Gentry (Wolves of Winter's Edge Book 1)(30)

Did he know her life was over yet?

Did Asher understand in this form? Did Roman?

Tears streamed down her cheeks. They were the only warm things about  her. Inside her body, her blood had chilled to ice, stretching like  clawed, dead fingers from the seeping bite-marks on her arms until it  reached her chest, her stomach, her legs.

Gentry had pinned Big Gray, his teeth on his throat, poised to shred his  neck and end his life, but Asher bolted forward and blasted into  Gentry. Why? Why not let him end this? Why not let him avenge their dad?  Avenge her?

Something big passed between Asher and Gentry with a look, and they both  allowed Big Gray to drag his broken body toward the woods.

Blaire didn't feel well. The woods were beginning to spin around her,  and she swayed where she sat. A cold sweat broke out all over her body,  and she could feel a poisonous fog filling each vein. She looked down at  her shredded arms. Red, red, now I'm dead.

"Gentry," she whispered weakly.

He looked over at her, locked his gaze on hers, and then dragged those firey green eyes down her body to her offered arms.

She wanted to say she was sorry. Sorry she hadn't run fast enough, sorry  she hadn't given him more of a chance to save them, sorry she'd been  weak, sorry she hadn't left when he'd asked her to. She wanted to say  sorry she was ending them too soon. Her heart was breaking. Nothing was  fair. All she could do was close her eyes against the spinning woods as  she fell backward into the snow.

When she opened her eyes, the glowing blue moon was there, full and low  in the cloudy sky. And then something even more beautiful was there,  leaning over her, agony written into his face.

"No," Gentry whispered.

Gentry cradled her body against his chest as he shook his head in denial.

"Call the witch," Asher said low.

"Man, she can't do anything for her!" Roman said from where he paced  right on the edge of her vision. "Fucking black magic, Asher? Really?  She'll turn Blaire into one of those zombie wolves you imagined in the  woods, and that's if Blaire's lucky. You'll owe a blood-debt to a witch,  Gentry. Maybe Blaire will survive the bites."

"Three percent, Roman. That's the odds for a woman." Gentry stood slowly  with Blaire in his arms, his eyes empty as he walked her up the road  toward Hunter Cove.

So strong.

He acted as if her dead weight was nothing.

Dead weight.

Dead.

"Gentry!" Roman said. "Odine can't save her!"

"Shut the fuck up," Asher snarled out in a voice more wolf than man.  "Zombie wolf or no, at least she would have a chance at living. Open  your eyes, Roman. They're bonded. If she dies, Gentry dies."

"That's not possible. She's human!"

"Yeah, well, witches and werewolves aren't supposed to exist," Gentry  barked out over his shoulder. "Anything's possible." He looked down at  Blaire and repeated that last part through gritted teeth. "Anything's  possible. Do you hear me, Blaire? Don't quit on me."

"You'll die, too?" she asked weakly.

"No, because you're going to be okay." He looked back up at the road  with a fierce determination glowing in his eyes. And as he lengthened  his stride, he swore to her, "We'll both be okay."





Chapter Eighteen




Gentry sat in the back seat of Asher's truck cradling Blaire's head in his lap.

This was one of those moments he would never forget as long as he lived.  It was like a black and white snapshot he'd seen once of his grandpa.  He'd never met his grandpa because he'd died before he was born, but  Gentry used to stare at the old photograph in Dad's cabin of his grandpa  standing next to the inn, leaning against an old water pump with this  hardened look on his face, like life had kicked the shit out of him, and  that was as close to a smile as he could muster anymore. Gentry used to  look at it and think it so strange that he was dead, and this was the  only thing people had to remember him by.                       
       
           



       

Gentry couldn't explain it, but he got that same feeling now. Like this  was the life-kicked-the-shit-out-of-me moment before he died and left no  legacy. And what legacy did he even care about if Blaire wasn't around?  This moment was frozen. Roman was in the passenger's seat, biting his  thumb nail, staring out the window. There was no song on the radio, no  talking. Asher was driving, and his profile was rigid and angry. And in  the back seat, Gentry was stroking Blaire's hair out of her face.  Already she was drenched in sweat. That would be the fever starting. The  poison did that. He was poison.

Asher growled and tossed him a fiery look. "Cut that shit out, Gentry."

Gentry frowned, and Roman looked over at their oldest brother, too, with a confused look.

"Can you read minds now?" Gentry asked suspiciously.

"No. But I can feel your damn thoughts, and you need to keep it to  yourself. You won't help her that way." Asher heaved a sigh and took a  right onto a road Gentry didn't recognize. "Odine isn't what you think."

"What?" Roman asked. "How do you know about Odine?"

"Because she's the reason we have our wolves."

Gentry sat up straighter. "What do you mean?"

"Mom was human, Gentry. The three of us? We were born human. Odine gave  us wolves. She tried to erase the memories, but I started having dreams  about it when I was twenty. I came back looking for answers. I found  Odine. I didn't realize she and Dad were a couple. I just thought she  was a witch he'd hired. Now I don't think he hired her at all. I think  she was a part of our lives when we were kids, and Dad asked her to make  us like him so we could be part of the pack."

"Or so he could be alpha," Roman spat out. "And I'm no human. I never was, so your dreams are bullshit."

"What Odine is going to do … " Asher murmured, ignoring Roman's outburst.  When he glanced at Gentry in the rearview mirror, his silver eyes looked  haunted. "You won't want to be there."

"I'm not leaving my mate," Gentry growled out, his head spinning with  the implications. Born human. Human? Couldn't be. Wolf was a part of  him. Separate but part of him. But … that would explain why he'd chosen a  human mate when he wasn't supposed to even be attracted to them. It  explained why Dad had picked Odine instead of Nelda. He'd already been  attracted to humans before her. He'd been attracted to his mother.

The deeper he dug into Rangeley and all the buried secrets here, the  more the memories of his father flickered like old lightbulbs.

Gentry ran a light touch over the bandages on Blaire's arms. She was  here because of him. Because he'd thought the Bone-Rippers were  salvageable. Because he'd expected more of them. Because he'd trusted  his memories more than his instinct to tuck his mate under his arm and  run with her.

"I want to know," Blaire whispered. Her pupils were blown. "I want to  know why you didn't kill that big gray wolf. That was Rhett, right? The  man who killed your father. The man who ordered this." Her voice  tapered, and her face crumpled as a tear slid out of the corner of her  eye and down her cheek. "Why, Gentry?"

"Because killing Rhett would make Gentry alpha of the Bone-Rippers," Asher said. "Can't have that."

"Surely you would be a better alpha than Rhett."

Gentry shook his head. "Maybe I would've considered it if the pack  hadn't gone after you like that. They hunted together though, Blaire.  They hunted a human. They hunted my human." His voice shook with fury,  and she winced. "I don't know if a single one is worth saving, but I  can't put myself on the throne of monsters. We need more time."

Asher pulled up to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps to  Blaire with her dull human senses, this place would feel like any other  home, cozy even, but thick, sickening fog drifted over Gentry's skin,  raising the hair all over his body. The stink of magic nearly choked  him.

Roman gagged in the front seat, and when Asher looked back at Gentry, he  was pale as a ghost. He waited there, as if asking Gentry if he was  sure about this.

"Come on," Gentry said low. He got out and scooped Blaire into his arms.  She was still awake, but just barely. She was staring at the sky,  unblinking, even when snowflakes brushed her dark lashes. Her pupils  were so enlarged that her eyes looked black right now. Gentry wanted to  kill the entire Bone-Ripper Pack, but revenge would have to wait.

Odine sat on the front porch, bundled in a thick wool blanket and  shivering like she'd been there for a while. "Took you long enough." She  admonished him behind chattering teeth. "How long since the bite?"