Page 216 of My Unhinged Alphas
“I know,” Vale says quickly, still holding me. “I know.”
The man sinks to his knees. Knox is beside him at once, more from instinct than mercy, while Havoc stands over them breathing hard, his expression stripped of every trace of humor.
“Who sent you?” Knox demands.
The man barely seems to hear him. His eyes find me once more, unfocused now, and his mouth works around a breath that sounds wet and wrong.
“The Brotherhood…” he says.
Knox leans closer. “What about it?”
The man swallows blood. “Is corrupt,” he whispers. “And will fall.”
Then he collapses onto his side, and the room goes still.
For a moment, none of us moves. The man’s last words seem to hang in the room after he’s gone, as if death has not quite taken them with him.
The Brotherhood is corrupt and will fall.
Knox is still crouched beside the body. Havoc stands over him, breathing hard from the fight. Vale has one hand on my shoulder, the other still close enough to catch me if I sway again. All three of them look stunned in a way I have not seen before, not by the death, not even by what I did, but by what he chose to say with his last breath.
I barely hear it.
I’m staring at my hands.
There’s blood on them. His blood. Across my fingers, under my nails, smeared over my palms where the knife handle slipped when Knox dragged him away. I keep looking down at it, waiting for my mind to catch up, waiting for the room to make sense again, but it doesn’t.
I killed him.
By accident. In self-defense. Because he was trying to hurt Vale.
None of that changes the blood.
A faint electronic click cuts through the room, and the laptop on the table at the side wakes up. The screen glows.
Vale’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “Apostle Andrew.”
The name pulls my attention upward through the haze.
I can’t see the figure properly from where I am, only the screen angled toward the others, a dark shape against darker light. But I know enough now to understand what that means.
“Wait,” I say, my voice sounding very far away to me. “Apostle?”
The man on the screen speaks before anyone answers me. “Is it done?”
Knox rises slowly from beside the body. The look on his face makes the room colder. “You knew about this man,” he says.
“Yes,” the Apostle replies. Calmly.
As if there’s not a corpse bleeding out on the floor between us. As if I’m not still tied at the ankles, shaking, with blood drying on my hands.
Knox’s voice drops. “How do you even have access to his laptop?”
“The Brotherhood is everywhere.” The answer is smooth enough to make my skin crawl.
Then the Apostle adds, “You can see me, but I cannot see you. Mikhail made sure of that.”
Havoc’s head comes up. “Mikhail?”
