I turned toward my Alpha, goose bumps scattering over my arms from the thrill of our discovery. “Liam, you realize this means we can call the duel off?”
His eyes gleamed as brightly as his teeth, which were on full display.
His smile unsettled me. “What?”
“Babe, we’re not calling it off. Thanks to you, we now know how to defeat her.”
My stomach hardened like a fist. “Thanks to me, we know how she cheated. We have no clue how to beat her.”
“Of course we do. By not getting any of her silver-tainted blood in us.” Liam backed up and started pacing the cowhide rug. “Julian bit her. That was the beginning of his end. I won’t bite her.”
I gasped, not okay at all with the turn of events. “How are you going to kill her if you don’t bite her?”
“Claws. I’ll use my claws.”
“What if she wounds you and rubs her blood into your wound?”
“I heal fast.”
“You said wounds inflicted by Alphas take longer to heal,” I sputtered.
“I’ll make sure to keep away until my skin seals shut. Besides, you saw her. She’s slow and not particularly strong.” He stopped pacing, beelined toward me, and then scooped me up and spun me. “Fuck, Ness, we got this.”
When he set me down, my head spun, but not only from the sudden movement. It spun from dread. There were still so many risks . . . And then, because having a headache wasn’t bad enough, my navel began to burn as though someone were jabbing it with a fiery poker.
August pushed off the wall and shot toward Liam. “You’re a selfish prick, Kolane.”
Liam wrenched his shoulders back and got into August’s face. “A selfish prick?”
“You think you got this, but what if you don’t? You won’t be the only one in that ring tonight.”
“Seconds don’t engage,” Liam spat out.
“Have you fucking met Morgan’s Second?” August snapped.
I squeezed myself between both males and pushed them away from each other. “Stop it. Both of you.”
“August is right, Liam,” Matt said. “Justin’s a sick fuck.”
“We know what their edge is,” Liam exclaimed. “We’re going to beat them at their own game.”
I slid my hands off their battering chests and whirled to face Liam. “Stop calling it a game. It’s not!”
His excitement dimmed. Finally!
“It was a manner of speaking, Ness.”
“Was it? Because if memory serves me, you called it a game the day we signed up.”
His voice lowered, and more light left his eyes. “I hadn’t been referring to the duel then.”
August’s chest brushed up against my shoulder blades.
I stared long and hard at Liam. “None of it was ever a game to me, all right?”
“I’ll take her place,” August said. “I’ll be your Second.”
“No!” I spun around.
“Don’t believe she can hold her own out there, Watt?” Liam asked.
August’s gaze sharpened on Liam. “This has nothing to do with what I think of Ness,” he said in a chillingly low voice, “and everything to do with what I think of Justin.”
“I signed up for this. I’ll see it through.” I turned back around. “If I have to,” I added. “I still think we should call them up on their cheating and chase them off our land.”
“They own the inn and all the Pine territory,” Liam said, eyes locked on August’s, “so chasing them off our land won’t get them out of Boulder.”
Pine territory! “Cole, did you get in touch with Sarah?”
“No, but Liam received a message from Avery.”
“Avery?” I asked.
“The Rivers’ contact,” Cole said.
“I remember who he is,” I said. “I meant, why did he send us a message?”
“Because he heard Alex Morgan talk about having put the two-timing Pine bitch in her place, and he believes Alex is talking about Sarah since he’s seen them together,” Liam said.
Dread curled through me. “In her place?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Liam said. “He doesn’t either, but he’s trying to find out.”
Fear for Sarah superseded everything else in that moment. I pressed a fist against my mouth. “Oh my God.”
Lucas careened toward the door. “I can track her smell.”
“No,” Liam said. “We stay put. Avery’s there. He said he’s working on it, and I trust he is.”
My head jerked back. “He didn’t even want to get involved, yet you trust he’s helping us?”
“People change their minds all the time.” When his eyes lifted to August, I wondered if Liam was talking about Avery or about me.
A thought struck me. However much I wanted to call this duel off, I couldn’t abandon Sarah to the Morgans. But Liam couldn’t turn the Creeks into Boulders without ingesting Cassandra’s heart. “Let’s say we go through with the duel, and you win-”
“I will win.”
His conviction made me purse my lips. It also made August’s pulse spike and hammer my tight spine.