Alpha

by Rachel Vincent

  “I’m having trouble understanding the part where that should matter to me.” I shrugged apologetically, and in his quiet corner of the room, Keller was nodding. “I mean, if I don’t belong to the council, they can’t stick their collective nose into south-central Pride business, right?”

  And if that was the case, maybe we should have separated ourselves from the council a long time ago. No, that wouldn’t stop Malone from running our allies into the ground, but it would remove us from the immediate fallout zone, wouldn’t it? And we’d need that little bit of distance, at least long enough for us to adjust to the loss of our Alpha and the emergence of the youngest, most testosterone-challenged new Alpha in history.

  Yet those very benefits were my first clue that leaving the council probably wouldn’t be as easy as it sounded. Malone might not want me sitting on his council, but he was never going to be willing give up his influence over the largest territory in the country.

  We probably could actually have defected when my father was still Alpha, but he would never even have considered that. He wouldn’t have abandoned his fellow council members to Malone’s poisonous influence and emerging dictatorship.

  Di Carlo’s response confirmed my own conclusion. “Even if they were willing to let you remove your Pride from the council’s collective influence—and they won’t be—there’s a reason the council exists. We band together because there’s strength in numbers. Because in its unperverted state, the council ensures representative government and a pooling of resources and ideas that benefits everyone.”

  “Yes, but the operative word there is unperverted, and right now, you guys are operating under the thumb of the biggest power-pervert ever to swish his tail in the U.S. He’s like Hitler with fur.”

  My uncle looked startled by the odd mental image, but then he nodded acknowledgment of my point. “Yes, but the solution to that problem is to remove Calvin Malone, not to remove the south-central Pride.”

  He was right. My separatist fantasy was pleasant, but fleeting. After all, the whole reason I was willing to take over leadership of the Pride in the first place was to make our hidden world a better, safer place—Marc had been right about that—and I couldn’t do that if I separated us from that world.

  I glanced at first Taylor, then Di Carlo, before narrowing my eyes at my uncle, searching his face for the truth. “But you don’t really think he’s going to let me into the boys’ club…?”

  “No. But I think you have to ask him to, anyway.” Uncle Rick drew in a deep breath, then met my gaze with the same steel-hardened expression I’d seen on my mother—his sister—many, many times. He was about to tell me the truth, even though I wasn’t going to like it. “We tried to fight our way out of this and failed. Malone’s still very much alive, still very much in power, and still heavily armed, if Alex was telling the truth about the other cache of guns. And we’re not ready for a second-wave attack yet. Not with your dad lying cold on the bed in there, and most of our men out of reach.”

  “Not to mention the severe lack of our new allies…” Marc added, kneeling next to me with the first-aid kit in hand.

  I nodded slowly, as the truth sank in. “So, I have to go beg for a time-out to give us a chance to regroup. Even if that means giving Malone the opportunity to ban me from the clubhouse.”

  “Exactly.” Di Carlo nodded firmly.

  My uncle sat up straight. “Malone refusing to acknowledge you right now is a given. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you go in there and make the best possible impression on the rest of them, so that after the funeral, you stand a chance of winning them over and evening the odds against us a bit. Even after Malone’s gone—assuming we can actually get rid of him—we’re all going to have to work with his current allies, so the fewer enemies we make at this point in the war, the better prepared we’ll be to fight later.”

  I considered for a moment, trying to sort through the barrage of new information and nonchoices. From the outside looking in, I’d always thought my father had a brilliant array of options spread before him—the luxury of choice—but now that I stood in his shoes, it was obvious that an Alpha had no more options than I’d had as an enforcer. And based on this first small sampling, every one of them sucked. Even worse, each choice he made carried life-or-death consequences.

  I’d just stepped out of the kiddie pool and into the deep end, with no floaties. And drowning was not an option.

  “Okay, I’m in. I can play nice, even if he won’t.” I tried not to notice Marc threading the long, curved suture needle as I forced my gaze back to my uncle. “So…what’s first?”

  Uncle Rick glanced at his fellow Alphas, each of whom could only shrug. Then his focus returned to me. “To my knowledge, replacing an Alpha has never gone quite like this before, so all we can really do is treat this like the ascension of any other Alpha, while acknowledging that there are necessarily going to be some differences.”

  Such as the new Alpha flashing the entire room a peek at her inner thighs, which couldn’t be helped, with Marc preparing to sew me up. Not that the sight of flesh was new to anyone, but Alphas seldom wore sheer, lace-trimmed underwear to formal meetings.

  And something told me that was just the first of many differences we’d soon discover between my father’s administrative style and mine.

  “Okay, I’m at your disposal.” I tried not to flinch when Marc leaned over me and the needle bit into the tender skin around my largest gash. I’d opted to go without anesthesia because all we had was alcohol, and while that would have numbed more than one kind of pain, I couldn’t afford fuzzy logic.

  “Right.” Uncle Rick stood, and his nervous pacing reminded me of my father—and of the fact that I couldn’t move around to burn some of my own nervous energy. “In order to be officially acknowledged as Alpha by your Pride, the territory’s enforcers must unanimously accept you by formally swearing their loyalty to you.”

  I’d known about the oath, of course. I’d seen it given every time my father hired a new enforcer, and I’d sworn the same oath myself when I’d been officially hired. But this was a little different, both because of the scale—all the enforcers would have to swear, rather than just one or two new recruits—and because without the loyalty of dedicated enforcers, an Alpha could never hope to properly lead a Pride, much less hold on to it in the face of opposition. And I’d probably break records in that last department.

  If one of the enforcers refused to swear loyalty to a prospective Alpha, that Alpha had two options. First, she could fight—and beat—the opposing voter, thus expelling him from enforcer ranks. Or, she could come into the job with sworn enforcers of her own—who hadn’t worked for the previous Alpha—and take the Pride by force. That hadn’t happened in the U.S. Prides in more than a century, but we knew of a very recent case south of the border—that of Manx’s father, who’d been executed by the Alpha challenger.

  Fortunately, as in most cases, I’d been named successor by the previous Alpha, and I’d served with the other enforcers, so a hostile takeover didn’t look likely, even if one of them wasn’t willing to serve under me.

  As if he knew what I was thinking, my uncle continued. “But being acknowledged by the council is another matter entirely—you have to be recognized by a simple majority of its existing members. But we’ve already agreed that that’s simply not going to happen right now, so I don’t want you to worry about that. When we get to the lodge, you can just make the formal request, then lose as gracefully as possible.”

  Well, at least there’s a plan B. Which was good, because I couldn’t even get a majority of the Alphas to agree to leave me breathing, much less to put me in charge of my own Pride.

  “Well, let’s not put the tail before the muzzle, right? I mean, if I don’t have the support of the Pride itself, the rest of this is totally moot.”

  I glanced down at my leg just as Marc clipped the suture thread on the first gash. About a dozen stitches, by my guess, and they weren’t exactl
y pretty to look at. But nothing was broken or protruding from my flesh, so all in all, I counted myself lucky.

  Marc must have known what I was thinking, because instead of starting on the next cut, he stood, and I stood next to him. “Before we go on, I need to know that you guys are with me.” I met the eyes of the south-central enforcers one by one, wishing desperately that they were all with us. But Owen and Parker had stayed on the ranch to defend the home front, so we’d have to move forward without them for the moment.

  “So this is your chance, and I want you to be honest—with yourselves, with me, and with this Pride. This’ll never work if you don’t trust me. If you don’t truly believe that I can do this. That we can do this together. So don’t worry about hurting my feelings or making me mad—I’m a big girl. But you should know that accepting me as your Alpha is going to ruffle more than a few feathers and outright piss some people off. And that the next few days and weeks—hell, maybe the next few years—will be the most difficult you’ve ever served as an enforcer.”

  I took a deep breath, concentrating on the four men who’d come to stand in a line in front of me. Marc, Jace, Vic, and Brian. It was up to them. If they all accepted me, our Pride would have an Alpha and a new starting place, no matter how rough the road might be.

  But if even one of them was unwilling to put his life in my hands, well, I wasn’t sure what would happen then, because I didn’t want to start my leadership by having to fight one of my own oldest friends.

  “So I’m asking you now, will you serve the south-central territory with me as your Alpha?” The words were old and familiar, but the fear bubbling in my stomach was not. “Will you swear loyalty to the Pride, and to me, as you did to my father?”

  “You know I will.” Jace dropped onto his knees in a single fluid motion so quick I barely registered the change. “I swear my loyalty and my life to the south-central Pride, and to my Alpha, Faythe Sanders.”

  Fresh tears came then, and I blinked them back, desperately clinging to composure. “Thank you.” I took his hand when he offered it, handshake-style, and responded with the words expected of me. “I swear to lead you to the best of my ability, and to always put the Pride before myself.”

  When I looked up, Marc took my hand, tugging me gently to stand in front of him. “You’ve had me from the beginning, Faythe. Loyalty, life, heart, and soul.” His hand was warm in mine, but his gaze scorched me as he knelt without ever breaking eye contact. “I swear my loyalty and my life to the south-central Pride, and to my Alpha, Faythe Sanders.”

  I wanted to say something. Something important and honest. Something to tell him that I understood what he was giving me, and that I would try to earn it. But before I could form a single world, Brian thumped to his knees on my left.

  As badly as I wanted to cling to Marc’s hand and never let him go, I could only squeeze his palm, recite the expected response, then move on to Brian.

  Brian Taylor stared up at me with bright, hope-filled eyes, and something heavy settled into my gut as he spoke the familiar oath. He didn’t understand what he was getting into. Not really. He knew that most of the other Alphas wouldn’t like it, but he couldn’t possibly truly understand the fight he’d just enlisted in. The danger he’d just committed himself to.

  But we needed him, and I would not deny him his chance to serve.

  Only Vic still stood, and my skin prickled when I felt him watching me. Judging me, as was his right. If he had doubts, he shouldn’t serve. It was that simple.

  He stared into my eyes, and I stared back, hoping that he saw in me what Marc saw. What my father had seen. What I was still hoping to prove to myself. The only real truth I could claim—the only thing I knew beyond the slightest shadow of doubt—was that I would live and die for my Pride. To protect everyone in it and to try to forge much-needed change from inside the system.

  “I believe you,” Vic whispered at last. “I believe that you can do this. It’s going to be hard. This job is going to break your heart, Faythe. It’s going to bruise you from the inside out, and it may keep you from ever truly being happy. But I believe you will fight for us all with every breath in your body. I don’t think you’re capable of anything less.”

  I choked on my next breath, staggered by his profession of confidence and loyalty, knowing what he thought of my personal mistakes.

  With that, he sank to his knees and took my hand. “I swear my loyalty and my life to the south-central Pride, and to my Alpha, Faythe Sanders.”

  I said my part, and when he let go of my hand, I stepped back and looked at them—my Pridemates. My fellow enforcers. The first brave souls to put their lives in my hands.

  It didn’t feel like I expected it to. There was no rush of power or glory. My first moments as Alpha felt…heavy. Somber. Like I’d just taken on a colossal debt I could never hope to repay. Being Alpha was a burden and an enormous responsibility, not a license to push people around.

  And that was what Calvin Malone had never really understood.

  Seventeen

  A wave of shock rolled over me when the guys stood, and I realized I was no longer their coworker. I was now their boss. But the term employer describes an Alpha about as well the word caretaker defines the concept of parenthood; it is a cold, one-dimensional word that utterly fails to convey the human element.

  My dad had been much more than our boss. He was our leader, guardian, adviser, landlord, counselor, sometimes a confidant, and a father figure even to those with whom he shared no blood. He was a champion and defender of those with little power and soft voices. He was a fount of wisdom and a source of never-ending patience. He was so many things I’d never even considered, and I harbored no delusion that I could fulfill all of those roles right out of the gate.

  But I desperately wanted to. I wanted to be what they needed. I needed to do this right, because they deserved better than I had to offer.

  “Okay, so what now?” I glanced to my uncle for advice. “We go make nice with the council?”

  He nodded solemnly. “But this won’t be easy.”

  “Nothing worth doing ever is.” I took a deep breath, trying to get my thoughts in order. “How does this work?”

  Marc gestured toward my chair, suture needle in hand, and I sat as my uncle stood, already pacing again. Most of the enforcers had gathered around another first-aid kit spread out on the coffee table, passing around bottles of hydrogen peroxide and bandages, a couple threading needles to sew up the worst of the gashes for fellow toms.

  It was an odd sort of quiet ritual, so different from the other times they’d shared bigger bottles and passed bags of snack food. But the familiarity was there. We were family, friends, and allies, whether we were celebrating or mourning. Or preparing to face common foes.

  Uncle Rick lifted a no-longer-steaming mug of coffee from an end table, and I could tell by the way he held it—making no use of the handle—that he wished it held something stronger than lukewarm caffeine.

  “They’re nursing their own wounds right now, just like we are.” He glanced at the coffee table triage center, and I noticed that the Alphas had all already been doctored. That particular privilege of rank was born of a desire to keep our leaders alive and…well…leading. A point driven home for me when Marc began the second set of unanaesthetized stitches on the gash in my side. “And as I said, they’re just as eager for a cease-fire, though Malone would never admit that.”

  “What do we know about their damages?” I asked, flinching when Marc’s thread tugged at very tender skin.

  “They have a couple of unconscious toms and a few broken bones…” Neither of which we had. “And three casualties.”

  One was my kill, one Elias Keller’s, and the third, if I had to guess, was Marc’s. Evidently Colin Dean had lived, an oversight I would soon remedy even if it took my dying breath.

  “We benefited from the element of surprise,” my uncle continued. “But we’ve lost that now, and we won’t get it back anytime soon. And
they’ll have the duration of the cease-fire to concentrate on healing and regrouping, but we won’t.”

  Because we had to plan a funeral, as well as our next move.

  “Did you tell them I’d come?” I asked, and Marc’s sewing paused midstitch as he waited for the answer.

  “Yes. And they’re probably expecting you to come in guns ablaze. Literally.” He turned toward the breakfast table and I followed his gaze to find the tabletop covered in the clunky black remains of six handguns, now rendered virtually unrecognizable, thanks to Keller’s efforts. “Or not.”

  “I’ll destroy the rest of them, too, if you happen ta get your hands on ’em,” Keller rumbled. “I don’t like guns, and it’s bad enough that humans carry ’em. I can’t have a bunch of cats up here, shootin’ up my mountain.”

  “We completely agree,” I said. “And hopefully Malone won’t be stupid enough to actually use their few remaining guns against unarmed opposition. At least in front of the rest of the council.”

  “He won’t,” Taylor said from an armchair across the room. “He’s not going to jeopardize his standing with the less loyal of his allies.”

  “Good.” I closed my eyes, thinking as Marc clipped the thread from the needle. “Hopefully they’ll be caught off guard when I’m willing to play by their rules.” I frowned up at my uncle. “What are their rules, exactly?”

  “It’s a simple formal poll. Each council member gets a chance either to recognize you as an Alpha or to refuse. You need to be recognized by five of the nine Alphas—obviously you don’t get to vote, since you’re not in yet.”

  “Okay…” My brain was racing. “I need five and I have three here.” I glanced from my uncle to Bert Di Carlo, to Aaron Taylor. “So, for the long-term, I only need to start winning over two more. I think our best bets are Nick Davidson…” Because he didn’t have any reason to hate me, that I knew of. “And Paul Blackwell.” Because he was currently the least loyal to Malone. Though he wasn’t exactly a Faythe fan.