“What are you talking about?” I all but snarled.
“If you’re not a Boulder,” Lucas said, “you won’t hear the Alpha.”
Silence caked the warm breeze. I tucked a long tendril of hair behind my ear before remembering the hand I used had been the one to clutch the pack artifact. The lingering stench made my eyes water.
“Do you also doubt my lineage, Mr. McNamara?” I asked.
Frank hooked a finger into his black bowtie and tugged as though it were on too tight. “Your mother was a good woman.”
A non-answer.
“I suppose we’ll find out for sure if you win, Ness,” Lucas continued. “If none of us can hear you-”
“Enough! Enough.” Frank’s face was so red it made his eyebrows appear whiter. “Who will you choose as your opponent for the last test, Ness?”
I hated the uncertainty that had again crawled underneath my skin. I exhaled an annoyed breath, then looked at Lucas and Liam-a rock and a hard place.
I finally made my choice.
“Liam,” I said. “I pick Liam.”
And then I walked away, finding my way home the same way I’d found my way out of the maze.
Alone.
I’d tried to drown my overactive mind in a book, but to no avail. After three pages, the contents of which had pinged against my skull without leaving a trace, I tossed the book aside and turned off the light on my nightstand. I shut my eyes and prayed sleep would devour me.
But it didn’t. My nerves were too raw to sleep.
“Oh, Mom,” I murmured. “Whose child am I?” A tear slid down my nose and into my pillow.
I rolled onto my back, and then I stared at the immaculate white paint on the ceiling, crumpling my comforter between my fingers. I felt a nonsensical bout of nostalgia for the water stains that had adorned our ceiling back in Los Angeles.
A knock on my window had my pulse spiking. I sat up quickly, and the world spun. Had I imagined it? Another knock, this time more insistent. I got out of bed slowly, swiping my room key off my desk and fitting it between clenched fingers.
Who would knock on my window? Everest maybe-
I drew the drapes open.
Liam stood on my balcony, barely distinguishable from the night in his dark clothes. Only his face stood out, pale as the moon behind him.
Nerves shrilled in my ears, and I shut my curtains.
“Ness, let me in.” He banged on the glass again, and I felt his fist inside my chest. “I’ll wake up the whole damn inn if you don’t let me-”
I shoved the curtains aside and opened the door, and then I backed away from him, fingers wrapped tightly around the key.
He thrust the door closed so hard it sucked in a piece of beige curtain.
He scowled as his gaze caught the glint of metal in my fist. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
I didn’t loosen my grip on my makeshift weapon. “Why are you here then?”
“I’m here for answers.” He inhaled a rough breath. “Why are you Julian’s puppet?”
“I’m not his puppet.”
“Oh, come on!” Liam smacked an open palm on my desk. I jumped. “You vanish into a fucking maze with him, and then you come back out all victorious and smug.”
“Is it so hard to believe he might enjoy my company?”
Liam let out a cruel laugh. “It is, actually.” His voice was hostile. “Julian is a manipulative bastard, and don’t tell me you don’t realize that, because you might be a lot of things, Ness, but you’re not dumb. Now, please tell me what the fuck is going on, because I am this close”-he held out his index finger and thumb, which were a hairbreadth’s away from touching-“to my breaking point.”
I pressed my lips shut, not to keep my confession from sliding out, but to keep Liam from seeing how they trembled. I squared my shoulders for the same reason.
“Did you think Lucas wouldn’t kill me? Is that it?” he asked.
My heart punched my ribcage. “What?”
“Don’t tell me you weren’t aware that the last test is a kill game.”
Those two words should never have been part of the same sentence. “A-A kill game?”
A shadow lapsed over Liam’s brow. “Winner takes all. Including loser’s life.”
The key tumbled out of my slack fingers and clinked against the wooden floor.
His eyebrows writhed in surprise. “What? You didn’t know?”
“They’re going to-” I swallowed, but it did little to displace the lump expanding like a vacuum bag inside my throat. “Make us-” I’d convinced myself I’d meet Liam’s punishment with my chin raised high-whatever that punishment may be. But that was because I hadn’t really believed he would kill me.
I wasn’t ready to die.
I didn’t want to die.
“Is this some sick joke?”
“No. It’s not. I wouldn’t joke about something like that.” Liam raked his hand through his hair, ramming back a lock that had fallen over his forehead.
A thought whispered across my mind. He’d planned on selecting Lucas as his contestant. Had it been to spare me? “You would’ve been ready to kill Lucas?”
“I wouldn’t have had to kill Lucas, because the elders would’ve let one of us concede. They wouldn’t have wanted to eliminate a pack member.”
His words trickled through me like grains of sand in an hourglass, and like those grains of sand, they were marking the time I had left.
I realized then that this was the perfect way to get rid of me for good. “But because it’s me-a non-pack member-they’ll take conceding off the table?” I swayed a little but caught myself on the back of my desk chair. My knuckles whitened. “Is that why you’re here? To finish this stupid contest?”
His gaze turned a forbidding shade of black. “Do you really think I could kill you?”