in cars, in people’s homes—”

“Homes…,” Leo repeated, suddenly freezing halfway through a stroke of the hairbrush.

I could hear his heart begin to pound as I looked up at his face. His eyes were flickering madly as he stared straight down.

“Fuck,” he said, suddenly dropping the brush and grabbing his phone.

“What?” I asked.

“The commanders. Last week my head five commanders were attacked in their homes. We thought Martinez was trying to convert them to his side, but we know he is smarter than that, to think that would work.

“There was another reason for him to do it, and I have a really bad feeling about what it is,” he said, dialing a number.

There was a split second of ignorant bliss before I realized what he was suggesting, and my heart began to pound just as his was.

“You mean—” I began, but before I could finish my sentence a crashing, booming bang sounded throughout the entire forest.

The trees outside shuddered with its sheer force as I felt its shock waves tremble through the brick walls of the house, shaking the lights and creaking the floorboards as it took hold.

I brought a shaking hand over my mouth as I slowly got to my feet, unable to take my eyes off the hell that had been unleashed outside.

As swirling towers of flame rose up, the forest became consumed and the sky ablaze with bright reds and yellows.

But as the thick black plumes of smoke billowed up, too, it was masked in a thick haze of ash, creating a deep blazing orange like a doomsday inferno.

Leo’s phone still rang.

But there was no answer.

“He came to our house too,” he said in a deep, serious tone as the phone went to the voicemail of Eduardo Siciliano, one of the commanders who had been attacked by Andrea. “We need to get you and the kids out of here. Now.”

But the fire had me in a trance. I couldn’t take my eyes off it as the reality blatantly refused to sink in.

“Ella,” he said, marching over and grabbing my hand. “It’s begun.”

I shook my head in denial. “No.”

“My head commanders are probably all dead, there could be a bomb in this house, and we have six children still sleeping in their beds.

“I need you to shut off your emotions and help me get you all to safety,” he said, shaking my shoulders. “Come on. You’re stronger than this.”

With that, I snapped my eyes from the burning forest and nodded as his phone began to ring.

“Answer it,” I said. “You focus on being alpha. I’ll get the kids out of bed.”

He gave me a small encouraging smile before his face straightened again, and he turned to answer his phone while I turned to the hallway, marching to the kids’ bedrooms.

It’d begun.

We didn’t have time to be scared.

And I was stronger than this.