My father would have halted the current craziness with one short bark, much like the one I'd used to allow the mountain lion to escape. Heck, no one would have even considered fighting while the Chief was around in the first place. But, instead of speaking, I stood frozen, two dueling sensations turning my legs to jelly and staying the words before they could leave my throat.
First came the realization that I could feel Fen's pain whirling through my own body, another surprising side effect of being pack leader. The physical agony was intense, but more punishing was the realization that my own wolf refused to put her power behind our shared voice. Not our pack, the canine growled, turning her back on the scene of carnage in front of us, and I could see her point, not being particularly keen on accepting Drew as part of my family at the moment either. But couldn't my wolf also see that if I opened my mouth without her consent, the alpha command that had so easily rolled forth earlier would be absent from my tone? And if we failed to command Drew to halt, then the young woman who had become one of my closest friends would continue to writhe in agony.
To make matters worse, werewolves can't stand a power vacuum. The instant Drew sprang, every eye turned in my direction, but when I seemed either unable or unwilling to respond, my pack mates quickly took matters into their own hands. Wade didn't even bother to shift back into lupine form before wrapping his powerful arms around my cousin's furry throat, and, to my profound relief, David sprang forward on four paws to help the yahoos as well.
But it wasn't a simple matter of two against one. Hawk was still on the other side of the clearing, but my two older uncles saw no reason not to take a stand. And, to my chagrin, they clearly sided with Fen's opponents.
Luckily, my tongue unfroze before the last two shifters could join in the fray, and my wolf's grudging support of my tardy command at last halted the carnage. But the damage had been done. Fen's arm dangled at a sickening angle from her shoulder, and the battle lines within my pack had been clearly drawn. Finally, adding insult to injury, Thomas Bell took one last look back at our fraying pack, then shook his head and strode away into the tree line without speaking a single word.
***
I wish I could say that what I did next was spurred by passionate temper, but I'm afraid that, in the aftermath of Fen's injury, I was as cold and hard of an alpha as ever my father had been. Everyone knew that Drew had to be punished, and if I wanted to even pretend that I was this pack's leader, I was the one who would have to carry out that punishment. Plus, to make matters worse, werewolves believed in an eye for an eye justice. Or, in this case, an arm for an arm. So even though I had hoped to end this night without more bloodshed, my teeth were the ones next responsible for puncturing skin.
"Shift," I commanded my unruly cousin, and the single word was as hard as flint, backed by wolf and human alike. Drew fell to the ground as his body reformed itself into a human against his conscious volition, and when the shifter rose to his knees at last, his chest was heaving from the effort of fighting against a forced shift. For those who weren't as fully in tune with their wolf as I was, our transformations were always slightly painful, and I imagined the discomfort was much worse if you were made to change forms against your will.
But that was just the start of the agony I planned to inflict upon my cousin. Keeping my eyes firmly latched onto Drew's, I allowed my own body to melt into lupine form, and without pausing, I walked slowly forward, deliberately closed my jaws around Drew's upper arm, and then clenched my teeth together until I could feel blood oozing from the sore. Finally, as my cousin's arm twitched within my mouth, I bit down yet harder until Drew was screaming in pain and I could feel his bone splintering between my teeth.
Releasing my prey as deliberately as I'd begun, I spat my cousin's salty blood out onto the forest floor, and then regained human form. The pain I'd created reverberated just as strongly through my bones as Fen's had, proving that "This hurts me more than it hurts you" was literally true for pack leaders. And my human half was sickened by what I'd been forced to do, forcing me to close my eyes for a moment in order to squelch the nausea that churned through my gut.
When I was finally able to shake the groggy pain out of my body, I was glad to see that Fen had already shifted back to lupine form, the action resetting her bone, although not healing the break. Wade and David were working to create a crude splint from two branches and some frayed vine fibers, and my Uncle Hawk was preparing a similar dressing for Drew.
Which left my two troublesome uncles to deal with. My father, I knew, would have repeated the arm-breaking exercise in order to discipline both of these shifters in the same way I'd chastened Drew, but even my inner wolf cringed at the extremity of such a punishment. After all, my uncles hadn't actually caused any physical harm, and it could have been argued that they'd jumped into the fight only to protect Drew from being torn apart by two over-zealous defenders.
On the other hand, I knew deep down in my gut that my uncles' actions had been meant as the first sally in a campaign to undermine my authority. Added to which, I suspected that, in the long run, two additional broken bones now might be kinder than letting my relatives' insolence fester into a true division of leadership within the Wilder clan. Because, assuming everyone didn't simply ally with my detractors and take me down in a pile of teeth and claws, a power struggle at the top of our pack would result in endless scuffles between neighbors lower down the social pyramid, the divisiveness growing until our clan had splintered into a dozen warring factions. I'd watched other packs descend into this kind of infighting before, our wolf nature making many shifters unable to hold themselves back from displays of dominance even if the ends didn't justify the means. And although some of my father's decisions had seemed overly harsh in the past, I knew that the Chief's firm hand had protected my relatives from civil war.
So I knew I should do the right thing and stop this bloodbath before it began. But I couldn't bring myself to do the deed. Instead, I simply set my uncles an arduous and time-consuming task and hoped that I would be able to find a way to further undermine their coup before it evolved any further.
"Wade, Fen, David, and Hawk will come home with me and will attend All-Pack," I said clearly, my words carrying to every ear and stilling the aid-workers' ministrations. Then, pushing the alpha dominance that I'd been forced to use multiple times already this night back into my voice, I finished: "The rest of you can walk back to Haven...and stay there."
Chapter 10
I woke far too early due to the sound of timid tapping on my bedroom door. The members of my pack who had been allowed to ride home via motorized transport had returned to Haven in the wee hours of the morning, and, for once, none of us was interested in the dawn feast that usually followed our midnight hunt. Instead, we'd each gone straight to our respective beds, which I'd hoped would at least mean enjoying a good night's sleep before I had to put out any more metaphorical fires.
However, my father clearly had other plans for this final day before our entourage headed to the regional gathering. "Terra?" Cricket's timid voice filtered through the wooden door, and I rose quickly to prevent my stepmother from waking Fen. The young woman was usually unwilling to be set apart from her male companions by dint of preferential treatment, but she'd readily accepted the offer of my spare bed last night, proving that the yahoo's pain and exhaustion was more extreme than she let on. It couldn't have been easy to limp home on three legs last night, but Fen had somehow managed to keep up with our descent down the mountain, never so much as uttering a single whimper of complaint. Still, the female yahoo's lips had been white by the time we'd reached our cars, and I hoped she'd be able to rest and heal for a few more hours at least before embarking on two weeks of roughing it in a wintry campsite. So I grabbed my clothes as soon as I heard Cricket's voice, then I tiptoed outside, pulling the door closed behind me.
As I emerged, I could immediately smell my father's scent wafting up the stairs from the lower level of the house. Oh goody, anothe
r visit from Crazy Wilder, I thought grimly. But there was no easy way to avoid my visitor, so I pattered barefoot down the stairs to face the music.
Unfortunately, the ensuing confrontation had a larger-than-expected audience. Cricket's sitting room was already filled to the brim with my father in his rare human form plus a heaping handful of menacing Wilder males by the time I came into view. Meanwhile my allies—the yahoos—were notably absent. Since the latter had spent the night camped out on the same sofas that my uncles and cousins were currently sprawled across, it was clear that this ambush had taken some effort to set up. Someone must have sent the yahoos off on a wild-goose chase and then assembled the ranks of my detractors at the crack of dawn, a sally that had my father's name written all over it.
As I took in the scene in front of me, I saw that the Chief was smiling and that his wolf danced with the glee of having pulled the wool over my eyes. In response, the least helpful emotion of all—anger—rose up within my breast. I'd rolled over and let my father manipulate me several times over the last few weeks, but something about this most recent entrapment felt like the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps my ire was raised because my father was working against his own best interests now—by berating me in front of the pack that I was so tenuously heading up, the Chief would undermine my authority and make his entire scheme pointless. Which, in turn, made my teeth grind in frustration. Why couldn't Crazy Wilder have simply left me alone and remained alpha himself if he so badly wanted to head up the Wilder pack?
So I didn't even take the time to fully waken my wolf, and I certainly didn't bow down beneath the Chief's cold stare the way I would have in the past. Instead, I stopped midway down the steps, from which vantage point I towered above the room's inhabitants despite my smaller stature. And I let loose every grievance that had built up within my mind over the last few weeks.
"So you're here to tell me what to do again?" I spat out, not caring if I sounded like a shrew. There was no longer any point in trying to beat my father at his games of alpha dominance, not since my other relatives' presence meant that I'd lost this fight before it truly began. "Let me guess," I continued, taking the stairs two at a time as my rage drew me toward the object of my exasperation. "You think attending All-Pack with a wounded woman and only three male shifters in my entourage is pure stupidity. You're going to tell me that I might as well just offer up my belly now and tell the other alphas to go ahead and tear out my entrails."
By this point, I had reached solid ground, where everyone towered above my head, my father most of all. But I didn't care if I was physically outclassed and if I could easily be dominated by my father's superior mental abilities. I was fed up with working so hard only to have the Chief tell me over and over again that I'd misstepped, and if I was going to go down, it would be a blaze of glory.
The frustrating truth was that I'd thrown everything I had into pulling the Wilder clan back together over the last couple of months, and I was no longer willing for my father to tell me that my best wasn't good enough. I'd woken early and gone to bed late, had avoided contacting my own mate, and had even broken Drew's bones between my teeth despite never wanting to see another drop of blood in my entire life. All of this to mop up the disaster that my father had left behind.
...And the Chief thought that, despite all of my pain and suffering, it was a good idea to berate me in front of the very people whom he wanted me to lead?
So I spoke my mind at last, all the while waiting for the other shoe to drop. "Well I've had it with you thinking you can lead this pack through me," I told my father, jabbing him in the chest with one hard finger. "If you're so sure that you can do a better job, then challenge me and see what happens. And if you're too afraid to step up to a fight, then get out of this house and...leave...me...alone."
My last words descended into a tone of quiet menace that I knew I couldn't physically back up, but I really didn't care at that point. I was done with being the Chief's puppet, and if my father wanted to take this pack away from me, then I would cheer and kiss the old shifter on both cheeks in gratitude. Then I'd skip off into the sunset with my mate and with the hodgepodge of werewolves who were already starting to feel more like family than my own did.
Finishing my rant, I waited, sure that my father would call my bluff. And, for a solid minute, we stood there, nose to nose...or rather, nose to collarbone.
Then my father simply shrugged and turned to leave. "On your head be it," he said simply, and to my surprise, the ranks of angry uncles and cousins filed out behind him without a word of complaint.
Meanwhile, I was left staring with my mouth wide open in disbelief. Because, even though it felt far too easy, it seemed that I had won.
***
I wasn't entirely sure that my father had actually capitulated rather than simply having wandered off to scheme at his leisure, but as the day progressed and everyone I met hopped to obey my commands, I slowly began to relax. Perhaps I really had stood up to my father and come out of the altercation triumphant. Perhaps I really could find a way to hold the Wilder clan together without losing myself in the process. Perhaps All-Pack wouldn't be so bad after all.
Of course, I should have known that my decisions wouldn't all go unchallenged.
But at first, the day seemed to be getting brighter rather than cloudier. When the male yahoos showed back up after lunch, cheeks red from what must have been an enjoyable run, I could smell the scent of blood on their human skins. These happy-go-lucky werewolves had made up for the anticlimactic nature of yesterday's hunt by finding a simpler prey animal to tear into shreds—a deer, if I didn't miss my guess. And while I envied the young shifters' simple good humor, their smiling faces also brought some much-needed cheer to my own mood.
"I hope you brought back something for Cricket to cook into our dinner," I told the yahoos sternly, but I couldn't maintain my acerbity and instead ended up smiling at the puppy-like grins on all three guys' faces. The simplicity of Wolfie's pack mates made my own Wilder relatives look even worse in comparison, and I wished that I could have simply thrown in the towel and let someone else take over my familial clan. But the relatives—like Hawk—who would have ruled fairly weren't the ones who would willingly fight for power, and I shivered to think what Haven would turn into if Drew or one of his cronies took control.
So I would keep fighting the uphill battle to take my father's place, but at least I could spend a little piece of today with Wolfie's youngsters in order to soak up their joie de vivre. "What are your plans for the rest of the morning?" I asked, once Wade had assured me that they'd saved not only the haunches, but also the tenderloin to be cooked up in my stepmother's kitchen.
The guys exchanged glances, and then the youngest spoke. "Um, we were thinking of going to see Sarah. She seemed kinda lonely the other day...."
Instantly, my big-picture ruminations gave way to the necessities of the present, and I narrowed my eyes at Blaze, assessing his honesty. Sure, werewolves were pack animals, and we didn't do well in solitary confinement. But I suspected that my Aunt Bev was keeping Sarah quite happy and healthy all on her own. In the meantime, if the girl wanted to talk to someone closer to her own age, David would be just down the hall.
So I suspected that the purpose of the yahoos' visit had less to do with humanitarian aid and more to do with Blaze's crush on Justin's cast-off mate. In which case, the question became—should I try to stifle the pairing before it truly began? Politically, having one of our yahoos hook up with Sarah would cause problems since Justin was just the sort of alpha who wouldn't want anyone else laying hands on his ex-mate, even if the shifter no longer considered the girl to be worth his while to house and feed. But I was already dealing with plenty of political problems, so one small additional issue barely raised my eyebrows.
Instead, my biggest consideration was trying to figure out what would make my own pack happiest. Blaze was young and hotheaded, but he was also loyal and lovable, and I figured that Sarah could d
o much worse than having a shifter like him as her mate. In addition, I suspected that another werewolf in her corner might make Sarah more likely to fight for her life in the battle that loomed on the horizon, and the girl would definitely need all of the odds tilted in her favor if she was going to survive.
So I shrugged off my reservations and didn't make waves, but I did opt to join the yahoos in checking on our guest. And that was my biggest mistake of the day. Because Sarah would never have built up the courage to come to me on her own, so if I'd just begged off from that visit, then half of the drama during the ensuing week would never have occurred.
But that's twenty-twenty hindsight, which never did anyone any good. And, at the time, I thought it would be a nice gesture for the reigning alpha to make sure that our guest was settling into her new home. So I tagged along...and started the chain of events that would eventually lead to even more pain and suffering.
***
"I'm glad you came by," my aunt greeted us as our foursome filed into her living room once again. Fen was still ensconced in Cricket's upstairs room, her lupine nature making it easy to enter a state of hibernation in preparation for the effort that was to come. But Wade and Glen had opted to join us rather than letting me and Blaze visit Sarah alone, and this time they'd even remembered to wipe their feet on Bev's welcome mat.
"How's your patient feeling?" I responded for the group, noticing that my aunt hadn't lowered her voice the way I would have outside Fen's sick-room door. I hoped that the midwife's normal tone meant that Sarah was feeling better, and my wish was soon born out when the girl in question came pattering down the hallway with sleekly brushed hair and even a dash of makeup on her cheeks and lips. In fact, our guest was in such perky good health that I almost thought Bev had planted another young werewolf to take the place of the wilting flower whom I'd met just a few days before. But when I peered closer with my lupine eye, I could see that there was still a spark of life within Sarah's womb, and that the spark definitely boasted a tail. So our guest wasn't healed, but at least she was feeling much better.
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