by Mark Henwick
I could feel the fury that my outburst had caused, not least from Felix and Cameron.
Tough.
Alex was by my side, as angry as I was.
“Hell, Amber, what have you done?”
“Yeah. Way to go, eh? Piss them all off.”
Poor choice of response. His eyes went all wolf-gold.
“This is deadly serious.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s serious. But we’re supposed to be co-alphas. Whatever happens has to happen to both of us, or Pack Deauville has all been a lie.”
He flinched, and the shock shaded his eyes back to green.
“No!” The word was ripped from him. “They persuaded me...” He dropped his eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have agreed to this. I couldn’t face the thought of losing you. Can’t. Maybe we can back down. We don’t need to be in this hierarchy.”
“No, we can’t back down, Alex. You know in your gut, we can’t.” I grabbed his head and shook it like Billie had earlier with me. “Time to focus. No time left. We fight. We can do it. What tactics do you think we need?”
Alex closed his eyes for a moment. His heartrate inched down from its peak.
“Same as before. I have to take him,” he said finally, indicating Caleb Oaken with a nod. “But it’ll take everything I’ve got. I need you to keep that bitch off me, and she’s no powder puff.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“We had a plan. Stupid plan that seemed to make sense politically. I’m sorry.” His eyes flicked to where Felix and Cameron stood glaring. “Now we have a couple of problems, including them—”
“One problem at a time,” I cut across him. “We fight El Paso. You kill him. Forget about her. Even if I don’t have experience fighting as a wolf, I have some tricks she won’t have seen.”
It was a bluff, for his sake. I wasn’t sure if he actually believed me, but there was no time left: Caleb and Victoria had already stripped.
Out of their clothes, they looked even stronger.
An eye-twisting moment later they were in wolf form. Black, gray and white. Big. Fangs like knives. They stretched and shook, looking like a couple of athletes limbering up, unconcerned about the coming confrontation.
Alex and I shed our clothes.
In a bad situation, I had to go for the simplest strategy—banking on Alex killing Caleb before Victoria could kill me, or get past me to help Caleb against Alex.
I knew my defensive role wouldn’t sit well with me once I was in my wolf. On four feet, I’d want to attack, and I didn’t have enough experience on my side for that. What did I have? Probably more strength and speed than my opponent was expecting. But the boost I could have had—from the fighting instincts of Hana, my spirit guide—that was missing.
Eukori? I reached out and touched my House: cold, focused determination from Alex, absolute belief from David, agitation from Scott. Uncertainty from Kane. Maybe he was wondering if he could get away with helping me. But eukori would be difficult to use in a fight, and there’d be no way I could compel Victoria not to attack.
I touched on the El Paso alphas. A sense of confidence. Eagerness. Bloodlust.
Maybe eukori would give me something like a warning of their intentions.
I was grasping at straws.
Alex changed to wolf.
I stood a few moments more, running my hand over Alex’s back and deliberately smiling at the El Paso wolves, waiting for that pre-combat focus to snap in while I reviewed what little I did know about actual werewolf fighting.
I’d fought Noble and won, but he hadn’t been an experienced fighter, relying instead on his sheer size and strength.
I’d seen Rita kill, and that had been about the speed and ferocity of her attack. Not what my role was today, and anyway, she was a cougar. Different beast entirely.
For a second, something almost surfaced about Noble, but my world was narrowing to a single, sharp point and the watchers were getting impatient.
I changed.
Damn.
My wolf felt unfamiliar to me. Not enough time spent on four legs.
I was bigger than before. More dominance. Something to do with the growth of the League. Not important—not enough to make the El Paso back down.
Threat. Need to kill.
I pulled myself back, reining in the wolf instincts. Alex and I would die if I went into an attack frenzy. I had to control myself, control my anger till I needed it.
From what Alex had told me, the real business of werewolf fights, like a lot of other types of fights, was done at the start, when the opponents sized each other up.
The El Paso wolves split and started to circle us in opposite directions.
It began.
Chapter 24
Alex and I moved to the center of the fight area. He turned to follow Caleb, and I tracked Victoria.
My wolf didn’t care that the El Paso were more experienced.
Kill. Threat to pack. Kill!
I was salivating. I lowered my body a little.
As they completed the half circle, they crossed each other, Victoria in front of Caleb. To keep tracking her, I moved in front of Alex.
Victoria lunged.
Feint!
I snapped and snarled at her, but she came nowhere near me.
I knew my response was clumsy, and her feint had been elegant, a clever test of my speed.
Her lips came back off her teeth and her nose wrinkled. She was laughing at us.
Harsh sounds. Excitement. Shouting.
I blocked out the noise of the crowd. Victoria was everything.
Kill!
At the full circle, Caleb took the inside track. I passed in front of Alex again.
Caleb lunged at me.
No time! Huge. Fast.
His fangs tore at me. Both Alex and I tried to bite him, but he was gone as quickly as he came.
Up close he was really huge. Almost as big as Noble had been, but fast. Hell!
And I had blood on my shoulder.
Victoria’s nose wrinkled again, and as my anger spiked, she charged me.
She was even quicker than Caleb.
Fangs high, claws raking, then her head dipped and shot in.
Raked my wound.
Pain!
My jaws closed on air again.
Kill!
No chance to kill her. Not important. Had to keep focus. Didn’t matter how many times she bit me—all I had to do was keep her off Alex.
Breath shaking with blood lust. Legs weak with the need to kill her, the need to feel her throat in my jaws.
I was whining in frustration as she kept circling and I had to follow her.
She sees my blood. Sees the pain.
It excited her. I could see the growing confidence in the way she circled us.
She knew I was fast. I knew she was faster. Even the boost from my Athanate blood didn’t match a hundred-year-old werewolf.
She still needs to kill me. All I need is to keep her out.
My bleeding had stopped. That was one thing Athanate were very good at.
Pain I didn’t care about. Pain was an old friend. Anger, too.
I reached with eukori, tasted the El Paso alphas’ excitement, their certainty, their fevered, almost sexual eagerness for a double kill, but my eukori told me nothing helpful about their fight strategy.
I really needed Hana. My spirit guide would have read Victoria’s wolf down at the level of instinct and given me warning of when to move, the same way she’d read Noble’s wolf. Completely inexperienced as I had been in that fight, she’d gauged Noble’s movements well enough for me to respond as if I were used to fighting. Well enough that I’d gotten a grip on his throat, even though his enormous size had allowed him to throw me off.
But no Hana today. Why did my thoughts keep going back to the fight with Noble? What was it about that fight that could help me today?
Alex’s flank brushed mine. I got a sensation of tension building. That was all the warning
I got.
Alex moving. Fast!
Crabbing in a circle around us, seeing how overmatched I was by Victoria, Caleb had gotten overconfident. He was too close to us and his weight was all wrong. First mistake.
Alex had been watching for that the whole time.
Despite all his experience, when Alex attacked, Caleb tried to move back to give himself time to regain his balance. Second, fatal mistake.
Alex had come in low and he launched himself up with all the power in his hind legs. Caleb was much bigger than Alex, but his weight was out of place and he wasn’t so big he could absorb the shock of the attack. He was thrown backwards and immediately Alex was at his throat.
Victoria charged me.
Come on, bitch.
I tensed for the impact, but she didn’t go for my throat or body. She side-stepped at the last moment, slamming her rock-hard shoulder into me and then she was past, aimed like an arrow for Alex’s unprotected back.
No!
I rolled, came up, claws scrabbling for purchase on the slippery sawdust floor.
The front of the throat is the most vulnerable part and Alex was turned away from her, but her teeth in the back of his neck would slow him, distract him, hamper him, when he needed all his concentration, agility and balance to keep Caleb down.
I’d failed him.
I’d failed both of us.
I leaped. She’d gotten her teeth in Alex, but exposed the back of her own neck to me.
My jaws closed, my fangs pierced her flesh.
Kill.
But the same lack of quick vulnerability protected both her and Alex. A back-of-the-neck kill is slow work unless you’re much bigger. Meanwhile, Alex was carrying the weight of two struggling wolves.
Victoria had known. For all the thrill, she’d made a stone cold assessment. She allowed me to bite her, knowing I couldn’t kill her in the time it took for Caleb to get free. And once Caleb was free, Alex couldn’t fight him with Victoria on his back, let alone both of us. Alex was going to die.
And then I would.
Because I wasn’t big enough. My jaws were gaped too wide on the back of her neck, and like that, they weren’t powerful enough.
I needed jaws the size and strength of Noble’s.
Shocking memories seized me.
Noble, testing his strength by biting through human thigh bones. Biting clean through.
Noble, crouched over his living victim, leeching her mass from her to make himself bigger, a working that fed on her terror and pain.
Dark magic. Blood magic. Evil.
No!
I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t use blood magic.
And because I couldn’t do that, Alex would die.
I didn’t have the power and I didn’t know how to use blood magic.
I bit down as hard as I could. I twisted and turned to try and make Victoria panic and let go. She didn’t, but the shifting weight on his back loosened Alex’s grip.
Caleb got free.
No time.
No choices left.
I’ll damn myself, but I won’t let Alex die.
I couldn’t do it alone.
In panic, I reached out with eukori to Kane. It wasn’t the usual gentle flow. It was hard, like lightning bolts crossing, with explosions wherever my eukori touched his aura.
Sheer horror from Kane as he understood what I was trying to do.
Time slowed. The world around me shifted. Became fluid. The ground simmered like boiling water and the infinite sky wheeled above us all to a different clock.
Kane was bound to me, however he struggled against it. I reached and pulled raw power from him, through him. Dark power. Power in the earth. A power waiting to be called.
Pain and blood and screaming.
My throat and jaws burned, swelled.
An explosion of pain. My body. Other bodies. Cracking.
Shouting.
Victoria was getting weaker and I was getting stronger. The muscle mass at the back of her neck protecting her was shriveling and my jaw was swelling.
She’s screaming. She can feel what’s happening and she’s screaming.
Fear. Feed on it. Makes me stronger. Kill!
I tore the shuddering wolf bitch off Alex’s back and shook her like a rag. Blood sprayed everywhere. I felt the spine break and break again. Felt her absolute terror as her body snapped and her mind sank into the darkness.
I didn’t leave it there. I bit and ripped again. Bit through her throat. Destroyed her neck. Her head rolled away, smeared with red.
Caleb froze. He’d been on the point of leaping at Alex. Now he was unable to look away from his wife’s body, even when Alex’s jaws closed on his throat.
Alex didn’t need my help with him.
I turned away. I stayed in wolf form to stalk along the line of watchers, a growl swelling in my chest. Some had supported the El Paso alphas; they backed away from me. Others cheered, but no one touched me, painted as I was with blood and gore.
Have a good look. I am death. You wanted this. You cheered for it.
Alex’s big wolf joined me, but he walked on the outside, between me and the crowd. I knew what he wanted, but I wasn’t ready, even if he was my alpha. He had to nudge and nip until I turned in toward the center where the two bodies lay.
The berserker exultation paled, draining strength from my limbs and coloring the anger with the first breath of sorrow. However we’d come to this, however much their deaths were their own fault, those bodies were two people who’d lived a hundred years. They’d loved each other. Their pack—now our pack—had probably loved them.
But I wasn’t going to forget they’d killed others. I wasn’t going to forget their sick anticipation of killing us.
I didn’t want to change back to human. The sorrow would be worse. I knew the nausea would come, and along with it, the same horror I could still feel echoing from Kane. Not only that I’d killed Victoria by biting her head off, but that I’d used blood magic to do it, and I’d torn the power through Kane himself while trapping him so that he’d felt it.
I’d done it without being taught. It was natural for me. Blood magic was natural for me. Not the magic that Tullah had tried to show me—something more raw, more powerful. Something evil. Flint and Kane had been right about the rituals. They were blood magic. My magic was dark, and I’d come into my own, without Hana as a spirit guide, without any guide. And there was no going back.
Cameron and Felix were waiting. They were pissed I’d challenged their plan and risked myself. The whole place picked up on it. They were seething.
Alex growled and changed back to human.
I needed to be with him to confront Felix and Cameron, but I needed to do other things first.
I stopped in front of Kane and changed.
Chapter 25
“Kane,” I said. It came out hoarse, and it felt like my throat had rusted. I didn’t know what else to say, so I tried: “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
Billie and Scott were stood next to him. Alex behind me. Of course they didn’t know what had happened, but all of them reacted to his obvious anger with me by growling at him.
He stiffened at the menace. His eyes were wide with shock and his face sweaty.
I waved everyone back, and I pulled Kane closer, accidentally smearing blood all over him.
“Yes, I’m sorry. It goes against everything I should do as House Farrell. It wasn’t planned, and I was desperate. I had no idea it would happen like that.”
“That was dark magic, and you used me.”
“Yes, I know. But think what the alternative was.”
His face hardened.
“There’s always a good reason for the first time.”
“We have to talk later. This circus here isn’t finished.”
I motioned Billie back and asked her to look after him. She looked sideways at the Adept, but just nodded.
“We did it,” Alex said. “You did it.”
I turned to him. His eyes were all green again.
“Yes. But you don’t understand. I pulled magic through Kane and—”
“I don’t care,” he said. “You’re my wife, my co-alpha, and you’ve done the impossible.” He stared intently at me. “I’m sorry I doubted you. It won’t happen again.”
He hugged me, making even more of a bloody mess of both of us.
“I—” I began.
“Keep it to yourself; there’s no time now,” he said. “We’ve got to take control of our pack.”
Our pack.
Werewolf rules: the El Paso wolves had to individually submit to the pair that’d just killed their former alphas. Or they could challenge us.
Alex and I had no time to clean up, and that was part of it as well. Let no one forget what results from a challenge. It wasn’t only El Paso blood either. Changing back had re-opened wounds we’d received in the fight. Alex had his chest and belly raked with multiple parallel slices from Caleb’s claws. I had rips in my shoulder.
Each of the pack that was present passed in front of us. They gave their names and their position in the pack. They confirmed their loyalty to the pack and to us as their alphas. Then we had to part-change back to wolf while they stretched their necks out and held that pose. We closed our jaws on those vulnerable throats. Leaked Caleb and Victoria’s blood over them.
Many of them were scared, and with good reason. Taking over a pack this way, we were allowed to kill any we didn’t want. All it would take would be to close our jaws.
Some of them were dominant wolves, but none had the strength to match Alex and me together. They were all dazed. Half of them hated us, but werewolves in a pack whose alphas were killed in a challenge had limited options. No one wanted to be an outcast, especially when the League was collecting packs into its loose structure. A pack, even a new pack with new alphas, felt better.
The whole El Paso pack numbered over three hundred. Like Athanate, werewolves generally try to merge into their human communities, so most members had been made to stay at home this time. Forty-five of them had been brought to support their alphas and each one of them swore loyalty and put their lives into our jaws.
