He grabbed Miranda’s hand. “You believe me, right?”
“I do,” she said, and his shoulders sagged with relief. She believed Creel with all her heart. And she loved him with all her heart.
“Prove it.” Jazmin smirked at him.
“Yeah, that’s kind of hard to do, since I didn’t invite anyone to come watch us when we were fucking,” Creel growled.
Miranda felt rage pool in her belly at the idea of Creel in bed with Jazmin. Yes, it had been five years ago. It still took everything she had not to lunge at Jazmin with her fangs bared.
“Exactly.” Jazmin’s eyes glowed with triumph. “And because you claimed me first, I have the legal right to death-challenge this interloper.”
Although each pack made their own rules, that was a law that carried across all packs. Claiming a mate was supposed to be for life.
“No fucking way,” Creel growled, stepping protectively in front of Miranda. “Why would you even want this? You were the one who left me.”
“I certainly did not. You can’t prove I did,” Jazmin said huffily.
“Oh, I get it. You didn’t count on Benjamin turning you down,” Creel said. “And in the last five years, you haven’t been able to sucker any other Alpha Prime into marrying you.”
“Well, I certainly deserve an Alpha Prime, and I will accept nothing less.” Jazmin preened her hair and flipped it out of her face. “And you claimed me, leaving me marked for ever. I demand my right to fight for my place as your mate.”
Miranda felt a shiver of fear ripple through her. As someone who was only half wolf, she was considerably weaker than Jazmin.
“Creel, this is the law.” Angrim’s voice rumbled through the air, and Creel spun on him with a snarl. “I know you have no respect for the law,” he continued, sounding huffy and mortally offended, “but I, for one, do. Jazmin and Miranda will have their death match immediately and you will not interfere.”
Creel shifted and lunged for Angrim, but a wave of rage and power swept through the air as Angrim and Joseph and the other Alpha Primes concentrated with all their might. Seven of them in total. Miranda felt as if her head had been slammed with a brick, even though they were directing most of their power towards Creel.
She fell to her knees, eyes watering from the pain, and Creel’s howl of pain and rage sounded as if from a million miles away.
Chapter Twenty
Creel woke up in darkness, filled with rage. He was curled up on his side, lying in the dirt. His head was pounding.
His brother was right next to him. He could feel it – and smell his blood. But Miranda was nowhere near. He could feel that too. Her absence was an enormous ache in his body.
“Benjamin?” His voice came out in a croak. He cleared his throat, forced himself into a sitting position.
“I’m here,” came the weak response. He heard his brother slowly, painfully sit up.
“Where are we?”
“No idea. When Angrim and his guys knocked you out, I attacked them, we got in a fight, and that’s the last thing I remember.”
His brother had his back. After all these years, after everything they’d been through. Creel felt something hard inside him soften a little bit. “You okay?” he grunted.
“Yeah, I’m healing. No big deal. Like I haven’t had my bones broken before.”
Creel climbed to his feet, feeling his head slowly clearing. “We’ve got to get out. They’ve got Miranda,” he rasped, panic choking him. Was she alive? If she’d been hurt, he was going to go on a mass killing spree. Starting with Angrim and working his way through every one of those bastards who had knocked him out.
Benjamin reached out in the darkness and put his hand on Creel’s shoulder. “Yes, and you need to keep a clear head if we’re going to save her. Let’s find a door.”
Creel began walking, hands held out in front of him in the pitch blackness, sniffing at the air. He smelled mostly dirt, but there was a faint scent of wood to his right, and he followed that until he found a door. Unfortunately, it was locked, and rock solid.
“I think we’re in someone’s root cellar,” Benjamin said.
“Let’s try to break the door down. On a count of three. One, two…three!”
Both men hurled themselves against the door at the same time, and Creel heard his brother’s pained groan. The door didn’t budge.
They both shifted into wolf form and tried again.
Still nothing.
Creel’s mind was clouded with rage and panic.
He heard his brother digging at the dirt wall, and joined him, clawing out huge clods of hard-packed soil. It would take too long, he realized, as fury raged through his body. They’d never get out in time. But they had to try.
It felt like hours were passing as they frantically clawed the dirt from the wall, but Creel knew that it had only been minutes. Benjamin suddenly paused and let out a low warning growl.
Creel stopped digging. He could just barely make out voices in the background.
There was the thud of footsteps behind the door, and he crouched low, a snarl rumbling in his throat.
The door was flung open. Brandon was standing there on the steps, panting for breath.
“Come on,” he growled at them. “Miles is already on his way to where they took Miranda and Jazmin. He’s got his pack backing him up.”
Benjamin and Creel shifted and ran up the steps, following Brandon. They were out in the woods, and the root cellar had been underneath a red brick house that reeked of Angrim and his pack. Motherfucker. He’d taken them to his own house and imprisoned them.
A dozen bears stood there, including Brandon’s wife, Anthea, and her clan. An enormous round moon hung in the sky overhead, bathing the woods in moonlight.
“How long were we down there?” Creel demanded.
“An hour. We found you as fast as we could. Had to kill a guy,” Brandon said with a fierce look in his eyes, and Creel could smell the blood on him.
“You go without me,” Benjamin grunted. “My leg’s still healing. Can’t run fast.”
Creel groaned in frustration.
An hour. Was she dead? Wouldn’t he feel it if she was dead?
They all shifted back into animal form and ran into the woods, with Brandon leading the way.
* * * * *
Angrim droned on and on to the hundreds of shifters who’d gathered to witness the death challenge between Jazmin and Miranda.
He lectured about tradition, and the importance of respecting the life mate bond, and made sure to throw in plenty of snide comments about how when wolves like Creel failed to respect tradition, it weakened the mating bond and so on and so forth. Miranda could see the assembled shifters rolling their eyes and grumbling amongst themselves.
Joseph and Terrence stood next to Angrim, and Miranda could see the glint of malice in their eyes. Apparently Joseph no longer cared about claiming Miranda, and was instead openly rooting for her death. Poor little Joseph didn’t take rejection well.
Douglas and Hyatt were there, being physically restrained by Angrim’s men. Douglas’s eyes blazed with fury, but he couldn’t overpower that many men. Suki stood next to Hyatt, crying hysterically.
Miranda kept scanning the crowd looking for Creel, but he was nowhere in sight. Worry twisted inside her. Had those bastards hurt him? She wished she had the physical strength to kill every last one of them.
Her grandmother hadn’t appeared to help her. She usually had a pretty good sense of when Miranda needed help. If she hadn’t come today, she wasn’t coming back. She blinked back tears at the thought. She didn’t have time to cry right now, and Grammy Edith wouldn’t want her to. She’d want her to kick some serious ass.
She’d mourn later.
First, she needed to survive the fight. Then she needed to find Creel.
Then she could cry for Grammy Edith.
Finally the crowd started shouting and booing. The shifters who came to populate the Greenlands were a rough, rowdy c
rowd. They wanted to see a bloody fight, not listen to a boring lecture.
Angrim looked huffy and offended at the booing crowd, although that was also his natural expression, all the time.
“Let the battle begin!” he bellowed.
Miranda realized she was clenching her hands into nervous fists, so tightly that her fingernails were cutting crescents into her palms. She was only half shifter. She was nowhere near as strong as Jazmin, and the blonde obviously didn’t intend to show her any mercy, judging from the way she was striding across the clearing towards her, stark naked and with her pretty face contorted in an ugly snarl.
Jazmin struck her across the face in an open-handed slap, curling her beautifully manicured fingernails inwards to leave stinging scratches on Miranda’s cheek.
There was a rumble of disapproval from the crowd. “Cheat!” shouted one of the watching shifters. “She sucker-punched her,” complained another.
Jazmin grinned spitefully and made beckoning motions with her hands. Then she dropped to all fours as she shifted into a big, lean, gray wolf.
Miranda desperately wished Grammy Edith was there. Not that she’d have been able to do anything, but perhaps she could have given Miranda some tips on being newly dead. Of course Grammy Edith had already taught her a thing or two worth remembering.
Miranda spun on her heel and planted her foot hard on Jazmin’s muzzle. The wolf yelped with shock and shook her head, sending droplets of blood flying. There was a ragged cheer from the crowd.
Miranda wasn’t strong. She wasn’t particularly fierce. And in wolf form, going fang-to-fang against a stone-cold bitch like Jazmin, she wouldn’t stand a chance. But growing up, her grandmother had insisted that she attend martial arts classes, and Grammy made a surprisingly effective sparring partner even though she couldn’t interact with the physical world. Not least because she fought dirty. Once you’d punched a wall a couple of times because your sparring partner had suddenly vanished, you developed fast reactions.
As Jazmin leaped, Miranda pivoted, thrusting out her hip and using the wolf’s own momentum to throw her.
Jazmin landed hard, all the air expelled from her body in a loud, pained grunt. She lay still, one paw twitching, whimpering with each agonizing intake of breath. It was clear she wouldn’t be able to regain her paws anytime soon. It was probably a mercy when her eyes fluttered shut and she lost consciousness.
Cheers erupted from the watching crowd, along with scattered applause. Then someone started to chant, “Kill her!” Other s in the throng quickly picked up the refrain. “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!”
Miranda stood heaving for breath, her heart hammering in her chest from adrenaline and exertion. She cast a scathing glance over the gathering of shifters baying for blood.
She slowly, painfully climbed to her feet. “I’m not going to kill an unconscious woman, you assholes!” she yelled at them. “Go watch a freaking movie if you want to get your gore fix.”
The crowd began booing, and started wandering off in disgust.
“Miranda!” she heard a familiar voice yelling. Miles came racing towards her, his packmates at his heels.
He cast a glance of disgust at Jazmin, who was groaning and trying to sit up. “Creel’s on his way. Angrim locked him up, but Brandon and the Stoney Creek clan went and set him free.”
Miranda’s ears rang and blood streamed from her nose. Miles helped her to limp over to a fallen log, where she gingerly sat down.
“Creel’s okay?” she asked Miles.
He pointed through the tree line. “Here he comes.”
She squinted as Creel came running towards her. “Creel, why are you all wavery?” she asked when he reached her. “Oh, never mind. It’s just the concussion.”
“You’re not dead.” His voice was shaking. He gathered her in his arms and she leaned against him and groaned. Her whole body hurt, but Creel was there, and she wasn’t dead.
“I’m pretty sure you’re right. You okay?” she asked through puffy, bleeding lips.
“Miranda! You’re alive, you’re alive!” Suki cried, running towards her with Hyatt and Douglas at her heels.
“That seems to be the consensus,” Miranda mumbled through swollen lips.
Suki looked at her, wide-eyed. “Wow. That is gonna take a lot of makeup. Don’t worry, I got this. I can make you look…almost normal. In a few days. From a distance.”
Miranda gave her a thumbs-up and leaned her head on Creel’s shoulder.
“The fight has concluded, and I declare Miranda the winner.” Angrim strolled up to them, then cast a disapproving glance at Miranda. “Although her refusal to kill the loser was highly— awwwk!”
Creel had let go of Miranda, leaped up, and spun on him. He punched him so hard that Angrim’s jaw shattered. Angrim spat out half a dozen teeth. He staggered back and looked around wildly. Joseph and Terrence were nowhere to be seen, and Angrim’s packmates took one look at Creel, shifted, and flopped onto their backs in the dirt, waving their paws in the air.
Angrim turned and did the most shameful thing an Alpha Prime could do – he tried to run. Creel swarmed over him, in human form, pounding him with his fists again and again, breaking ribs, crushing his cheekbone, shattering his nose.
Finally he left Angrim limp and bleeding in the dirt.
He stood up, panting, eyes blazing with rage. “I’m not going to kill you,” he spat at Angrim. “I’m going to do something worse. I’m going to let you live with the humiliation. If you’re still in the territory at sunrise, you’re a dead wolf.”
Hyatt held out his hands and Creel felt some of his rage abate, and then the realization struck him like a thunderbolt.
Hyatt was an Omega. Hyatt was his Omega.
And Douglas was his Beta.
He had a pack. He had his brother back. And he had a mate. A mate whom he loved with all his wounded, angry heart.
“Let’s go home,” he said to Miranda, his voice shaking. He didn’t trust himself to say much at the moment.
“My car is here,” Suki said, so Creel picked Miranda up and carried her to it and tenderly put her in the back seat, then sat down next to her. Hyatt and Douglas piled in as well, and they drove in silence back to Creel’s house.
When they climbed out, Creel carefully lifted Miranda out of the car, then turned to look at his friends.
“You all had my back when I needed you the most. I trust you with my lives, and I want to make sure that we all have a safe territory to live in. I want you to be my pack. Hyatt, you’re my Omega, and Douglas, you’re my Beta.”
“I have a pack?” Hyatt’s eyes were comically wide with astonishment. Then he looked at Suki. “We have a pack!”
“And finally, and this is the most important thing, I love you, Miranda. There. Happy? You have my heart. I love you and only you forever.”
“Happy,” she mumbled. “In pain, but happy.”
He glanced around. “Come back tomorrow afternoon, everybody. We’ll start planning out where we’ll locate the pack property. I’m thinking the area right by Miranda’s shop. Right now, my mate needs time to recuperate.”
He turned and carried her into the cabin. Miranda was crying and smiling at the same time.
“That was a great speech,” Miranda sniffled. “Especially the part where you admitted you love me. That was really good.”
“I thought you’d like that,” Creel grinned. “I do. Love you. Want me to prove it right now?”
Miranda groaned. “Tommorow. I want you, but I’m too sore right now.”
“I was going to prove it by making you dinner and bringing it to you in bed, actually. Glad to know that you want me, though.”
“Oh. Yes, love of my life, prove away.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Two days later, first thing in the morning, things seemed to be settling down. Miranda sat behind the counter at her shop, ringing up sale after sale. Suki had slathered a thick layer of makeup over her fading bruises. She was still sore
, but overall she’d healed faster than she’d expected.
Their new line of scented soaps was selling especially well, and Brandon had agreed to start distributing those, along with the candles. Rory had offered to work for her making new inventory and restocking her shelves.
Hephzibah had tried to start up conversation with him several times that morning, but he always mumbled his answers and then slunk away. Finally she’d informed Miranda that she was going into town to do some grocery shopping. Miranda suspected that she just wanted to hide from Rory. She made a mental note to tell Rory she wouldn’t need him to work for her any longer. There were plenty of people she could hire.
There was a steady stream of customers through the shop, and off to the right, the sound of Creel and several hyenas from Thomas’ pack sawing and banging away on the new room they were building to hold more inventory. Everything was going as it should. There was just one nagging problem.
Grammy Edith had never resurfaced, and Miranda needed to go to the graveyard to talk to Hank again. She’d been putting it off, but she couldn’t ignore the facts any longer. She and Hank and her grandmother’s friends should hold a private memorial service.
“Phone for you!” Suki called, and Miranda walked over and took the phone from her. It was Sophia, and she sounded frantic.
“Come to the Grubstake right now. Be here five minutes ago. Hurry. Brandon Sheffield is trying to arrest Hephzibah,” she said. “She’s hiding in the kitchen, but I don’t know how much longer I can hold them off.”
“Arrest her? What the hell for?” Miranda said.
“They say she’s a spy,” Sophia said. “Apparently right after he left the territory, Angrim faxed up a report saying that he’d been investigating Hephzibah and she’s not actually a student.”
“Why would anyone believe that asshole?” Miranda said angrily.
His Curvy Mate (Alpha Prime Book 2) Page 13
