Chapter 6 The Offer

Mercy POV

Boone racks the shotgun. The sound cracks across the clearing like a branch snapping.

"That's close enough," he says.

The black wolf stops three steps from Wade's grave. It looks at the barrel, then at Boone, like a grown man looking at a kid with a stick. Then it lowers its head and drops something from its jaws onto the snow. A dark bundle. Cloth.

The fur ripples. The bones shift with a sound like knuckles cracking. And then Cyrus Wexley is crouched in the snow in front of me, with nothing on but the cold.

Boone's mouth falls open. "Is that..."

"Yes," I say.

"The King? The actual King? At our camp?"

"Yes, Boone."

Cyrus picks up the bundle and stands. It's a long black coat, the one from the hook in his tent. He doesn't put it on. He holds it out to me.

"Your collar's torn," he says. "And you've been digging in the snow for three hours."

My hand comes up off the shovel. It gets halfway to the coat. Then I see how warm and heavy it looks, how much it would cover, and I put my hand back on the shovel.

"I'm fine."

"You keep saying that."

"Because I keep being fine."

He looks at me for a second longer. Then he swings the coat around himself and buttons it, and Boone lets out a breath like he's been holding it since the wolf stepped out of the trees.

Cyrus looks down at the fresh dirt. At the crooked stick I pushed into the ground where the marker will go.

"Wade Hask," he says quietly.

"You've been following me," I say.

"Not me. Two of my men. Since you left the tent." He says it like it's nothing. Like it's weather. "I wanted to know if the silverbane worked."

"It worked for an hour."

He nods slowly. "I'm sorry."

I don't say anything. I don't nod. I just stand there with the shovel and let the words fall into the snow between us, and he watches them land.

Boone shifts his feet. "Mercy. Why does the Lycan King know where we live?"

"Ask him."

"I'm asking you."

Cyrus answers for me. "Because she's the reason I'm in this valley."

Boone laughs, short and sharp. "You came for Lydia Redfern. Everybody in town knows it."

"I came for the Redfern daughter." Cyrus turns his eyes on me, and they glow in the last light, gold and silver. "I just didn't know which one until last night."

The air goes very still.

"What did you say?" Boone asks.

Cyrus keeps his eyes on me. "You're Harlan Redfern's blood. Not Lydia. You."

"You don't know that."

"I knew it the second I touched you in the woods." His voice drops. "My body knew before my head did. I've been close to Lydia Redfern three times. Nothing. Not a flicker. Then a rogue girl punches me in the throat, and I can't feel my own hands."

My face goes hot in the freezing air. I hate that he can probably see it.

"Mercy," Boone says slowly. "Is he right?"

I put my hand on my coat pocket, where the melted tag is. I don't take it out. I don't have to. Boone looks at my hand, and then at my face, and something goes out of his shoulders.

Cyrus takes one step toward me. Just one.

"So here it is," he says. "I'll say it once, plainly. I need a Redfern bride before the Blood Moon. The law says I take one, or I lose the crown. I don't want Lydia. I want you."

My heart does something stupid.

"Be my Luna," he says. "Queen of every pack from Alaska to Florida. Harlan Redfern will be exiled before the snow melts. That poster comes down tonight. No one in this country will ever be able to lay a hand on you again. Not Gil. Not Harlan. Not anyone."

It's the biggest thing anyone has ever offered me. It's bigger than this camp. Bigger than this valley. For one second I can see it. A warm room. A locked door. A name nobody can take back.

"And Redfern?" I ask. "My birth pack. What happens to my claim on it?"

He goes quiet.

"Tell me the truth," I say. "Or don't tell me anything."

"A Luna belongs to the Crown," he says. "She holds no pack rank. Anywhere."

There it is.

"So I'd be queen of everybody," I say, "and Alpha of nobody."

"You'd be safe."

"I'd be kept."

"That isn't what I"

"Then no," I say.

He stares at me. I don't think anyone has ever said that word to him in his whole life. He looks like he doesn't know what to do with it.

"No?" he says.

"I'm going to take Redfern by Blood Trial," I tell him. "At the full moon. In front of every wolf who looked the other way while my father paid to keep me dead. I'm going to walk into that circle and put my hand on the silver, and it won't burn me, and they'll all have to watch."

"Harlan will kill you before you get near the circle."

"Then he'll have to do it in front of you."

Cyrus breathes out through his nose. He steps back, one long step, and puts space between us that wasn't there before. Like he needs it.

"Do you know what happens to a wolf who challenges without the blood?" he asks.

"They die on the stone."

"And if I'm wrong about you?"

"Are you?"

He doesn't answer that. Instead he says, very low, "Two weeks."

"What?"

"I can hold off naming a bride for two weeks. After that, my council will name one for me. And it'll be Lydia, and the Accord will be sealed, and your claim won't matter to anyone." He looks at me hard. "Two weeks to change your mind."

"I won't."

"Then two weeks to prove me wrong."

Behind me, Boone hisses my name.

He's not looking at us. His shotgun is up, pointing past the school bus into the trees. His thumb keeps clicking the safety on and off, on and off.

"Mercy. The trees."

I turn.

There are red lights in the pines. Little ones, floating at chest height. Six of them. Seven. They're laser sights, moving slow and steady across the snow toward us.

One of them lands on my chest and stays there.

Men step out of the trees. Redfern hunters in camo jackets, rifles up. The barrels catch the last of the sun, and they shine white. Silver bullets. The smell hits me a second later, sharp as pennies.

Gil Tanner walks out last. He's smiling. He has a toothpick in his mouth, and he takes it out to talk.

"Evening, Your Majesty," he says to Cyrus. He gives a little bow, the kind you'd give a waiter. Then he nods at me. "And there she is."

Cyrus doesn't move. "Lower your weapons, Tanner."

"Can't do that, sir. Rogue trespasser. Ten-thousand-dollar bounty. All legal." Gil puts the toothpick back in his mouth. Then he takes it out again, like he forgot something. "Oh. And Harlan says thank you, by the way. For the tip."

The red dot on my chest doesn't move.

I look at Cyrus.

He looks at me.

And for the first time since I met him, he doesn't look like a man who knows what's happening.