Maddy looked at each of us in turn. “I don’t know,” she said, giving us what honesty she could.
She didn’t know if she was coming back—now or ever. She didn’t know if she was ready, didn’t know if things could ever be the same.
This might be good-bye, then, I realized. Maddy might leave here and disappear, the way she had before. Her plan could backfire. She could die. Even if she didn’t, we might never see each other again.
And there was nothing I could do about it—nothing any of us could do about it.
I walked forward and wrapped my good arm around her. She wrapped both around me, and for a moment, I could hear her heartbeat, feel the baby shifting position restlessly in her womb.
Good-bye.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
WE GOT TO THE BORDER BETWEEN CEDAR RIDGE AND Stone River with twenty minutes to spare on Sora’s timetable. Griffin was still holding strong, and I could tell by the worry lines that had taken up residence around the corner of his mouth that the constant onslaught had subsided.
The killer had taken the bait.
I said a quick and silent prayer that wherever Maddy was, she was well, and then turned my attention to what we’d come here to do.
What I was going to have to do.
Werewolves were difficult to kill. Purebreds, like Devon and Shay, could survive anything short of decapitation, having their hearts ripped out, or being literally torn to pieces. I wasn’t sure whether Sora’s mother had been a werewolf or not, but even if she hadn’t been, killing Sora wouldn’t just be a matter of pulling a trigger.
Not if we wanted to make sure she stayed dead.
Dead.
Don’t, I told myself. Don’t think it. Don’t picture it. Don’t picture Dev.
“Silver,” Lake said, nodding toward the weapons she’d packed us. “And you have your knife.”
Since the challenge, I hadn’t gone anywhere without it.
“I’ll do it.” Caroline crossed the border to stand on the Wyoming side—something that neither Lake nor I could do, without invitation.
“You’ll do what?” I asked, jarred by the sudden reminder that Caroline wasn’t one of us and wondering how I’d gotten to the point where any part of me thought that she was.
“I’ll kill her.” Caroline was holding a knife in her own hand, and she ran her thumb over the tip of the blade, so lightly that it didn’t draw blood. “That’s what I am. A killer.”
I could tell by the tone in her voice that those were someone else’s words, ones she’d heard often enough to believe them.
“It’s what I do, Bryn. It’s what I am. You know that.”
At one point, I would have believed what she was saying, but now?
“You have a knack for hunting,” I said. “That doesn’t make you a killer.”
“I shot Eric. The others killed him, but I shot him, and now he’s dead.”
If you’d told me a week ago that I would be arguing with her about this, I never would have believed it, but she’d weathered the events of the past three days with me. She’d fought by my side.
If she was a killer, so was I.
“You know Sora,” Caroline said finally. “I don’t. It will hurt you. It won’t hurt me. Nothing hurts me.”
“Liar.” Lake beat me to the punch. “Just breathing hurts you so bad, you want to beat the snot out of something.”
Eloquent was Lake.
“I can do it,” Caroline insisted.
I nodded. “You could,” I said, “but I’m not asking you to.”
I owed it to Sora to see this through. To do what she’d asked of me—what Callum couldn’t do.
There has to be another way. I couldn’t push down the part of my brain that was desperate for that to be true. I wished I could believe that wanting a solution, wanting it so badly it hurt, was enough to make it so that one could be found.
But it wasn’t enough, and there wasn’t another solution—and even if there were, we didn’t have the luxury of time to find it.
I don’t want to Change. That thought came fast and vicious, and this time, I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to fight it back. I don’t want to be a werewolf. I don’t want to live forever, having to make these decisions over and over again. I don’t want to stay young and watch Ali and Keely and Caroline grow old and die.
I don’t want to kill my best friend’s mom.
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t want any of it.
I’d already lost Maddy. I couldn’t take losing Devon, too. He was my rock, my friend, my constant from the time I was four years old, and this—this unspeakable thing I had to do—it would always be there between us.