by A. J. Downey
“She’s got a lot of pull,” I agreed. “But we can’t worry too much about her. There are a lot of other, more important things, to worry about. She’s angry and bitter and I get it, I won’t take it personally. But if she tries that again I will drop her, I don’t care if she is one of our Betas.”
I could almost see Chloe’s ears perk up at that and I turned my head slightly toward her. “Yes, there are Pack Betas as well, male and female. I’ll explain their positions in the Pack structure a little later.”
She nodded and I turned my attention back to Markus. He was giving me a considering look and finally nodded, “Can’t drop her ‘til yer Alpha boy,” he reminded me.
“I don’t think she’ll do much,” Nora spoke up to fill the ensuing uneasy silence. She tossed the last of the paper towels into the small trash can I kept under the sink and pushed the door shut with her knee, before she turned and leaned against the counter with her arms crossed beneath her breasts. “Sharon’s bark is far worse than her bite, no pun intended. She’s surprised and upset.”
“And it’s none of her damned business who I choose as a mate,” I muttered darkly.
“It is when you remember what she went through.” Brent reminded us.
“What happened to her?” Chloe asked hesitantly, but curious enough for that to override her caution. We all exchanged looks and in the end they all ended up staring at me.
“It’s not my story to tell, Chloe,” I said gently, “It really isn’t. So if you really want details you’ll have to ask Sharon yourself. She’s one of the oldest members of the Pack, age wise, not as in actual membership. She’s been around the block a number of times. But of all the wolf-kind that I’ve met, she has, by far, the strongest hatred for Hunters…”
Most of the time the Hunters just hunt to kill us. But occasionally they decide that they need to study us and every now and again one of us will be taken captive. Sharon was held for six months by men that saw her at best as an animal, and at worst as a monster as they pulled ‘scientific’ experiments on her. Science experiments on level with the type of shit Joseph Mengele pulled during the holocaust. It really wasn’t my story to tell. It was Sharon’s own personal hell.
Markus sighed, “Don’t think too badly of her,” he urged Chloe, “She’s had a hard time of things and it’s just going to be difficult for her to accept you with our boy here.”
I glanced at my watch. The meeting was supposed to start at five. It would be dark right about that time as well. “Come on, guys. We’ve gotta get moving or we’re going to be late. It’ll be dark soon.”
I ran upstairs and changed while the others waited. When I returned, we filed down the stairs and out the front door as one. As far as meeting spaces went, there wasn’t anything spectacular about this one. The Olympic National Forest had plenty of space away from prying eyes and ears. Our meeting space was a large clearing that held nearly fifty members of the local Pack comfortably. It was about a mile and a half hike in off of one of the popular trailheads.
On the drive, Markus gave us a rundown of how the night’s event was supposed to go. It wasn’t a meeting of my supporters as we had originally thought. Because we had been so transparent in the meeting’s time, it had turned into a formal nomination of candidates for Alpha.
More than a majority, closer to seventy-five percent of the Pack, had to feel that a certain candidate was a better choice for Alpha over another. If enough of the Pack felt it, it would be communicated throughout the entire Pack. Almost like a psychic link amongst the members but more of a non-verbal language specific to wolf-kind.
“So this is your big chance to impress basically?” Chloe asked as we parked and climbed out of Markus’ Jeep.
“More or less. The Alpha won’t be officially announced until the next Full Moon but tonight will give us a very good idea of who that is going to be,” I explained.
“Things sure do move fast in your world.”
“Which is odd considering we live so long, eh?” I gave her a wink and led her across the parking lot to the mouth of the trailhead. It was packed with cars and my nerves started to jangle.
A mile and a half in, just off one of the trails, we reached the large clearing. Almost perfectly round, it’d been lined with torches. Two large bonfires burned in pits within the clearing, and it was filled with people that smelled strongly of wolf to my nose. I know that to Chloe it was just filled with people, many of whom were dressed in jeans and shirts even as the evening temperatures continued to drop.
“So is the entire Pack here?” Chloe asked. I was proud of her. She didn’t bother to whisper, my girl was too smart for that. She crossed her arms, rubbing them slightly through the light sweatshirt she had dug out of the bag I had packed back in New York. It had only been a handful of days, but it felt as if considerably more time had passed considering everything that had happened and the long road that was still ahead of us.
“Cold?” I asked her and she shrugged.
“Maybe a little. I’m mostly just nervous about the…” she trailed off and looked around at the assembled members of the Pack. She gave me a meaningful look and I nodded.
“Try not to worry about it. We’re here to meet people, so let’s get to it.”
She was amazing. I led Chloe from one group of people to another and every person she met she introduced herself as the Daughter of Mathias Young. Reactions ranged from shock, to curiosity, to fear, or hatred and she handled each with aplomb.
“I never knew anything about what my father has been doing, and I don’t agree with it in the slightest,” she was saying a few hours later. “I met Romulus and Remus though, about six to eight months ago in my father’s home. They were introduced to me as Roman and Remy Dulcet, as clients of my father’s accounting business.”
“Names that Remus made up years ago,” I pointed out for the twentieth time.
“And for good reason.”
I wish I had been paying closer attention. I wish I had considered what Markus had been saying in the Jeep. This meeting was to meet the candidates for Alpha. Rom had made it pretty clear that he and Remus wanted a shot, so of course they would be here as well.
Without thinking my arm went around Chloe’s waist, pulling her against me. She stiffened and let out a slight squeak as Remus rounded from behind us.
“Yeah,” I said, turning to face my brother. “You wouldn’t want Romulus’ unstable temper to cause trouble out amongst humans. He’s a danger that would just draw the Hunters’ attention to us.”
“Like you haven’t? Kidnapping the daughter of The Hangman? Mathias Young is by far one of the most ruthless members of an already ruthless organization that have spent centuries attempting to hunt our entire species to extinction!” He raised one hand, shoving one accusing finger into my face in a perfectly dramatic display. “You’re more of a danger to our Pack than anyone else and least fit to be the new Alpha.”
“So if anyone should be the Alpha it should be you, is that right Remus?” I asked. He grinned and shook his head.
“Not me,” he said. He turned to his right and pulled Romulus over to stand beside him. “Romulus. He’s the strongest and he loves this Pack and its members with more passion than anyone I have ever seen–”
“And he helped orchestrate the murder of your last Alpha!” Chloe interrupted him and Romulus let out a harsh growl for a moment before he could stop himself. “I’m just a human, and worse, the daughter of a Hunter. But you all know that already. I’ve been saying it all night. I’ve admitted where I came from and that I don’t know all the details around here. I don’t know your laws and your culture, but it seems to me that patricide is probably something that would be frowned on in any culture, don’t you think?” she arched one golden-red brow and stared my brother down.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about you little bitch!” Romulus growled and he reached out and grabbed hold of the front of her sweatshirt.
I saw his hand moving and in the
same instant I responded. My arm cocked back and shot forward. His fingers closed on her zipper, just as my knuckles slammed into the side of his jaw with as much force as I could muster with being off balance like I was. All around us chaos erupted as people started yelling. Grasping hands reached for us and beneath all that a loud ripping sound echoed in my ear and I saw the manic grin that lit up Rom’s bloodied face as his eyes locked on the bite, now a newly healed scar, on Chloe’s’ shoulder.
Damn it!
“STOP IT!” Markus bellowed and everyone froze. Silence fell over the clearing. Rom pushed himself to his feet and spat a mouthful of blood to the side before he straightened up and glared at me.
“You’re going to get yourself into more trouble than you can deal with one of these days, Little Cub,” he sneered at me. “You don’t deserve to be the Alpha!” With that he turned and stalked away into the night outside the reach of the firelight.
The positive vibe that I had been getting from the crowd vanished rather quickly. And the smug grin that Remus gave me didn’t make me feel any better about the situation.
“Something’s not right here,” I muttered to no one in particular ten minutes later. The meeting was beginning to break up, people starting to gather their belongings to leave.
“What is it, Son?” Markus asked.
“Rom left too easy, and Remus is still here, he looks smug too.”
“So?” Markus glanced over at Remus standing a few yards away with his hands shoved in his jeans pockets. “What’s that matter?”
“Have you ever seen the one of the twins without the other being nearby?” I asked. “Ever?”
Markus frowned as he considered that. “Rom is still around here somewhere. But why?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out. He already did enough damage pointing out that I brought a hunter’s daughter– NO!” I had turned as I spoke, unconsciously looking for Chloe in the crowd and when I spotted her the entire purpose behind Remus and Romulus’ lingering presence fell into place for me.
Off to my right, about twenty feet away Remus stood, watching me, an openly curious look on his face. Forty feet away, directly across the clearing from me stood Chloe next to Nora. The two were talking amiably enough and behind them, running silently on four feet came Rom in his wolf form. Not his Hybrid. I rushed forward but there was no way I would make it in time.
He leaped into the air and a low, thunderous growl echoed across the clearing. He body checked Nora in midair, sending her flying before he planted all four paws into Chloe’s back and knocked her onto her stomach, his teeth flashed once, gleaming in the torchlight.
“Romulus no!” Remus shouted and Chloe screamed my name, panicked.
“William!” Rom’s head darted forward and then reared back, his teeth stained with a splash of crimson.
The agonized scream that tore its way out of Chloe’s throat reached in through my ears, past the human portion of my brain, grabbed my wolf and pulled, hard. I barely remember what happened next. A red film of pure rage coated my vision and the next clear memory I have was of lying in the dirt with my arms held and a heavy weight across my back.
“No, Kid, you can’t do anything right now,” Markus was shouting insistently in my ear. Someone was screaming over and over, a masculine counterpoint to Chloe’s high shrieks and cries of pain. Took me a moment to realize it was me.
“Calm down Pup, you don’t want to do this right now,” Remus said. He was on my right, my arm held in a complicated hold that I couldn’t pull free of. He sounded almost as stunned as the rest of the wolves standing around openmouthed.
“I’m going to kill you both, you motherfucker!” I roared in his face. He didn’t even blink, taking my anger calmly.
“And you probably have every right to, but you’re not going to do anything. Not right now.”
Rom stood across from us, back in human form. He’d acquired a pair of pants from somewhere, thankfully. At his feet Chloe lay in a crumpled heap, sobbing, screaming from the pain. The initial bite hurt like a motherfucker. Like your blood had been replaced with acid from the sight of the wound, spreading throughout your whole body. Not everyone survived a bite to become wolf-kind…
“Chloe!” I screamed while the Pack stood around us, some of them muttered quietly, angrily, but I couldn’t tell with who, Romulus or me.
Blood had already begun to pool beneath her from the deep lacerations in the shoulder opposite my bite mark. She bit down on her cries and whimpered, tears streamed down her face as her blue eyes met mine across the pine and leaf litter. The pain in those eyes, that had just hours before sparkled with her smile, fuck, it tore at me.
“Chloe!” I screamed again and struggled anew against the hold they had on me. I just managed to shake Markus loose enough that I got my arm free, twisted and punched Remus as hard as I could throwing him back and away from me. I heaved off whoever had been on my back and lurched to my feet, sprinting across the grass toward the vertical dead man I had my eyes set on. Rom simply grinned as a weight slammed into me and I was driven face first into the dirt again. Chloe screamed, her voice high and tight with fear and enough to make everyone wince at the sound.
“Shut up!” Rom yelled. He spun and one foot lashed out catching Chloe squarely in the face and sending her sprawling in the dirt, almost close enough for me to reach her.
A hand came down into my view, grabbing Chloe’s sweatshirt and ripping it the rest of the way off her body, exposing the healed scar on her shoulder.
“So! Baby Brother chooses a mate,” Rom said mockingly, with a heavy sneer. “And not only that, but he chooses a Hunter’s bitch, I mean, bad enough to be human but one of theirs?” He threw back his head and laughed uproariously as the muttering spread through the crowd even louder and faster.
“I’m going to fucking kill you!” I swore and he looked down at me, disdain clear on his face.
“You can’t touch her right now. I’ve bitten her. She’s Moon Forged, and by Pack law, my progeny. She’s mine now.” He picked her unconscious body up and threw her casually over his shoulder as I started fighting against my new captors.
“I’ll kill you!” I screamed.
Without a word he turned and walked away, Remus joining him with one last backward look at me, the expression on his face dispassionate but also, spooked somehow.
“Do you hear me, Romulus?” I screamed my throat raw. “Do you hear me? I’m going to fucking kill you, you motherfucker!”
***
A couple of hours later Markus was shaking his head at me as we stood in my shop.
“It’s not good, Boy,” he uttered. I could have guessed that but I grunted quietly to tell Markus I was listening.
“I’m serious!”
“I get it. Start talking and give me something I can work with. Give me some fucking options, Man, because I’ll tell you, I’m really not in the fucking mood, Markus.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me away from the tree sculpture.
“A little under three hours ago you were beaten by Romulus.”
“And thank you for twisting the knife,” I snapped and threw down the rag in my hand.
“I’m not twisting the knife, Boy! I’m trying to explain the lay of the political land to you. Jesus! So instead of sulking like the goddamned Cub Rom is forever calling you, you might want to get your head out of your ass and try listening to me.
“Now Romulus beat you. Not physically, he outsmarted you this time around. The Pack doesn’t feel very secure with the idea of you as our Alpha if you couldn’t even protect your mate from your own damn brother. You should have known better than anyone what he’s capable of.”
I lowered my head and he stood there, pushing me up against the side of the tree.
“Look at me,” he snapped. “The Pack has already decided that Rom should be the new Alpha, it’s over, unless you exercise your singular right in this situation. It’s your last option and it might be your only chance to get
your woman back so I suggest you take it! Even if I think it’s a damned fool idea.” He shook his head, “I ain’t blind, William. I saw the way you looked at her before you called me in a panic, you were already mated. Didn’t need no bite to seal the deal.”
I said nothing and after a minute he sighed and let me go. I took up the rag I had dropped and turned back to the tree, wiping away the dust that had accumulated on the surface where I needed to attach another branch for the canopy support. When I said nothing, Markus sighed again and turned away.
“Markus?” I said when he reached the door and pulled it open.
“What is it, Son?”
“I need to tell the Arbiter something.”
He hesitated for a second. “Well, I am the Arbiter.”
“I know.”
“What did you need to say then?”
“I need the Arbiter to tell Romulus that I, William Reese, am issuing a formal challenge of combat for the position of Alpha of the Pacific North West Pack which holds the Washington Territory.”
There was a heavy silence for a moment, and when he spoke again I could almost hear the pride in his voice through the fear.
“The challenge will commence on the next full moon, as dictated by tradition,” he uttered.
“Conditions of the challenge?” I asked, to be clear.
“Winner of the challenge will become the new Alpha, barring another challenge from someone else.”
“And the loser?” I just needed to hear him say it.
“The loser won’t have much to worry about. You know as well as I do that to wolf-kind you haven’t won a challenge if your opponent is still breathing.”
Chapter 14
Chloe
I winced, and raised my hand to my face which itched. Something flaked, under my nose, over my mouth and I squeezed my eyes shut, opening them onto an unfamiliar bedroom done in grays and blacks. I pulled my hand away from my face and winced at the flakes of dried blood there.
