by Sam Hall
When I found the clearing, they came. I stumbled out into the middle of it, the light of the moon so damn bright like a spotlight, and I was in its centre. The males came after, crashing through the undergrowth or slinking from the shadows, one after the other in a ring around me. For a moment, I just panted, my lungs working like bellows to suck air back into a body deprived of it. But with oxygen and moonlight came clarity. My eyes darted around, tracking each and every time a wolf stepped from the trees and into this empty space of grass, heads lowered, legs crouched and coiled to spring.
My human form came back without thought, and the wolves took their cues from me, until I was surrounded by a ring of naked men. All but twelve.
Dark fur only faintly flecked by grey, two of them barrelled through the clearing, stopping only once they reached my feet and then spinning around, fangs bared, the ten enforcers placing themselves at all points around me, ready to attack.
“This is how it has to be, Paige,” Aidan said, smirking in the low light. “You didn’t make a choice, so now we get to make it for you.”
I stared him down, feeling the pressure to look away, even with the distance between us, but he just snorted to himself when I didn’t.
“We fight this out, tonight, and the last man standing takes you and the role of alpha.”
“Fucking take it for all I care!” I snapped. “Set up the chick with the big tits you were all over in high school as alpha female. Honestly, I don’t give a fuck about this place. I came home for Dad. I came home to say…” My voice was cracking, my heart was cracking, and if I let it do so here… I forced my eyes up. The musical sound of growls from the wolves at my side were all that stopped the men from getting too close, but that would only last for so long. “I came home to say goodbye, for good. We’ve already talked about it. Selma’s prepared to step up and take my spot. Go and fight for a place by her side.”
I spat a mouthful of foul bile out on the grass, unable to stand the steady trickle of it in my mouth anymore.
“That’s not how it works,” another man said. “I’ve got a mate. I love her, want to put her in your place and give her that big house in the middle of town, but I can’t.”
“It won’t be Selma,” Aidan said. “It can’t be her.”
“What? But—”
“He didn’t tell you. Fathers don’t as a rule, but they insist on those rules, don’t they?” A dark-haired man stepped forward, a mocking smile on his lips. “Those wolf shifters you met in the big city.” His eyes dropped down to one of the wolves at my feet. “They wouldn’t know this. Their packs aren’t like ours. The first of her line bestows the crown.” And as he said the words, so did many of the men, my head whipping around to take in all the speakers.
A fight to submission… Me as the prize… My brain was torn by pain and exhaustion and grief, but this, this was all familiar stuff. I’d settled many a grudge match in the gym. No reason why we couldn’t do the same in this instance. And doing so formally, with witnesses and rules would do the same as it did in the gym—ensure an even playing field and make sure the proceedings were fair.
I didn’t want to do this. My wolves growled as I cleared my throat, trying for a clear, calm declaration and no doubt failing.
“You want this? You want to do this the old way?” A round of grunts indicated that they did. “So let’s do this properly. A stage will be set, a roster of everyone who wishes to put themselves forward as alpha will be drawn up, and then it’s fighting through the rounds until one wolf remains.”
“You’re stalling,” one of them said.
“You want me to. Some of you have mates you love, some have those you’ve got your eye on and they aren’t me. I can go through the collective wisdom of the pack, sort through the records they brought over from Germany, and see if I can find a way to make that possible for the winner. That would free me to go my own way, free you to have the mate of your dreams.”
“And what if it’s you?” Aidan asked, running his eyes slowly up my naked form.
“Me? Well, that’s a whole other fight you have to win, but you’ll have time, showboating in the ring, showing off your fighting prowess to all the single women in the pack, including me.” I couldn’t believe I was going to say this, but I couldn’t see any other way. “Throughout the entire process, anyone who wants to see if we’re compatible, I’ll make time for.” Several growls came from the wolves around me. “Doesn’t mean I’m down to fuck, but if I feel drawn to you, we can go on a date, you can get to know me like you would any other girl.”
“If everyone’s in agreement?” a masculine voice said.
Mason had come back to skin, standing tall, a wall between me and the other men, then Zack and the enforcers did the same not long afterwards.
“Don’t try and skew things, beta,” one man said. “Everyone knows about you and the heir.”
“Then you know I’ve knocked her back once before already. I rejected what you seek” —I jerked a little at those words, feeling them hit me physically— ”so by my reckoning, I’m the safest one of all of you to ensure this process is carried out in an orderly way.”
“Fair enough,” Aidan said. “There’s a period of mourning, the funeral, and then…” His silver eyes slid to me. “The battle begins.”
Declan waited until all of the other men had faded away, leaving just me, Zack, Mason, and the enforcers standing there.
“And what about us, Mase?” he asked, but his eyes were on me, not his beta. He was trying not to stare, but those whiskey eyes were bleeding silver. Alien, animal, they felt like they stared through the darkness and took in everything I was.
Which was such a perfect illustration of pack life. I was sure Dec didn’t want to be ogling me in the middle of the night right after I’d seen my dad die. I watched him frown, try to rip his eyes away, and it took Zack stepping between us and hiding me to allow that to happen.
“Are we to enforce a fight we want to participate in?” Declan forced out.
“We’ll bring all the contenders together, hold a general meeting before the whole town,” Mason said in the usual calm, measured tones I remembered so well. This was why I’d chosen him all those years ago. His voice was like my father’s, able to settle a group of unruly shifters with a few words, while making it clear disobedience wouldn’t be tolerated. “What Paige suggested, it’s the best option. It gives everyone who wants a go a means to put themselves forward and prove themselves to the community. You won’t be excluded from that. If there are questions about objectivity, I can bring some of the mated men in to take over your duties. But we have to remember, our alpha passed tonight.”
And there it was, the truth behind all the panic and the drama, and I started to shiver in response to it, my body fighting to process everything I’d subjected it to.
“We need to get Paige into the car and some clothes,” Zack said, moving closer and wrapping his arms around me, even as some of the enforcers growled. “And then she needs to get in front of a punching bag if she’s to have any chance of sleeping tonight.”
“What?” one of the enforcers asked.
“We’ve got a gym set up at the back of the alpha residence,” Mason said. “You can take her there.”
Chapter 9
They followed me into the training room. Because it was part of the enforcers’ quarters at the back of the alpha’s house. Because they were keeping an eye on me. Because I was silent all the way home in the back of the car, curled up in a ball, despite Zack’s attempts to soothe me. Because I shivered and shivered, even though I’d pulled on the warm sweats that smelled of Mason.
“C’mon, baby,” Zack said in a low voice, steering me into the room. “Too much, way too much today, but you gotta let all the adrenalin out before you can crash. We’ll keep coming back, like we always do. Go through the movements, babe. You’ve got them now.”
My body felt heavy, leaden when I tried to bounce on my feet and get the blood moving. It had already, r
ushing around, running through the forest, but Zack was insistent.
“Don’t worry about them,” he said when my eyes went to the guys leaning against the wall. “Listen to my voice. Start with your stretches. Legs first, then arms, then back.”
This was our ritual, our moment together. Before we opened the gym, before we started dealing with the day, he’d walk me through the routine, even though I knew it by heart. He’d do it too, his body shadowing mine, his muscles on display, being forced to lengthen, soften, warm up in preparation for what we would require them to do.
“All right, let’s throw a few punches. Not too hard, you’re locked tight, too much fight or flight right now.” It made sense and I felt it as I moved, my hands up, ready to defend against an invisible enemy, then punching out to hold them off, smack them down, those sharp brutal actions making my heart race again, but for a whole other reason. I forced my body to stay loose, mobile, active. I wanted to harden myself against the world, against the burden I’d set down for just a moment.
Dad…
That would come. There was no escaping it. The loss, the… It was a gigantic black wolf at my heels, ready to swallow me whole if I just…
“Do the work. Don’t get in your own head. Focus on the movements. Give your body time to process all that stuff, and then your mind will follow.” Zack’s words were gentle, persistent, dragging me back to the here and now, back to him.
My body went slack and still, just staring at him for a moment, taking in the muscular bulk of his body, the hard planes of his face, the scruffy tousle of his dark hair, and those eyes—eyes I could get lost in. But the fact he was good looking, that he got me hot, was almost irrelevant. I could say the same about every guy in the room. Wolves tended to make pretty babies that grew up to be hot men. What was here in the room between Zack and me was something else.
If those arms were much thinner, wrapped with ropy muscles rather than bulky ones, it wouldn’t have made a difference, they’d always be open to me. They’d be reaching out to catch me before I even knew I was falling, pulling me back against him into the safe harbour of his body. But they’d open just as easily to let me walk free, walk far, if that’s what I needed. I looked into those implacable dark eyes and saw something I always knew deep down but never really articulated.
Zack would always be there for me.
I nodded, all the acknowledgement I could give him, but that twist of a smile told me he saw past that. Then we bumped our knuckles, and I walked across the floor to the heavy bag.
I touched my fists to the bag, checking my distance, making sure I wasn’t too far away and swinging wide. My knees bent, my hands up, then I shoved the bag and started the shuffle.
“Just start shuffling at first,” Zack had told me in my first lesson. “Don’t even throw a punch. It’s much harder for your opponent to hit a moving target, and you’re smaller, so you need the advantage speed and mobility can give you. You might be up against a heavy hitter” —he smacked one massive fist into his palm— “but if they can’t catch you, they can’t hit you. Start moving, pivoting, getting your legs used to shifting your weight at fast notice.” He’d demonstrated, swivelling around his bag with a kind of deadly precision I’d thought was well beyond me, but right now, I fell into the same patterns.
I didn’t have to hit the bag. I didn’t need to hit the contenders or even Mason, who deserved a smack in that sour mouth of his. I just needed to focus—on my body, on my breath, on my movements, in sync with the bag. I maintained the distance between us while it swung, occasionally giving it a shove with my shoulders to set it off again.
And then I needed to hit it.
I never felt a rise in aggression when I learned how to fight, and most of Zack’s clients didn’t. Roid heads and pumped up douche bags didn’t last long at the gym, in the ring or out of it. The way he saw it, it was about knowing your body, knowing what it could and couldn’t do, and seeing if you could push that. Then when faced with all the dominance bullshit that came with being a shifter, particularly an unmated female wolf shifter, you could meet just about anyone square in the eye, because you knew.
I struck out at the bag, liking the way it jumped in response. Not hard, not decisively, because I had no protection on my hands, and right now, even that wasn’t likely to help. I felt them curl in my spine, all those feelings, then stiffen, swell, manifesting as a need to slam into the vinyl surface.
I followed with another few quick punches as I moved in close, pivoting around the bag, smacking my fists and my knee into it before swinging back. I bounced away on the balls of my feet, feeling the blood pump, all that damn adrenalin that was still coursing through me rising with it, making my muscles twitch faster, my reflexes snap tighter as I stepped in and kicked the bag hard. Thoughts fell away and muscle memory kicked in as I moved smooth as silk. Elbow strike, punch, knee, then kick. I danced around the bag, performing string after string of blows in rapid succession, pushing until my breath was coming in hard.
“Keep breathing,” Zack said, observing from a safe distance. “Hands up.”
“I think I’m done,” I said, feeling the shake in my limbs. I’d pushed myself so hard, running then, fighting now.
“No, you’re not. You’re not done until I say.” That got a growl from the crowd. “Hands up, do the work. You know how.”
I looked at Zack, frowning at his words, but they were the same as they always were—calm, sure. So I raised fists that felt a whole lot heavier now and kept going. But it wasn’t the same, didn’t he see that? He was watching my every move, the commentary coming as always. Watch your feet, keep moving, don’t drop your guard, maintain your defence. It was the steady background noise I’d always heard when I trained, but somehow, it’d become something else. His tone hadn’t changed, but I had, my body unable to comply with his steady litany of demands, no matter how hard I pushed myself. I stumbled over my feet, went crashing into the bag.
“She’s had enough!” Mason said sharply.
“I’ll say when she’s had enough. I know her better than you ever will,” Zack snapped back, his eyes not leaving me. “It’s OK, Paige. Do the work. What you need, it’s there.”
“Why are you doing this?” I sobbed between breaths. “I’m tired, my feet hurt, my everything hurts. I’ve got bruises everywhere.” My attention made the pain in my sides from where I’d smacked into walls flare bright, and when I looked down the collar of my top, I saw them there, murky and sullen on my skin.
“Do the work, Paige.”
“I’m hurting, Zack. I’m gonna need to lie in an Epsom bath for hours and down a box of ibuprofen as it is.”
“Excuses aren’t gonna help, babe, you know that. Keep moving, keep your hands up—”
“Shut up, Zack!”
“No one can touch you when you stay on your feet.”
“Zack, that’s enough. You may not respect pack hierarchy but—” Mason growled out, pushing forward.
I did what he said, because that’s what I did, most of the time, but now, when I faced the bag down, my view was blurred by the tears in my eyes. Push, push, push, that’s all anyone did. My feet and my fists slammed into the bag with wild abandon, sending it rocketing on its chain, and I stepped in and caught the backswing face on before striking again. Ever since I’d gotten here, I’d been pushed by one group or another. Do this, choose this, let them sniff you, let them fight.
Bang, bang, bang!
I was doing this all wrong. It hurt my wrists when I didn’t hit the bag square on the knuckles, the slap of it against my knees and feet feeling like one to the face. My muscles screamed, and sweat poured down my face and into my eyes, masking what came.
The first sob was too loud, too harsh, announcing to the whole room what was happening, but when I heard them come forward, I kept on punching. My fists flew wide, the bag smacking into me as my knee thrust pushed me off balance, but I snapped back onto my own two feet. I kept striking at the bag, but it wasn’t wh
ere it should be, careening now in patterns I couldn’t follow and catching me in its wild swings.
Then I did what I’d always been told not to do—left my side wide open as I threw a wild punch, and the bag took the advantage. It slammed into my side, and a great surge of pain blossomed out, out, out, through my whole body as I staggered back.
I went down, not because of my fuck up but because my body couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t dodge or weave or punch. I could barely breathe. I sucked oxygen in with great shuddering breaths, but right when I needed it most, my body refused. How could I take a full breath when this was taking up all the space in my chest? I was on my knees, wavering, and that was fitting, because this, this would have me beat.
Dad…
Zack had helped me keep that at bay for the moment, but now it came rushing back twice as hard, and when he came to stand before me, I saw in his face that this was exactly what he’d planned.
“No…” I croaked.
“Yes, baby. It’s what has to happen. You can’t compartmentalise this, not this.”
“No!” I screamed as he bent down and scooped me up. I screamed it again as he held me close. As my nails clawed his back, tearing the fabric of his T-shirt, scoring his flesh deep. Again as I thrashed in his arms.
He had me gripped tight, just as the black wolf of grief did. Both brought with them the too bright room, the hiss of the ventilator, my scream matching the high-pitched alarm from the vital signs monitor as I realised that my dad had been dead the moment I woke up from my sleep. That brief time, early in the day, that’s all I got with him, just watching the machine breathe for him.
“It’s OK. It’s OK…” Zack said the words like a prayer now, over and over, and for once, I was glad to hear that calm shredded just like mine was. He was pleading almost, his voice growly and ragged, his hold tight until finally, finally, I went limp.
It all came rushing in, all of it—the pain, the loss, the disbelief, the total spaced out feeling of unreality, because surely this wasn’t the way it worked. I needed, no, deserved another chance. But I wasn’t gonna get it, and that hit me hardest. No matter what I thought or felt, this was the reality. This was the way it was going to be.
