Page 71 of Her Reborn Mate

“If there is no tribunal left alive, there won’t be a trial. I am afraid, brother, you and I will have to end this here and now. Only one of us is leaving this place alive, and even that is not a guarantee.”

Alexis. Please tell me some good news, I called out to her.

“You cannot do that right now. That would be cheating. I know what you’re doing. You’re reaching out to your mate. Tsk. Tsk. I thought we were airing our dirty laundry. Or are you bored already?” Fred smirked.

“You never told me how you and Blair started working together,” I said, feeling resigned when Alexis did not respond. I hoped that she was doing all right. I had given her a monumental task. It would be miraculous if she’d achieve it. I needed to have some faith.

“Blair came to me after his father’s death, informing me that you had killed his father. He wanted revenge. I set him out on a warpath, told him of Wolf’s Bane, and even nudged him in the right direction quite a few times. I made him work with Ralph and Maurice so that he’d have some backing in the city. People never suspect the old and withered guy to be capable of doing such things. They never knew that everything happening in the city only happened because I deemed it to happen. For the first time in my life, I had control. And then you came and took it back in a second, and things were back to being how they were,” Fred said.

“You sought to reduce my name to ashes, to kill me, but in doing so, you only made me stronger. It was because of you that I was imprisoned by Edward. He experimented on my body and morphed me into a stronger version of myself. My lifespan increased, my body retained its vigor, and thankfully I look every bit as young as I did seventy years ago while you look like, well, death. I found my mate thanks to you. I fell in love. Life suddenly became very colorful for me. So, in trying to take me down, you gave me everything that I had ever wanted. If you weren’t about to blow all these people up, I’d consider forgiving you and thanking you for what you’ve done,” I said.

And there it was. I could see in his eyes that he had fallen into the trap I had laid for him. His grip on the button loosened as his facial expressions became vacant. He struggled to get words out of his mouth. Two tears rolled down his eyes and streamed down his cheeks.

“You would forgive me after all I’ve done to you?” he asked.

I wouldn’t. Of course, I wouldn’t. But he didn’t need to know that. “I would. You made my life better, even though you never intended for that to happen. I have a new lease on life. I’m young and thriving in the twenty-first century. I may end up getting married. I can let bygones be bygones if you can just put down that button and stop this madness.”

His face reverted to being a canvas for vileness. He scowled at me and gripped the detonator tightly. “You were leading me on. Very clever. You think that I crave your forgiveness? Fuck that. You should be on your knees in front of me instead, begging me for forgiveness,” Fred snapped.

“I am never going to beg someone like you for forgiveness. Not when I know that I did nothing wrong. And I can tell you that this night is not going to go the way you planned. You take me for some fool. You do not know how powerful I am. I took down your son. Murdered him in cold blood. I killed the leader of the vampires. And after tonight, I will hunt down Blair and rip apart his limbs from his lifeless body. Tonight, I will end your life. Fuck the trial, fuck the jury, fuck the tribunal. You think you can draw breath after you threatened my family? I will end your existence and make sure that you are nothing but a black blot in the history books. Forget that. I will make sure that everyone forgets who you ever were to begin with,” I said, seething with rage.

“Big words from a man who stands to lose everything,” Fred said, coming close to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I do not want to be remembered. All that legacy bullshit I was spewing earlier, I never meant it. I don’t want to go down in history. I have lived my life and have made peace with the decisions that I made. I didn’t do the things I did out of love. I did them out of duty. Without you, the pack lived on under my supervision, didn’t it? I fulfilled my duty.”

“You aren’t some selfless leader. You wanted glory for yourself. You wanted to rule the pack in my place. That’s why you did everything. Admit it!” I shouted.

“Fine! I admit it. I needed the same worship from the pack that you got all your life. They venerated you. Everyone thought you were a manifestation of some god! I never got that in my life. Never once. Even after you disappeared, the pack remembered you and told tales of your bravery. How that burned me from the inside!”

“The madness fueled by hatred has no end,” I said, pushing Fred back. I didn’t want him to stand so close to me. He might have been my brother a lifetime ago, but the man standing in front of me was every bit my enemy as Ralph or Maurice, or Blair were.

“You started it,” Fred said. “I’m just ending it.”

“Before you end it, tell me where Blair has gone. What good is it going to do me, after all? You’re going to kill the pack and me. So, what’s the harm in letting me know?” I coaxed an answer out of him.

“Blair is operating on his own now. You think that he planted those bombs? I did. Well, I had some help from some enterprising vampires that wanted revenge, but mostly this was my plan. Blair has departed from the city, and I don’t know where he is. Even if I knew, I would never tell you,” Fred said.

“You’re a disappointment, little brother,” I said, taking a few steps back. “And you are going to get disappointed.”

“Oh, how is that?” Fred asked, raising his eyebrows.

“You never had any faith, to begin with. You have always lacked it. If you had only had some faith in me when I brought us to America, you would have seen what I had planned. But you didn’t. You’ve never been a faithful person. Tonight, it’s not about who wins or loses. It’s about faith. You have none. I have all the faith in the world,” I said.

“Let’s put your faith to the test, then,” Fred said, raising his hand in front of me, holding the detonator.

“Do it,” I said. “Let’s put my faith to the test.”

Without saying a word, Fred pushed the button. My heart skipped a beat. To my right, I could see the town. The town, with its many lights, all flickering in the night. Suddenly, all the lights went out. Fear gripped my throat as I realized that Fred had probably succeeded. But when nothing happened for the next few seconds, I looked back at him and smiled.

“What is it? Things did not work out for you as you thought they would?” I asked.

“This cannot be,” Fred said, pushing the button over and over again. “It’s impossible—a hundred bombs. I planted almost a hundred of them. It’s impossible that the pack got them all in time.”

“Or they just disabled the signals that control the detonator,” I said, feeling relieved. In the far corner to my right, fireworks were shooting into the sky, and the lights were coming back into town. I could hear the people cheering. From the looks of it, the new mayor had been voted.

“Tonight heralds new beginnings not just for the town but for the pack as well,” I said. “Sadly, this is as far as you go. By the power bestowed to me by the Grimm pack, I take you my prisoner and order you to stand trial before the tribunal.”

“I will not go quietly into the night,” Fred said, throwing the detonator at me. “The bombs will blow up anyway. They’re rigged to explode with a timer.”

As I advanced toward Fred to subdue him, I hoped that Alexis had done something about the timers.