War Of The Alphas: Alpha - War of the Alphas: Alpha Part 25
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War of the Alphas: Alpha Part 25

She'd shifted once while in the Winter Court, so why couldn't she do it again? Melchior had shown her the way.

She needed anger as fuel.

Deirdre spread her arms wide, letting the fury burn through her.

Anger was easy. She'd never been so angry as she was now, not for so many years. The ability to be truly angry had been beaten out of her by the system that had broken her down. It had forced her to direct all her energy into survival without thinking of what that survival might mean.

Now Niamh had tried to kill Vidya.

Deirdre was furious.

The harpy pitched past the skyscraper, feathers tearing free of her wings as she plummeted.

As soon as Niamh vanished below the edge of the building, Deirdre jumped.

I'm angry. Let me change. I'm so angry.

Deirdre's skin burned. Her whole body was on fire, churning on the inside, as though her every molecule vibrated with the force of a wildfire. She remembered what it had felt like to fly, carried on the sheer force of Melchior's power.

It should have been easy to capture that feeling again.

But she wasn't changing.

"Damn!" Deirdre gasped. The word was yanked from her mouth, breath dragged into the air, lungs emptying and refusing to refill.

In a blink, a dozen floors of the skyscraper shot past her, asphalt approaching rapidly.

Both Deirdre and Niamh were free falling. For a heartbeat, their gazes met in midair. Deirdre's flames turned her to a comet against the night sky. Niamh's blood streamed from the bullet wound as a crimson tail.

Deirdre slammed into Niamh's back.

The black feathers caught fire. Glossy as they were, they were terribly dry, almost dusty-as flammable as tissue paper.

Niamh screamed. Her wings folded.

And Deirdre didn't change.

They hit the pavement a moment later.

It felt like Deirdre was only unconscious for the time it took her heart to beat.

She awoke to find herself back at Chadwick Hawfinch's high-rise. Her aching eyes focused on the wall. It was blurred, but she could pick out the shape of runes. She was in the cell where they had been trying to contain Rylie and company.

When she tried to sit up, her body was too weak to respond. Her eyes rolled down to the pinching on her arm. There was a needle buried in her vein. The clear plastic tube glowed brilliant blue.

"Evening, Beta."

Stark was standing in the corner, arms folded over his chest, disapproval in every line of his body.

Deirdre flicked at the catheter weakly. "The hell is this, Stark?"

Stark slunk along the perimeter of the room. She tried to track his movements but couldn't lift her head. "What do you think it is?"

She followed the catheter's tubing up the pole to the bag hanging from its hook. It sagged with the weight of enough lethe to keep a murder of vampires stoned for a week. It was also enough to keep her numb as her body reassembled itself. The healing fever washed through her body, but the pops and snaps of bones healing barely registered.

"I think you're dosing me with lethe. Which is...weird. Not uncommon, but weird, all things considered." Her tongue was uncoordinated. The words slurred.

"That's because I'm preparing to kill you."

Even with the warm buzz of drugged euphoria, her heart skipped a beat. "You're what now?"

"It would be difficult to kill you, but not impossible. I'm keeping you weak enough to find a way if I decide that's necessary."

She tugged at the catheter again. "How much have you given me?"

"Not much. Not yet." He delivered a swift kick to Niamh's feathery side. "The next words out of your mouth had better be about how this harpy released the prisoners."

"They broke out on their own."

"Am I supposed to believe that? You freed them and then fled."

"Because Niamh dropped Vidya's body on the roof!" This time, when she tried to sit up, she succeeded. Stark looked surprised. "Did you find Vidya? Is she okay?"

"She's fine," Stark said. "Vidya's almost as difficult to kill as you are."

She sagged against the IV pole. "When can I see her?"

"At this rate, you may never get to see her."

Deirdre didn't have the patience for it anymore. She snapped. "Look, we can run in circles about whether or not I'm loyal to you for days-nay, for months-or we can accept the fact that we aren't powerful enough to hold on to an Alpha werewolf and two damn wizards." He opened his mouth, but she kept speaking. "It doesn't make us weak. Nobody could hold those people. We're never going to be co-Alphas if you can't fucking trust me once in a while."

Stark didn't move for a moment, and she thought she'd said the wrong thing-bringing up the whole "Alpha mate" suggestion he'd made, like she was trying to leverage their relationship against him, dragging up all the hurt about Rhiannon all over again.

Then he turned off the lethe drip.

"I didn't run to get away from you," Deirdre said. "I was chasing Niamh. But could you blame me if I had fled? You must have scraped me off the street with a spatula, and your first reaction was to lock me into a cell and pump me full of lethe."

"I have a temper." Stark's tone was so mild, Deirdre had to laugh.

He kneeled over the harpy and whipped his hand across her face.

Her eyes shocked open at the pain.

It only took Niamh an instant to realize where she was and what had happened. She tried to scramble away from Stark, wings beating helplessly against the floor, talons scrabbling. She was clumsy in her bird form, huge and ungainly.

He pinned her down with a hand on the side of her head. It reminded Deirdre of the way that a bigger dog would hold down a little dog.

"My Beta tells me you're the one who tried to kill Vidya and dump the body on my roof," Stark said.

Warmth flushed over Deirdre. His Beta.

Niamh struggled against him in vain. "I didn't try to kill Vidya. She followed me into the Winter Court, and I'm the only reason Kristian didn't manage to kill her."

Stark clenched a fist in her chest feathers and yanked, pulling the harpy skin away from her body, like peeling the plastic off of a new cell phone.

Her scream made Deirdre's eardrums shiver.

He exposed a plaid skirt, Black Death t-shirt, and fishnet stockings under the feathers. Most shifters couldn't shift with their clothing intact, but she wasn't shapeshifting naturally. The skin was enchanted, a gift from the unseelie-a curse-and she was wearing it over everything else like a cloak.

But it looked like Stark was stripping off her actual flesh, the way that her spine arched.

She was in so much pain.

Deirdre only managed two steps away from the wall before staggering. The healing fever was too much for her.

"Stop it," she said. "Don't torture her."

Stark ignored Deirdre's plea. "Why would you have tried to rescue Vidya when your allegiance clearly rests with my wife? Tell me the truth. Tell me what happened out there tonight."

Niamh tried to say something, but she was barely coherent. The consonants, the vowels-they all slurred together.

Deirdre tangled her fingers in the shreds of swan skin, lifting them from the floor. Now that the skin wasn't attached to Niamh, it flowed through Deirdre's fingers like a liquid.

Stark flipped Niamh over, smashing her face into the floor. The heel of his palm ground against her cheekbone. "Talk clearly," he said, still so chillingly calm. "I can't understand you."

Niamh's wide, glistening eyes fixed on Deirdre. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Dee. I'm sorry."

The apology rankled. "You can't be that sorry, or else you never would have stabbed me in the first place."

"I had to." With her cheek pressed into the floor, her lips were almost pursed, the lower eye halfway closed. "I was compelled by Rhiannon."

"The hell you were," Deirdre said.

"But I was! You have to believe me. Please." Niamh must not have had access to all her usual makeup in the Winter Court, because whatever mascara she wore was cheap, clumping to her eyelashes and streaking black on her cheeks as she sobbed.

"You had to know Kristian was from the Winter Court."

Niamh's shoulders shook violently. Her body was so frail. "Yeah, but Stark knew that I had unseelie contacts. I asked him about the door in the basement. He gave me permission. You gave me permission, Stark!"

"Your alliance was meant to be with me." His knuckles were white, betraying his temper despite his frigid tone. "And your deal wasn't supposed to be made with Rhiannon."

"I said it was the unseelie queen."

His calm frayed. "She's not the queen!"

"She compelled me," Niamh whispered.

"And the skin?" Stark asked.

Her mouth sealed shut, crystalline tears sliding to the floor. She kept her gaze fixed on Deirdre.

Niamh must have known Rhiannon was a usurper to the true queen, but she hadn't cared because of what she could give her.

Deirdre would have done anything for the ability to shapeshift. She had joined Stark's rebellion because she wanted the ability to shift. What would she have done if the Winter Court had gotten to her first? How many terrible things would Deirdre have done if Rhiannon had offered the ability to change in exchange for Niamh's life?

She wouldn't have needed to be compelled.

Niamh probably hadn't either.

"Were you compelled when you attacked me on the dirigible?" Deirdre asked.

"I wasn't attacking," Niamh said. "I followed Kristian there to try to keep him from marking you. I couldn't reach you in time. And then there were the wards-they kept me from communicating with you. But the unseelie know I'm not with them anymore, they want me dead, and I saved Vidya because..." Her throat worked as she swallowed. "I hoped that you'd help me if I helped her."

Deirdre was still cradling the slippery feathers in her hands. It seemed like such a pathetic thing to have instigated such incredible betrayal.

"I made a mistake," Niamh went on in a hoarse whisper. "I should never have hurt you. I should have gotten away when Kristian told me what was going to happen at the asylum. I haven't been able to sleep, or eat, or-gods, I hate myself. But I have information. I can tell you things. For instance, I know that they've released the sluagh."

"I know. We've already seen it," Stark said.

Her eyes grew huge. "Rhiannon is planning to have Melchior kill the true queen so that she can take charge."

"I know that, too. You don't have any valuable information. I don't see why I should give you protection."

"The unseelie plan to provoke riots," Niamh said. "They want to get Melchior's name on the ballot so that he and Rhiannon will be recognized as leaders of the unseelie. Even if they don't win the Alpha position, they'll win control of the Winter Court. Sidhe magic is weird. It would give them so much power just to be recognized."

"I don't care about sidhe politics," Stark said.

"Then I can tell you where Melchior's keeping the queen as he prepares to kill her," Niamh said.

Stark's eyes met Deirdre's over Niamh's head.

That was something Stark wanted as much as Niamh wanted to be able to shift: Melchior's location. His life.

"Tell me," Stark said.

Niamh swallowed hard. "The queen is the most powerful sidhe that's ever lived. Way more powerful than anyone in the Summer Court. It's going to take time to kill her. Melchior is there preparing for it now."

He leaned his weight against her, biceps bulging. "Tell me."

"Promise you'll protect me." Niamh wasn't looking at Stark. She only had eyes for Deirdre.

Stark's voice deepened, growing stronger with compulsion. "Tell me where Melchior is keeping the queen."

Niamh had no choice but to respond, and she knew it. She sobbed, muscles straining as she tried to resist his compulsion.

But she couldn't.

"Original Sin."