Better Off Dead: A Jack Reacher Novel 소설 & 이야기

“Do you have any idea what that did to me?” I move closer, crouching beside her. “I know, Rachael. I’m sorry,” I apologize, my voice heavy with regret. She turns her face away and suddenly looks back at me, her expression unreadable. “Jack is dead,” she says bluntly with no expression on her face. “I just saw his body.” I let out a huge sigh and nod. “I know. I paid him a little visit.” Her brows knit together in confusion. “Wait... when?”

I growl as he tries to shake me off, so I bite down into the warm flesh in my jaws and feel and taste his disgusting blood fill my taste buds. With one quick pull, the entire back part of his neck is ripped clean off; I spit it to the floor and feel Jack slump to the floor and shift back. The limp fragile figure of Jack is on the floor as he bleeds out from a deep wound from just under his hair line to mid back. "Goodbye Alpha Jack." I whisper once I shift back, wiping the blood from my mouth, "good riddance." I hear as his heartbeat slows and eventually stops. Alpha Jack is dead.

Even the dead-universe traders repeated them, probably after assessing reputational risk. The Tail convulsed. Identified collateral increases recovery difficulty. Jack lunged. He could not kill the Tail. Not here. Not with downgraded power and ink still poisoning his chest. But he could make it pay attention. He grabbed a black chain trailing from its jaw and drove it into the floor. The chain showed another ending: Katherine choosing survival after Jack died. He looked at it once, then at Katherine across the room reading names with blood running from her burned hand. "Rejected."

I growl as he tries to shake me off, so I bite down into the warm flesh in my jaws and feel and taste his disgusting blood fill my taste buds. With one quick pull, the entire back part of his neck is ripped clean off; I spit it to the floor and feel Jack slump to the floor and shift back. The limp fragile figure of Jack is on the floor as he bleeds out from a deep wound from just under his hair line to mid back. "Goodbye Alpha Jack." I whisper once I shift back, wiping the blood from my mouth, "good riddance." I hear as his heartbeat slows and eventually stops. Alpha Jack is dead.

I retort. He simply smirks at me, “You got lucky this time, Beta. But next time, you will not be so fortunate,” he replies. “You realize we have no incentive to keep you alive, right? Do you have a mate? Pups you want to get home to? I would suggest you make peace with the reality you are going to die in this cell,” Jack says in a chilling voice.

Life couldn't be any better. THE END

“What’s there to be afraid of? It’s all done now. I have to say, Rose, I underestimated you. You’ve proven yourself worthy of James’ legacy.” I blinked, confused. “What are you talking about? Do you realize what Jack will do if he finds you here? He’ll kill us both without hesitation!” Brad smirked, completely unfazed by my panic. “Wait… you don’t know yet, do you? Jack is dead. He was poisoned. It’s all over the news. You finally avenged the pack and your father. James would be proud if he were alive to see this day.” My blood turned cold. “What?” I managed to whisper, my mind spinning.

… I had been pacing in boredom outside the operating room when suddenly I felt my body being disturbed. A second later, I was back at the estate, in the bedroom where I had died. A blood-curdling scream tore through the house. Willow Trump, the housekeeper, stumbled down the stairs, nearly tripping over herself as she grabbed Jake's arm in a panic. "Ms. Bartlett! S-she—she's dead!" Jake's expression changed. Shoving Willow aside, he bolted up the stairs. By now, my body had begun to decompose. The stench of rot filled the air, and Jake instinctively covered his nose, his face twisting in disgust.

My heart nearly stopped beating. The black note trembled violently between my fingers as I stared at the three words written across the paper. THEY KILLED YOU. The room seemed to tilt around me. My mouth went dry. My pulse thundered inside my ears so loudly that it drowned out every other sound. Those words. That handwriting. That horrible feeling crawling beneath my skin. I had seen this before. Not in this life. In the other one. In the life that ended with a wolfbane dagger buried in my chest and my blood staining the healer's floor.

Each cough sent waves of pain through my frame, though none of it hurt as much as the pain in my chest did. Just as I was losing consciousness, I saw paramedics rushing in to rescue people. When I woke up again, I was lying in a hospital bed. The room was eerily quiet. Every now and then, I could hear nurses whispering in the hallway outside. "I heard that famous lawyer, Ms. Hudson, is in the room next door. She's keeping her first love company. I never thought someone who looks so cold on TV could be so gentle with her boyfriend!" "Yes, they make such a great couple!"