Alpha Ascendant: A Fantastical Werewolf Adventure (Wolf Rampant Book 3)

by Aimee Easterling

  But the Tribunal member instead ignored his female audience beyond a slight twitch in one cheek. And after several long moments of gazing into Wolfie's face, our visitor merely shrugged and turned on his heel, walking to the exit as if he'd never planned to talk to us in the first place.

  The stranger was already halfway out the door before I realized what was happening, Fen shadowing his steps to ensure he headed directly to our boundaries and left other pack members alone. I was dying to pick Wolfie's brain about the unexplained contest of wills, but I ended up not having to wait.

  Almost as if he heard the questions running over themselves inside my brain, the uber-alpha turned around after stepping through the door, while standing in the line of sight of half a dozen shifters. Meeting Wolfie's gaze completely now for the first time, the Tribunal member spoke in a pitying voice.

  "I'd come to offer Wolfie Young a place on the Tribunal," he explained. "But it appears his powers have faded significantly over the last twenty-four hours. As he is no longer strong enough to hold his own among the top wolves of the southeast, the offer has been preemptively rescinded."

  Chapter 17

  "Not strong enough?" My Uncle Hawk was the first one to speak up, voicing the confusion that was at the forefront of everyone's minds in the wake of the uber-alpha's visit. "That's a new one on me," he continued. "The only shifter I've ever met who could even hold a candle to Wolfie was Chief Wilder in his prime."

  For once, I was grateful that my father was still wandering the woods in lupine form because he would have been none too pleased to have his own strength assessed beneath that of my mate's. Still, I could see heads nodding throughout the crowd, proving that both Wolfie's original pack mates and my relatives were in full agreement on the issue. Our current alpha had found it simple to hold his own at All-Pack against every other clan head in the region, so being sneered at by Mr. Sassafras was patently unfair.

  On the other hand, Wolfie had been acting a bit strangely over the last couple of days, his actions much more aggressive and erratic than usual. So perhaps something was going on that I should know about?

  Give him a break, my inner wolf demanded. Wolfie at his worst is still better than any other pack leader at his best.

  She had a point. So I allowed my mate to smooth over the concerns of the crowd with his bantering. "I didn't want the job after all," he reassured them. "Haven keeps me plenty busy enough." But I still filed the piece of data away to be chewed on later, and I resolved to find a bit of leisure in the near future to gently draw out my mate.

  Apparently, that downtime wouldn't occur this afternoon, because the pack had decided Ember deserved First Rites despite her tender age. The coming-of-age ritual was usually reserved for teenage males, but Fen assured me that she'd insisted upon First Rites when she was a kid and had found no trouble keeping up with the rest of the pack. So I had no choice but to allow my daughter to be swept up in First Rite preparations by an enthusiastic band of werewolves.

  "You know we'll all keep an eye on her," Fen promised after the crowd members dispersed to their kitchens and workshops. The young woman touched my hand as she spoke in a fleeting but much-appreciated show of solidarity. "Everyone in Haven adores that little wolfling. We won't let her fall too deep into the games."

  I wasn't entirely sure I agreed with the young woman's assessment of the upcoming celebration, not after my adopted daughter had shown up in tears less than an hour earlier because she didn't feel accepted by our clan when clad in human skin.

  But my relatives and the members of Wolfie's old pack had all jumped on the project with enthusiasm, and my mate hadn't protested their scheming. So I let my worries slide. And before I knew it, we were all piling into vehicles so we could travel up the mountainside to the cleared spot where Wilders were traditionally welcomed into their adult lives surrounded by every member of their birth clan.

  It appeared our precocious puppy would be joining those ranks sooner than anticipated. I just hoped Ember could weather the upcoming trials as easily as she'd breezed through everything else in her short but action-packed life to date.

  ***

  Apparently some facets of being a shifter gave even our wolfling pause, though, as I learned while driving my little family up the mountainside.

  "Do I really have to?" Ember whined from the back seat. Wolfie had taken advantage of the fact that our daughter was required to arrive at her First Rites in human form to lay down the law about her new duties, and she seemed less than thrilled by the sudden introduction of rules into her life.

  I was just relieved that I didn't have to be the bad cop this time around. Because in all fairness, Wolfie should have made me speak to our daughter since I'd been the one who pushed for additional restrictions the night before. My argument had been simple—I felt that Ember-the-girl needed more structure in her life than Ember-the-pup. Wolfie had cautiously agreed...but we hadn't quite been able to iron out what exactly those additional restrictions should be.

  Apparently, even the bare minimum requirement that Wolfie had chosen to bring up this afternoon wasn't okay with Ember.

  "Yes, you really have to," my mate told our daughter firmly but gently. "One hour per day in human form won't kill you. Not since you can choose when and where."

  Then, as the bloodling girl opened her mouth, Wolfie smiled indulgently and added, "You can choose when and where...as long as you're awake during the human hour."

  Ember harrumphed, the loophole she'd spotted abruptly closing around her. "But what's the point, Daddy?" she demanded. "I want to be strong like you, and everyone knows your wolf is what makes you strong. I totally grow faster when I'm a wolf. I mean, look at Lantana. She's a whole year older than me and she's still just a baby. I don't want to be like that."

  "You totally can handle growing more slowly for one hour per day," Wolfie rebutted, making me grin.

  I shouldn't have been surprised by how well my mate handled an overindulged human child since he kept every other member of our pack on track with similar restraint and caring. Still, I found it amusing that an adult bloodling who so strongly cherished his own lupine bond was the one currently laying down the law that another bloodling had to spend unwanted time in her human skin. Wolfie's hand crept over to settle on my knee even as my eyes crinkled up, proof that he found his current predicament just as droll as I did.

  Ember, on the other hand, continued to be unamused. "Mommy?" she asked when her father wasn't willing to sway to her whining. "Can't I just be a wolf?"

  Unfortunately for her, I wasn't willing to bite at such a classic trick of playing one parent off against the other.

  "Your father is strong because his human half and his lupine half dance together like perfect partners," I told our daughter instead, backing up my mate. "And you'll be stronger too when you learn to do the same."

  "But it's annoying," Ember grumbled quietly.

  "I know," Wolfie agreed wholeheartedly, chucking one finger beneath the little girl's chin to bring her eyes back up and out of her incipient pout. I glanced away from the road in time to catch both of their inner wolves communing without words, and my heart seemed to swell within my chest at the sight.

  Yes, Ember wouldn't have the easiest time learning to be a tween when she hadn't even walked this earth for a year. But she and Wolfie were birds of a feather, and everyone in the pack knew that there was no better shifter to emulate than my mate. So all our daughter had to do was walk in his footsteps and she would be just fine.

  Now, time to see if Ember's backbone would stand up to the First Rite games.

  ***

  Nothing about Wolfie's old pack was conventional, so I wasn't entirely surprised to see full humans like Dale and Acacia mixed in with the more wolfy members of our clan as we pulled up alongside the cleared spot. Even my father had found his way out of the trees to join the joyous mob. And when Ember jumped out of the car and ran into the assembled crowd on her two human feet, I realized that every single m
ember of our merged pack had shown up despite the short notice.

  Okay, so that wasn't such an astonishing feat since my most old-fashioned relatives had been siphoned off by Justin's backstabbing a few months prior. But it still did my heart good to know that I possessed family members ready and willing to drop everything at a moment's notice so they could celebrate the coming-of-age ceremony of an unrelated bloodling girl.

  During my own childhood, the concept of a female shifter partaking of First Rites would have sent most of my relatives into tailspins. And bloodlings of both sexes used to be either hidden from view or outright killed at birth. So our current celebration was further proof that Wolfie's tutelage had brought my relatives out of the Dark Ages at an astonishing rate.

  But my enjoyment of the crowd was short-lived because I soon realized that everything wasn't running quite as smoothly as it might have been. "Trouble," Wolfie said succinctly just as I caught a thread of negative emotion wafting into my nostrils from the far side of the clearing. As one, my mate and I pushed through the assembled shifters, coming upon the Barn rat contingent just as Ethan shoved David out of his way and nearly off his feet.

  "I said no," my half-brother growled. He'd never looked more like a gang member than at this moment, tattoos on full display as they drifted up his arms toward the scrap of fabric that humans so vividly referred to as a wife beater. "I'm not going to shoot up with your stupid drug just so I can play wolf for the night," Ethan elaborated continuing to stand his ground even though the surrounding shifters were beginning to murmur angrily beside him.

  "Meaning that you don't want to be one of us," David grumbled. My cousin's gaze shot to Fen for a split second before he forced himself to pull his attention away, and I knew that my usually kind-hearted relative wasn't operating at his best tonight. Usually, I would have said that David would be the last of our young-adult pack members to start a fight. But, apparently, tonight I was fated to be proven wrong.

  Too bad my cousin had picked one of our more incendiary pack members to molest during his rare foray into shifter aggression. Because my brother clearly wasn't going to turn the other cheek after my cousin's verbal blow. Instead, he rebutted: "Meaning that I don't want to become a bloodthirsty wolf." Then, without waiting for a reply, he surged forward, fists raised in the universal invitation to fight.

  Around us, the crowd began to chant their encouragement. The attendees were all excited about the upcoming First Rites, and most of their wolves were already rampant behind human eyes. So it was no surprise that the assembled shifters were thrilled to see two of their own choosing to release pent-up aggressions with their fists.

  But even though Ethan and David clearly thought bruises would make them feel better in the morning, I figured that physical blows between members of the same clan were never a good idea.

  "Wolfie!" I muttered, waiting for my partner to take action before this charade could go any further. But my mate merely gazed at me with head cocked and one eyebrow raised, leaving it unclear whether he felt the young men might as well duke it out or whether he thought this was a good opportunity for me to expand my own alpha repertoire.

  I chose to assume the latter, and was glad Wolfie didn't move to stop me as I pushed through the final layer of shifters to stand between the two young men. In the time my attention had been trained on my mate, though, the fight had begun in earnest. As a result, Ethan's fist nearly caught me in the jaw before he pulled his punch at the last possible moment, his cheeks coloring in distress.

  "Terra! I'm sorry!" my brother exclaimed. Due to his half-blood nature, I had a harder time making out his inner wolf than I might have with another shifter. But I could still tell that the animal's distress at nearly striking his sister overshadowed the beast's unhappiness at finding so many werewolves arrayed against him.

  Because that's what the crowd looked like to Ethan, I realized. Not like a large family ready to embrace his differences, but like a pack of predators waiting to drag down the weakest link in our living chain. And in my brother's eyes, he was the weakest link.

  From ten feet away, my mate caught my gaze, and I could feel his own assessment of the situation matching mine. In the posture of Wolfie's lupine half, in fact, I saw the question of whether David might not have been right in his impulse if not in his method of carrying out that suggestion. Maybe Ethan did need to celebrate his first shift at the same time Ember's First Rites were embraced by the pack. Or he did if my step-brother hoped to be fully included in clan life.

  Speak of the devil. Well, in this case it would have been more accurate to say think of the devil. Either way, my adopted daughter came barreling out of the crowd at just the right moment, and she quickly proved herself more adroit than I'd been at defusing the werewolves' tension.

  "Ethan!" the young bloodling crowed. "Auntie Fen just told me that we get to share our First Rites together if you want to. Isn't that exciting? You'll be like my brother, not just my uncle."

  I could feel the crowd exhale a sigh of relief or disappointment (depending on the shifter) as the tension ebbed away. Meanwhile, the little girl appeared oblivious of anyone except Ethan, pausing to stare up into the handsome face of the halfie who wasn't actually related to her by blood.

  The bloodling's expression abruptly became calculating as she continued. "Although you won't be too much like my brother," she concluded. "You can't be, since I'm going to marry you as soon as my wolf catches up with yours."

  A titter of amusement wafted through the crowd now, and I could see both David's and Ethan's shoulders relax. The issue of Ethan's First Rites hadn't been settled, but it was clear my male relatives wouldn't be able to physically duke out their differences in the face of our wolfling's obsession with choosing the absolutely perfect relationship for each member of our clan. It was one of Ember's more endearing—if confusing—traits that had come to light over the last day and a half.

  Wolf brain, my lupine half explained succinctly. Relationships are all that matter.

  My human mind didn't entirely follow the logic, but my inner wolf was evidently right about the way Ember's brain worked. Because ever since the young bloodling had found her tongue, she'd made up familial names for at least a dozen unrelated shifters. I'd noticed that being called "Auntie" melted Fen's heart the same way Ember's easy "Mommy" thawed mine, and I'd caught my most ornery relatives going out of their way to visit with Ember in order to hear themselves called "Cousin" by our bloodling pup.

  And, as we waited to see what Ethan would do in the face of Ember's excitement, I soon learned that my brother was no more able to deny our wolfling what she wanted than anyone else was. "Okay," he conceded. "Call out the wolf."

  Chapter 18

  Human coming-of-age rituals are many and varied. But in the end, most traditional cultures have celebrated the cusp between childhood and adulthood by pushing the skills and stamina of their youngsters to their limits.

  Not to be outdone, werewolf societies strive to take these ceremonies to an entirely new level. So while young Ethiopians are required to leap over a living bull four times naked, young shifters are made to jump over a family member who's holding flaming torches aloft and is swiping the fire dangerously through the air. Inuit boys are sent out into the frigid arctic with their fathers to learn survival skills, while werewolf boys are expected to embrace their instincts untutored by killing a wild animal within their first twenty-four hours of shifting to fur and fangs.

  With all of the possible permutations of First Rites firmly in mind, the idea of Ember and my brother being put through their paces tonight gave me the creeps. But, on the plus side, these types of events took time to set up. So while the pack busied themselves building a bonfire and teasing the First Rites participants with well-meaning banter, I pulled Wolfie away beneath the trees for an extended kiss followed by a long-awaited conversation.

  "Mmm." My mate's lips turned upward beneath mine, and one large hand cupped the back of my skull, drawing me closer to his
hard chest. In response, I melted into his touch, waiting until both my human and lupine halves were well sated before initiating the upcoming interrogation.

  "I know this probably isn't the time or the place for a heart-to-heart conversation," I said at last, doing my best to keep my voice steady despite my joyous inner wolf. She nudged me to close my mouth and use my lips for something more important than talking, but I knew that I couldn't fully protect our pack if I didn't understand what was going on with my co-alpha. So I took a deep breath and asked the tough questions.

  "But you can't leave me in the dark any longer," I continued. "What did that Tribunal member mean about your powers dwindling?" And why have you been so grumpy all day? I wanted to add, but figured I was pushing my luck already without carrying the cross-examination any further.

  I expected a simple answer to my simple question. After all, Wolfie was usually the most direct shifter I knew, his strong inner wolf finding no purpose in beating around the bush.

  But now my mate's gaze skittered away from mine and I could tell he would have preferred not to answer. Fortunately for me, though, my companion's inherent sense of fair play finally carried the day.

  "It's no big deal," Wolfie started, a preface that made me think that whatever my mate was about to tell me was actually a very big deal indeed. "And just because I'm weaker than some hyped up sassafras-scented alpha doesn't mean I'm not plenty strong enough to hold our pack together," he grumbled after a moment.

  Despite my mate's words, though, his inner wolf had pinned his ears back unhappily and I noticed that his human face had twisted into a sardonic smile that mirrored the animal's unusual behavior. Which is when I realized that neither half of my mate was actually confident that they could adequately guard our pack any longer.

  No wonder my companion had been on edge for days on end. Wolfie valued nothing so much as the safety and well-being of the shifters beneath his care, so declining power that he might not miss on his own account would gnaw ferociously at his peace of mind if it meant other werewolves were brought into danger as a result.