All In (The Naturals, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

We can shed the past. We can dance it off. We can laugh and sing and spin—forever and ever. No matter what.

I was my mother’s daughter.

My mother was a survivor.

You hate yourself for imagining it. You hate how easy it is to put yourself in the mind-set of my mother’s killer—or killers. You hate that it makes any kind of sense at all.

All thoughts cut off as Dean lifted my wrist to his lips, pressing a soft, silent kiss to the once-abused skin. He closed his eyes. I closed mine. I could feel him, breathing behind me. I matched my breaths to his. In. Out. In. Out.

“You don’t have to be strong right now,” Dean told me.

“They got him.”

“Nightshade stuck Briggs with some kind of needle.” Michael looked from Lia to Dean to me. “Injected him with something. They don’t know what.” My mouth went dry and the roaring sound in my ears surged. Poison.

Undetectable. Incurable. Painful.

“Take your time,” Nightshade said. Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, it felt like he was looking directly at me.

My stomach twisted with unexpected nausea as he continued. “I’m here when you’re ready, Cassandra.”

You see Judd. Your lips curve slightly. I kept my face as blank as I could. One last card to play. One last game.

You watched us. You get off on Judd’s grief, on Sterling’s.

That poison. Your poison. Your legacy.

You can look at the files, Judd had said, back when this all began, but you’re not doing it alone. Neither one of us was doing this alone now.

You don’t kill children. That was a rule they lived by. A sacred law. But you have no problems leaving them in the desert to die of their own accord.

“Nine is the greatest of us. The constant. The bridge from generation to generation.” Your leader, I filled in. Beau hadn’t just been born in their walls. He’d been born to lead them.

“The girl has many fathers.” That answer sent a chill down my spine. “Seven Masters,”

EWWW

My mother wasn’t worthy. My mother fought.

“I like to think of the Pythia more as Lady Justice,” he said. “She is our counsel, our judge and our jury, until her child comes of age. She lives and dies for us and we for her.”

“The woman,” I said. “The one I saw with you.” My voice lowered itself to a whisper, but the words were deafening in my own ears. “She killed my mother. You made her kill my mother.”

“We all have choices,” Nightshade replies. “The Pythia chooses to live.”

The Pythia chooses to live. The words echoed in my mind. Perhaps one day, that choice will be yours. Room 2117.

Sterling called to say that Briggs had received the antivenom.

“Nine,” she whispered. “My name is Nine.”

“Laurel. Mommy calls me Laurel.”

That’s my mommy, Laurel had said. But the woman in the picture was my mother, too.

“Forever and ever,” Laurel whispered, each word a knife in my gut. “No matter what.”

WHAT IS GOING ON

“Laurel,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Where is Mommy?” “In the room.” Laurel stared at me and into me. “Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room.”

We had no idea who the woman we’d just buried in my mom’s grave was.

What I did know was that my mother was alive.

I turned, meeting each of the others’ eyes, one by one. Home is the people who love you.

I was ready to go home.

To protect Laurel. Forever and ever. To find my mother. Find the Pythia. Find t...