47. Unhinged

“To think I ever loved you,” Sona spat as she tried to wrench free of Conri’s grip when he spun her around to face him.
“With our entire souls.” His grin was smug and savage. His gray eyes were bright with ferver, dark circles under them, now-overgrown brown hair in disarray as if he hadn’t combed it in days. Lines she didn’t remember him having creased pale skin on either side of his mouth. He looked aged.
He looked unhinged. Which was enhanced by the missing tip of his left ear.
Sona’s lip curled in disgust. “You look like shit.”
“No thanks to you,” he growled, snatching her upper arm and yanking her away from Edom, who clicked his tongue in annoyance. “You haunt my waking hours, Sona.”
She yanked back without avail. “Let go of me, you disgusting beast.”
“She likes that word,” Edom called behind her.
“‘Beast’?” called Conri with an abhorrent smirk. “It’s what she named me in bed.”
By consequence of merely being Goldwater by birth, Edom hated her guts. Enough that he would lower himself all the way to a Leto werewolf. That was low. And what did he gain in return—what did Conri promise in exchange for her?
She labeled him as a tentative enemy. The only thing preventing him from killing her was his duty to his Alpha—more, the care and responsibility he felt for Taos and Cerise.
And Conri? Lovers turned true enemies. He was not her husband, not her mate, any more—far, *far* from it. No matter whose fault it was—his, for starting a relationship with Vallea; hers, for not trying hard enough to bring him down from his obsession with protecting Valleytown; or both, for spitting and fighting with each other—Conri Grayhide was now Sona’s true rival. A damn villain.
“The only thing I called you was *my love*,” Sona hissed, trying to twist back toward Edom, because she had a dreadful instinct that Conri was going to drag her all the way back to Moonvalley. “That was a lifetime ago. Now the only thing I’ll call you, as Gamma Edom was saying before you had to fuck it up, is *disgusting*.”
Conri’s arm looed around her waist and jerked her body to his—chest to chest, her head forced back to look up at him. Before she could spit in his face, he mashed his mouth to hers in a forceful kiss. He groaned with pleasure against her lips, but when his tongue slipped inside her mouth, Sona Shifted her canine teeth to be her wolf’s—and bit down as hard as she could.
He released her with a shout and a shove. Both of them spitting out blood, Sona made eye contact with Edom. There was no expression in his face or eyes, and for a moment she thought he’d let her escape, but before she could make it a few steps, he snatched her arm that was rubbed raw by the brutal handlings.
“You almost bit my tongue off, bitch!” Conri roared, whirling. “Stop using me to teethe! Royan, let her go. She’s mine.”
“Fulfill your end of the deal.” His voice was not one to argue with, lest you long for pain. Conri was too smart to know when to fight a bigger enemy—a bigger body. “Call me anything but my title, I’ll kiss your backstabbing mouth and sever that tongue myself.”
Even in the dark, Sona saw Conri hesitate with a spark of fear. Then he cleared his throat. “Fine. Here. It was damn near impossible to get Rand to give that up.”
He tossed Edom something tied to his belt; the Gamma snatched it right out of the air. Sona glimpsed a small but heavy-looking satchel bag—and it reeked like stale blood.
“What is that?” she demanded, breathing through her mouth.
Edom released her yet again—she was very sick of being a game of tug-of-war—to take the sack and start walking back toward the cave. “Deal completed. Take her and neither of you cross this border again.”
Conri locked Sona between his chest and arm even as she screamed, “Edom! Please! Don’t leave me with him! *Please*—”
Her nemesis chuckled in her ear. “Come on, Sona, you really think you can plea with someone like him? He sold you under the risk of his own Alpha hating him in exchange for his *former* Alpha’s ashes in a jar.”
Sona’s mouth went dry. *That’s all that I’m worth*?
Edom must see it as a reclaiming. The former Redbone Alpha Serkin raided Leto and perished—no one knew how; was it murder, or did he siply burn to death in the chaos? Either way, it seemed Leto found his body and cremated it. Gammas were utmostly loyal to their Alphas—only some, apparently—and would do anything to follow them even in death.
It occurred to Sona then: had Edom participated in the attack that day? And if he did, how was he still alive?
“Don’t be upset, dear, I’m taking you back home to Moonvalley,” crooned Conri, thumb stroking her lower abdomen, a strip of it exposed by her rumpled shirt, “where we can live at the manor together. You can return to being the best healer in all of Valleytown without fear of being tried for murder. That’s all over now…”
Sona didn’t know which emotion to let lash out first. Bitterness took a pretty hard swing, though. She pried his fingers with her own. “What, change your mind about Vallea, your Luna-to-be?” she spat, failing to free herself yet again. She felt too overwhelmed to know if she could handle another fight. Talking it out might give her an opening of how to act.
“Yes, actually,” Conri murmured, setting into a walk, lifting her right off her feet and onto his shoulder.
“Gods!” she shrieked in outrage. “Am I only a sack of goods to be throne around?!”
Ignoring her, he continued, “I made a huge mistake, Sona. I shouldn’t have left you, or let you leave—let anything happen since the dinner. I should have protected you when I let my anger command persecution. I…I was wrong. And I want to make it right—back the way it used to be.”
“You’re insane.”
“Likely, again thanks to you.” Conri sighed, adjusting her roughly. “I’ve been thinking. Since I will be the Alpha of the Moonvalley pack in two days, I have more power than I ever did as Gamma. I’ve already bought a house for Vallea to live in and raise our pups, and since she will no longer be my Luna, there is an opening. Sona, why be the Luna of such an ugly, ruthless pack when you could rule over one you already know who trusts you? You belong back in Moonvalley where you will be safe and loved.
“And,” he added, “as Alpha, I will need heirs. So you will be my Luna…and you will give Raff siblings.”
The words went through Sona’s mind like stones thrown at a wall. She bore the pain as she watched Edom blend into the night and into the cave. There was no one else to save her.
Except herself.
“Let us make more offspring, Sona, as soon as we get back to our home.”