Page 120 of The Vixen

I’m sorry, my love.

Alaric’s breath comes faster now. He’s spent. He knows it. I know it. But he doesn’t falter. He raises his good fist while shifting his stance, ready for more.

Sawyer must be at the fence by now. Or close. Close enough.

I exhale, slow and measured.

This time, I don’t wait for him to move.

I surge forward, knocking his weakened arm aside, stepping inside his guard before he can react. My palm slams into his collarbone and forces him backward—just enough to knock him off balance.

Then I drop low, sweep his legs out from under him, and before he can hit the ground, I drive my knee into his sternum, pinning him down with bone-crushing force.

The crowd silences. Almost. A woman’s cry sounds just past the front row. A mate. A friend.

A choked sound escapes Alaric as the breath leaves his lungs.

I stay there for a moment, the weight of my knee pressing into his chest, watching as the finality sets in.

Alaric goes still beneath me. His head falls back against the frozen ground. Not in surrender, but in understanding. Acceptance.

A warrior’s death.

I cover his ears with my palms, my gaze never leaving his as I whisper, "You fought well."

Then, with a final exhale, comes the crack.

CHAPTER 34

SAWYER

The tiny room is almost as I remember it, though from a very different lens.

My face stares back at me from dozens of photos pinned to the walls, some from my time in New York, some from before. Lots from Sawyer Hansley’s life. Pictures of my island, me with a now resigned prime minister, a headshot taken four years ago, the day after a shot of botox that left my face too tight for a week. I’d all but forgotten about the bogus website it was used for whenAmerica’s Most Wantedflashed it.

Notable are the photos of before Sawyer Hansley. My senior yearbook photo, my driver’s license, a group photo of my theater class after a performance—I played akillerRomeo.

I knew Luna had to have found my real name, but staring back at an identity I haven’t touched since I was eighteen… I busy myself searching for the chloroform with my eyes drawnlow. Persephone’s ballet flats tap the hollowed board covering the tunnel.

“Are you sure Her Grace wanted me to see this?” she asks.

I find the bottle on a small shelf with various other containers, all of which appear equally nefarious. I slip the bottle, along with a neatly folded rag, into my pocket.

“She just wants you to see the way out in case of emergencies, like a fire. You’ve been staying here more frequent?—”

As my head turns, I lock onto a newspaper article that steals the words from my mouth and the breath from my lungs.

The tension that laces through my arms reminds me of the shift of a shadow down a darkened alley. It’s always a cat, but for a moment or two, you’re sure it’s a mugger.

The article is nothing I didn’t know, nothing that could hurt me. But the tension never leaves as I stare into my mother’s eyes, once a shifting mix of deep blue and silver, like the ocean at dawn, now dulled by the black and white ink.

It’s dated twenty years ago. Which means it’s been twenty years since I’ve read these words, and the hit is no less brutal.

To the left of her photo in big block letters is the headline:Local Woman Found Dead on Monterey Shore in Apparent Suicide

I don’t need to keep reading, but I do.

Monterey, CA — The body of Eleanor Whitmore, 39, was discovered early Tuesday morning along the shoreline near Cannery Row in what authorities are calling an apparent suicide.