I lifted Ness over the fence and watched her move further away from me. My beast snarled and lashed out. It sent me rocking forward. I had to catch myself on the fence. Ness didn’t notice. The sound of her boots hitting the ground swallowed my moment of weakness.
Shoving the beast back, I promised I would deal with its greed later. I would address the Treasure Sickness slowly creeping in.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I ran a hand over my face.
Ness half-turned and gave me a look of concern. “Are you all right? I can go on without you if you need me to.”
My beast gnashed its teeth. Like hell would it let her go on ahead without me. I jumped the fence in one motion. Ness called me a showoff under her breath. The sound of her voice eased my beast’s twisting thoughts for a heartbeat.
I wanted to reach out and touch her, pull her into me, taste her lips again. The desire nearly got the better of me. My hand was already reaching out towards her before I caught myself and pulled back.
Mine. Mine. Mine, the beast muttered inside my skull. The endless repetition invaded my thoughts until I couldn’t think straight.
Being this close to Ness while she refused me would be the death of me. I didn’t know how much longer I could take this. Perhaps surrounding myself with pack would change things. The sense of family and home might ease my beast’s racing thoughts for a little while. It would do good for my beast to remember that there was more to life than one person.
What is life without her, though?
I swallowed and tried not to think of the answer to my beast’s question. Ness had nearly died again. Every damn time I turned my back, she came close to leaving this world. While she believed that she would be able to come back from anything, I didn’t want to watch her hurt over and over again.
I wasn’t going to let it come to that. Though I said nothing, I made her a silent promise that I wouldn’t let her die again.
Ness led me toward the overflowing trashcan in the center of the small park. She picked at the trash, much to my confusion. When she lifted a ripped shirt, she scowled dubiously and threw it back into the bin.
I scanned the park. “He shifted somewhere near here, then.”
She nodded.
I mean, there was a chance that Alvin had walked around shirtless, but that wasn’t likely. Being topless in the city would have attracted too much attention. He must have found a corner of the park that would hide him as he shifted.
With the protection sigil left outside the building, I could track Alvin’s scent now. The sourness of it wasn’t enough to distract my beast from Ness, though. A part of my mind stayed on her as I traced Alvin’s footsteps. Though I should have pulled my beast away from her, I figured I might have an early warning system should anything happen.
Marcus and Jackson had managed to sneak up on us last time. I didn’t need that happening again.
We followed the scent to a trail through the woods. Though the trail was littered with human debris like crushed beer cans, I figured it wasn’t just a hangout spot. This trail likely led somewhere, perhaps a couple of blocks away, depending on how far the park stretched.
“How…how are we going to kill him?” Ness asked.
I did a double take. Her gaze remained ahead, on the trail that Alvin had likely taken. There was a shadow over her features, though.
I stepped in front of her. “We’re not killing anyone. We’re going to exile him. That’s it.”
She looked up at me, aghast. “Seriously? After everything he’s done, you’re going to let him get away?”
I thought she’d changed her mind. She’d told me that she wouldn’t ask me to kill anyone, yet here she was. She looked at me as if I had sentenced the rest of the world to death.
Ness lowered her voice. “Alvin is a murderer. If we let him go, we’re risking the lives of others. Can you sleep with that on your conscience? Because I can’t.”
“Can you sleep with murder on your hands?” I snapped without thinking.
Ness lifted her chin even though her eyes darkened dangerously. “Not well, but I can so long as I know that I did it for the right reason.”
As of now, both Ness and I had killed out of necessity. While I’d put down a good man who’d been taken by a sickness of the mind, Ness had killed a bad man to save herself. The two situations were so different yet ended the same way:
With guilt that intrinsically changed who we were.
I sighed and shook my head. “I won’t do it again.”
Ness twisted her hands. “I can’t do it on my own.”