The Alpha's Pack (Kit Davenport Book 6)

by Tate James

  “Between us all here, I’d say we have most broad categories of magic covered. What is Finn, Vixen?” Cole asked me, and I twisted my mouth, unsure if I was spilling secrets or not.

  Then again, these guys deserved total transparency from me. “A demon, and a pretty big deal one too, I think. He said his twin brother is one of the Princes of Hell.”

  “Huh,” Caleb muttered, looking stunned. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “Neither did I,” Austin admitted, agreeing with his twin. “But I guess he will be useful training any unusual supernaturals we end up with.”

  “Like demons,” Sam offered, with an edge of sarcasm. “There are bound to be some, even if they’re a lot more watered-down than dog-breath over there.” He jerked his scaled head at River, who glowered back at him.

  I ignored Sam’s comment about River and frowned at the snake. “Why do you say it like that? Like it’s a sure thing.”

  Sam flickered his tongue in that insulting way of his. “Because demons have been coming to the human realm and impregnating human women for millennia. I doubt they stopped simply because their offspring weren’t magical. They just like fucking.”

  “Good to know,” I murmured, rubbing at my tired eyes. “Okay, so Wes, you’ll start bringing up files and sorting them? Maybe Caleb and Austin can come with me, and we will go looking for Finn.”

  “What would you like the rest of us to do, Kit?” River asked me with calm deference, not challenging my orders but subtly testing my ability to lead. Asshole. Must have been a wolf thing.

  “Check out the campus and work out where we will conduct all this training. I have a feeling, also, we will have more people to turn in the next week or so.” I chewed at the edge of my lip as I admitted this. As much as I didn’t want to change anyone else, Dark-Kit had put the call out to all active agents, and they would be returning here expecting to be changed.

  Also, if they were older and more experienced, they’d probably be a huge asset in training so many fresh supernaturals.

  “Active agents,” River nodded, obviously remembering the same thing I just had. “We will deal with them when they get here. Can I assume these ones will have a choice on whether to accept or not?”

  He didn’t mean it as an insult, but my cheeks heated with shame nonetheless. “Yes,” I croaked, feeling sick for how Dark-Kit had handled rejection. “Yes, we will give them all a choice. A real choice, this time.”

  River gave me a tight nod, his jaw clenched with the same guilt as I felt. “Let’s get on with it then. You need a proper night’s rest tonight before even thinking about changing more agents.”

  Sam popped up near my shoulder and hissed in my ear, “And by rest, he really means you need to rest your overactive cunt. The amount of pheromones in this apartment are enough to choke someone.”

  “Shut up before I make a purse out of your skin,” I snapped back to him. Even if he did probably have a point.

  Caleb and Austin both sent their familiars back into their resting places before we left the apartment and went in search of Finn. For one, we didn’t need to scare anyone unnecessarily if they were having a hard time believing the magic stuff. For another, we didn’t need to listen to Sam yapping on the whole way.

  “How many recruits do you think you changed last night, Princess?” Austin asked as we jogged down the stairs.

  “Uh, I don’t really know,” I admitted. “All of them? And instructors too.”

  “There were probably around ten instructors on campus and if it was a full recruit class, maybe fifty or sixty total? It won’t be fun, but I’m sure the seven of us can handle it.” Caleb gave me a smile of reassurance, and I hummed a noise of disagreement.

  “Nope, Jonathan had been on a major recruitment drive. There would have been somewhere between two and three hundred. Easy.” At this, both twins stopped short, and I ran into the back of Austin before he whirled around to grab my upper arms.

  “Two to three hundred,” he repeated, and I nodded. “You used your magic on that many in one session? No wonder you were so drained!”

  He looked so mad, but his grip on my arms was comforting, like he couldn’t decide if he should be hugging or shaking me.

  “Damage is done now, bro,” Caleb pointed out, tapping him on the wrist to remind him he was holding me tightly. “We just need to handle the fallout, yeah? Piece of cake. Kitty Kat did the hardest part, after all. Besides, it was only a matter of time.”

  Austin grunted and released me but smacked a quick kiss on my forehead before continuing out of the building.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked Caleb as we followed Austin’s stalking form. “That it was only a matter of time? I thought I was the only one who could change people.”

  “Yeah, that part could only be done by you, for sure,” he agreed, “but I meant about handling the fall out. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been the international media. Cole and Vali’s investigation pretty much proved that supernaturals, shifters in particular, are sick of hiding in the shadows. Whether it was through Bridget’s influence or not, the end result is the same. They’re sick of hiding, so they’re making themselves known to the world. ‘Ready or not, here we come,’ kind of thing.”

  “Well fuck,” I replied. It really was the best I could come up with. Maybe I was more exhausted than I had realized.

  “Yep. So, this whole thing might actually work in our favor. When push comes to shove with the humans finding out, well, we want supernaturals putting on a good face, right? We don’t want these rabid, angry shifters who have been running to fight clubs to be the ‘face’ of supernatural kind.” Caleb shot me a glance and a crooked smile. “I for one would much rather have a pretty Ban Dia redhead speaking for our kind.”

  I scoffed a laugh and shook my head at him. “I’m sure we can find a suitable spokesperson among Omega, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “It is. Sort of. I honestly think you’re the best choice, but clearly we have a whole lot of other shit on our plate at the moment.” He sighed and took my hand in his, swinging it as we walked across the grass to the training center. “At least it’s a pretty sunset tonight.”

  Austin made a choked, snorting sort of sound ahead of us and cast a look at his twin as if to say, “Seriously? The weather?”

  “Thank you,” I told the two of them honestly. “I know I made a mess of things, so thank you for not yelling at me. I appreciate it.”

  This time Austin spun around fully to squint at me while walking backward. “Oh, princess. You don’t think you’re getting off unpunished, do you? Trust me, baby girl. It’s coming.”

  His words and the evil glint in his eyes should have scared me. Not turned me on. But I was starting to question the way I was wired because, holy shit, I looked forward to being punished by all six of my guardians.

  13

  CALEB

  My eyes narrowed at the self-professed demon standing in front of me, and I tried not to overreact at what he was saying. It had been two weeks since we’d arrived on Omega campus and saved Kit from her dark side. Two weeks of dealing with two hundred and sixty-eight fresh-as-fuck supernaturals while keeping the whole damn campus from being burned down.

  “Repeat what you just said,” I ordered Finn in a deathly quiet voice, feeling my fangs sharpen in response to my emotions. “Just exactly what you said. Once more. I think I misheard you.”

  Finn rolled his eyes at me and sighed. “You heard me perfectly fine, Mage. I said that if you want to stack the deck in your favor, then you’re really going to need help from Bridget’s third dianoch, Lachlan.”

  “The other part,” I growled from behind gritted teeth.

  “Oh, about him being my twin? I thought you knew that already.” The sarcastic smirk on his face said he knew perfectly well what a bombshell this information was.

  I sucked in a few breaths in an attempt to calm down before replying, “Why, Finn? Why the fuck would we have known that?”

/>   He arched an eyebrow at me, like the smartass he was. “Because Lucy knew. I assumed she had told Kit. Anyway, what does it even matter? He’s the missing link you’re going to need to nail that psychotic bitch to a board.”

  Running my hands over my face, I started pacing to give my angry energy an outlet. Why the shit was he telling me of all people? So that I would have to tell everyone else? Fuck that! I’d just drag him upstairs by the scruff of his neck to tell Kitty Kat himself.

  “So, I take it you know where to find him then?” I asked, and Finn nodded. “Great. Where is he?”

  “Can’t tell you that,” the infuriating demon replied, shaking his head.

  “And why not?” This fucker was seriously testing my patience now, and I was not above physical violence when angered.

  “Not my place to say. Besides, he’s in hiding for a reason, dipshit. Do you really think it would be super smart for me to go running around telling everyone where to find him? What if Bridget has spies here and she finds out and gets to him first? Use your brain, Mage.” Finn tapped the side of his head as if to demonstrate where a brain was located. Asshole. “Lachlan is one of five princes of Hell. What do you think Bridget would be capable of if she could access his power?”

  “Fuck,” I breathed out, grasping the seriousness of the situation. “So, her killing Lucy…”

  “Was more of a fuck you to me than Kit, yeah. Why do you think I’m here helping you all instead of comforting Elena? When she found out…” He grimaced. “Let’s just say I need to do my damnedest to see Bridget ended or there won’t be much hope of reconciling with that feisty thing.”

  “Fuck,” I groaned, scrubbing at my face. “You have to tell Kit about this. She blames herself for Lucy’s death.”

  Finn shrugged again, totally uncaring about my girl’s guilt. “Not important right now. We need Lachlan, which means you and your surly brother need to work on a spell to break the dianoch bond. Currently Lachy is under a magic-induced coma, which prevents Bridget from accessing his magic. We cannot risk bringing him out until that bond is broken.”

  “Why us? Why now? How long has he been in this coma shit? And how the hell are we supposed to break their bond unless you tell us where he is?” I had way more questions than just that, but those were the first ones off my tongue.

  “I don’t have time to hold your hand and talk you through this shit, Caleb,” Finn drawled, pushing off the wall he’d been leaning on. “Your Ban Dia has me teaching a class to a bunch of demonlings and assorted other weirdos, and I’m already late. Just figure it out, yeah? You and Austin are the only ones with the power. So, figure it out.”

  He started to walk away from me, then, while I shook my head and gaped in shock. Was he seriously just dumping all of that at my doorstep and then walking away?

  Finn didn’t make it far, though.

  A loud boom thundered through the campus, and the ground shook under our feet, causing Finn to cast a worried look over his shoulder at me.

  “What the fuck was that?” I shouted at him, hurrying in the general direction the noise had seemed to come from—the training center.

  Finn ran with me, keeping up as he replied. “I think I know. I have a couple of jötunn in my class of random weirdos. They were scrapping over a girl yesterday.”

  “Jo-what?” I demanded, not slowing down.

  “Jötunn. Frost giants. This sort of sounds like they’ve come to blows.” We didn’t need to speculate any further as we rounded a corner and saw the culprits for ourselves.

  Two blue-skinned, ten-foot tall creatures tussled on the grass outside what used to be a solid brick wall but now revealed a trashed classroom and twenty-odd yelling recruits. As they rolled, one aimed a punch for the other’s head and missed—hitting the ground and causing another mini-earthquake like we had just experienced.

  “Holy fucking…” I gaped at the jötunn. They couldn’t fight for shit, but damn, they packed some serious strength.

  “Don’t just stand there!” Finn snapped at me. “Help me separate them before they turn this whole fucking building to dust.”

  I was sorely tempted to just let it play out for a bit. What better way for two teenage boys to work through their anger than by pounding each other’s skulls into the ground, right?

  Then again, these were fucking frost giants, and Finn probably wasn’t being all that dramatic when he’d said they could turn the whole building to dust. They’d already demolished an entire brick-sided classroom, after all.

  “All right, that’s enough!” I snapped, projecting my scary “leader” voice that I’d been working on for official mage gatherings and such. “Break it up, now!” As I bellowed this command, I threw a droplet of blood, which landed on the grass beside them with an explosion like I’d just thrown a grenade.

  “I said help me reduce the damage, not make it worse, you idiot!” Finn growled, stomping over to one of the dazed frost giants and placing him in a binding spell while I took care of the other one.

  Shrugging, I used the toe of my shoe to nudge some displaced grass and dirt back where it had come from. “This place could have used a little landscaping anyway.”

  Finn rolled his eyes at me so hard I could practically hear it, but I was in no mood to be fucking around with out-of-control teenagers fighting over a girl. The demon had just dropped a major info-bomb on my head, and we really needed to get back to that subject.

  “What in the hell is going on here, then?” Finn demanded of his captive, shaking the kid’s huge blue shoulder. I sighed and ran a hand over my face, realizing we actually had to discipline these morons before we could get back to discussing missing princes of Hell.

  Before the stubborn, blue dickheads could come up with a plausible lie for why they’d been fighting, like “we both tripped and fell through the classroom wall” or some bullshit like that, a young girl came running over to us and skidded to a panting stop in front of Finn.

  “I’m so sorry; this is all my fault,” she gasped, looking upset. “These two idiots got it into their frozen skulls that I was dating them both and therefore cheating on them both.” She looked pissed as hell, and her forearms rippled with fur as she glared at the two giants.

  “And are you?” I asked her, genuinely curious and not at all judgmental. I had seriously come a long way since my days of monogamy—not that I’d ever really been that hellbent on it to begin with.

  “No!” she raged, fur coating more of her arms in her anger. Definitely a shifter of some sort. “I wasn’t dating either of them! We each went on one damn date before all of this happened, then I shifted and found my mate, Trevor.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate a shy-looking boy in glasses. “I had zero interest in these two even before I found Trev, and even less now! This whole thing is out-of-control stupid.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her ire and gave the frost giants a pointed look. “Well, I think you both got your answer on whether she’s ‘cheating’ on you.”

  “Thank you, Bella,” Finn told the girl. “You and Trevor can return to your class. We will handle this from here.”

  The girl—Bella—gave Finn a concerned frown, but did as she was instructed, grabbing her mate’s hand as she passed and dragging him away from the fight scene.

  “One guess who the alpha of that relationship is,” Finn muttered under his breath, and I fought not to laugh.

  Turning back to the two dipshit blue dudes, I turned on a good teacherly scowl. “Have you two learned something from this?” They nodded sullenly. “What have you learned? We need to hear it out loud.”

  The boys glanced at each other, and the one sporting a swollen eye sighed before responding. “We learned that we should probably communicate with one another before resorting to violence?” He posed it as a question, so I nodded, like I knew fucking anything about disciplining teenagers.

  “And that by letting our anger get the best of us, we caused a lot of damage?” the other boy added, and I eyed the de
molished classroom as I nodded again.

  “Very good,” I agreed, wanting to be done with the whole thing so I could go and find Austin. “Now, shift back down to human size and report to Instructor Morgan for punishment assignments.” Yeah, I was that lazy. But also, River came up with way better—more appropriate—punishments than I ever could. “Finn, I believe we were in the middle of a chat?”

  “Sorry, snake-boy. I need to deal with this mess. Go chat with your brother and hit up Yoshi for more info. He and Jackson had started some research before hitting a dead end.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, barely restraining myself from punching him in his smug-ass face. “Why the hell are you only telling me this now? Why not months ago?”

  Finn gave an apathetic shrug. “I didn’t trust you then. I do now.”

  14

  KIT

  The heady aroma of fresh coffee teased at my nostrils as I sniffed my takeaway mug. So damn delicious. I raised the cup to my mouth to take a sip, but before the heavenly liquid touched my tongue, a huge hand grabbed my arm and my mug went flying.

  “Fuck!” I screamed before a hand clamped over my mouth and I was dragged around the corner of the building I’d just been passing.

  Oh. No, no, no. This fucker did not realize what he’d just done. It had been hours since my last coffee. Freaking hours! And now it was spilled all over the path and probably seeping into the grass by now.

  Uh-ah. Someone was about to feel my wrath.

  “Relax, regina mea,” Vali’s velvet-smooth voice chuckled in my ear even as his hand peeled away from my mouth. “It’s just me. You have been so hard to get a moment alone with, I thought I would just grab the opportunity when it arose. So to speak.”

  “Literally, apparently,” I grumbled, turning to face him and throwing a fist into his rock-hard abdomen. “You spilled my coffee.”

  His grin spread, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. “I’ll get you more—if we can drink it somewhere no one else can find us.”