Page 63 of Beautiful Madness

Fuck.

Then the sounds of thefighting, the voices of the crowd, the crackling of the magic, it all rushedback into my ears, and I could think again.

I nodded.

He whirled and rushed towardFarrow, who gave me a small smile, and then the three of them were gone.

When Bastien gave Joe back tome, he would be one of them.

And I was fucking okay withthat.

Remy was not. “What did you do,Kait,” he yelled, getting in my face. “What the fuck did youdo?”

I stood, finally turning towatch my alpha destroy my father, and my mother destroy my mother. They did notneed me. They didn’t need anybody.

“Get away from me,” I toldRemy. “He is my friend, not yours, and I know what he wanted.”

“Not that,” he said, emotionaland horrified. He was not the cold-blooded hunter, the fearsome boogeyman, notat that moment. He was shattered that a human he’d known and considered afellow hunter was even now being turned into one of the creatures he despisedand hunted.

One of the creatures we both despisedand hunted.

Once upon a time.

“Don’t you ever fucking do thatto me,” he whispered, something terrible in his eyes.

It was Zach who urged him awayfrom me. And Zach, remembering his time with the vampires, didn’t quite look mein the eye. But he would be all right. He would understand, when Joe came back.He would.

Lucy stood a little apart withthe detective, both of them watching me but neither of them approaching.

“Things change,” I murmured,and turned my attention to the fight at hand.

It was short, honestly, andquite anticlimactic. Jared tore out the throat of a man he shouldn’t have evenbeen able to feel or see, and then shifted back to his human form, snatched ablade from the ground, and carved out my father’s heart.

I didn’t know what would happento my father then. Would he go back to whatever afterlife he’d settled into?Would he return to his spirit form? Or would he simply cease to exist?

I nodded when Jared looked atme.

To me, my father would cease toexist. He no longer mattered. It was over.

Over.

My mother fared a little worsewith the shapeshifting bitch who’d birthed me, but I would not interfere. Shewouldn’t have wanted me to. She needed to prove something to me, to theshapeshifter, and to herself.

Ordinarily, she would neverhave been able to defeat a shapeshifter, but my birth mother was not as strongas she should have been. Whatever had happened to her so long ago had fuckedher up not only mentally, but physically.

And in the end, my motherkilled the monster—again—much as Jared killed my bastard of a father. She cameout of that battle bloody and half dead, but smiling and proud. “For you,” shetold me, pulling me into her arms. “For you. The fuckers are dead, and they’llstay dead this time. I swear that to you, my daughter.”

I wrapped my arms around herand sobbed against her torn throat.

And when she left me andshifted once again into her wolf to heal, my alpha was waiting to take herplace. He lifted me into his arms, and holding me as tightly as he dared, hestrode from the horror of the caves.

The charger was dead. The magicwas dead. My birth parents. Dead.

And Joe…

Well, Joe would be reborn, andhe would come back to me, fiercer and stronger than ever. Would he be changed?Oh yes.

But he would not be dead.