“I would challenge her,” Rhianne nodded. “But it would be irrelevant.” She turned to face Gia, a spark of grim satisfaction lighting her eyes. “Since she is not our lupa anymore.”
Chapter 13
The pack erupted into a chorus of questions. Before Gia could call for silence, Rhianne raised her hands and the talking stopped. Her wolf’s fur bristled as she watched her pack obey the commands of another female. Something was wrong.
“What do you mean Gia is not our lupa anymore?”
“As I watched Claudiu attack Gia, this man,” she pointed to Sorin, “entered the room and took up the battle. Letting someone else fight the challenge fight constitutes a forfeit. By right of combat, Claudiu is our lycaeon. And he is single.”
“I choose Rhianne for my lupa,” Claudiu shouted.
Rhianne’s smile widened. “I accept.”
Gia’s head spun and bile teased the back of her throat. In a matter of seconds, her world had gone from a dream to a nightmare. She looked around at the faces of her pack mates, dismayed at the looks of discomfort she saw as they turned away from her.
“Technically she’s right,” a voice admitted.
“If he interrupted the fight then Gia forfeits.”
Pain burned in the tears behind Gia’s eyes. A technicality. That’s all it was. No one here could really call Claudiu attacking her a “challenge fight.” Nor could they really consider Sorin’s intervention a forfeit on her part. They were all allowing a technicality to remove her as lupa. How could she have lost their loyalty so completely?
“Now that that’s settled,” Rhianne spoke up. “I have another announcement.” She turned to Claudiu. “You are no longer my mate. Will you back down willingly or do you wish to fight me for leadership?”
Stunned silence echoed in the room. Claudiu’s jaw dropped, horror turning his face white. “What did you say?”
“Just because Gia saddled our pack with a weak mate, doesn’t mean I’m willing to do the same,” Rhianne sneered. “Now answer me. Will you bow down gracefully or do you want to fight?”
Gia looked at Claudiu and almost felt pity. Almost. He’d finally gotten his wish. She couldn’t protect him now, even if she wanted to. When an alpha pair decided to split, whoever’s decision it was, one of them either had to bow out of the leadership role or they had to fight to see who remained alpha. A challenge between alphas often ended in death. It was time to put his money where his mouth was.
Her gaze returned to Rhianne. She would slaughter Claudiu. Gia had accepted her into the pack two years ago because she believed Rhianne would be a powerful addition to the pack. She was strong and ruthless and seemed a perfect fit for the Furies, the punishers of the pack. She had taken to her role with zeal and Gia had always suspected one day the other woman would make her play for lupa.
“I yield.”
Claudiu’s whisper came almost too quiet for anyone to hear. Fortunately, he was in a room full of weres and their hearing could pick up even the most hesitant of surrenders. Before anyone could react, Rhianne pointed across the room.
“I choose Byron as my lycaeon.”
Gia’s eyes shot open so wide she half expected her eyeballs to pop out. Rhianne continued to shock her. How long had she been planning this? How long had she sat there plotting each move as carefully as a game of chess? She turned with the rest of her pack as they faced Byron, the man mountain who had served as Gia’s beta for the last twenty years.
Rhianne’s announcement seemed to come as just as much of a surprise to him as it did to everyone else. Byron’s bulk took up a full corner of the cabin, his thickly muscled chest and huge arms making him impossible to miss, even if he wasn’t seven foot four and nearly five hundred pounds. Despite his size, Byron had no interest in leading, preferring to play beta to an alpha he respected. He stared at Rhianne.
“This is unexpected.” His deep rumbling bass rolled like thunder through the room. He turned to Gia. “Are you going to fight for your position back?”
Before Gia could answer, Rhianne’s voice cracked like a whip over her skin. “She cannot challenge me until you have either accepted or rejected my offer! If you accept, she must find a man to fight a paired challenge. I think I know who she’ll choose.” She pointedly looked at Sorin, who stood in the back of the room, watching the goings on with a look of interest in his eyes. “The same man she will no doubt choose as her lycaeon should she be given the opportunity.”
Again, the room exploded into chaos as everyone spoke at once.
“A vampire can’t be our lycaeon!”
“He’s not a werewolf!”
A hush fell over the room and Gia didn’t have to look to know what had happened. Sorin had taken his wolf form, silencing the crowd with a wave of shock. She stood on the couch, steeling herself to bear the brunt of her pack’s outrage.
“He’s a wolf!”
“He just changed his shape! He’s not a real werewolf, it doesn’t count!”
“He smells like a wolf!”
“He’s a vukodlak!” Gia announced loudly. Her pack turned to face her, questioning looks painting their faces.
“What’s a vukodlak?”
Several voices echoed the question and Gia held up her hands for silence. “A vukodlak is a person who lived life as a werewolf and became a vampire after death. Sorin is a werewolf—and a vampire.”
Of all the faces in the room, the one she couldn’t meet was the one burning a hole in her face. Trying not to be sick, Gia forced herself to meet Byron’s eyes. The intensity of the betrayal on his face hit her like a physical blow and she winced.
Byron’s wife had been killed by a vampire five years ago. Sorin hadn’t been part of the killing, but that didn’t matter. Vampires were the one area in which the gentle giant truly showed the level of rage that made his body into the devastating weapon it could be. Rhianne had just made it crystal clear that if Byron didn’t agree to be her lycaeon, Gia would fight a challenge fight against her and, if she won, announce Sorin as Byron’s new alpha.
“Is it true?” he said quietly, pain and rage fighting for a place in his voice. “Would you make that murderer our lycaeon?”
Byron had been loyal to her for over two decades. She couldn’t lie to him. “I don’t know.”
“Will you swear now, that you wouldn’t?”
Tears burned in her eyes again and she had to fight to keep them from forming. “No.”
He turned back to Rhianne, visibly straightening himself as if preparing for something unpleasant. “I accept.”
Rhianne turned to Gia with a triumphant look on her face. Gia’s heart turned to stone and nearly shattered. Rhianne had won. Gia had failed her pack, let their faith in her vanish so completely that Rhianne had been able to walk up and take everything that had ever meant anything to her. In less than an hour, her life had fallen to shambles. Numbness leaked over her even as she felt an unbelievable pain brewing inside her.
“I’ll be leading the hunt tonight, Gia. I’ll understand if you want to sit this one out. When we return though, I will expect you at the sacred circle.” A shadow crossed Rhianne’s face and she looked at Gia with an expression the older woman couldn’t quite make out. “You’ll have a choice to make then, Gia. Challenge me with a mate of your choosing—or swear an oath of servitude to me.”
Gia clenched her hands into fists, refusing to give in to the vortex of emotions that erupted like a tornado inside her. An oath of servitude would forbid her from ever challenging Rhianne in the future. If she refused the oath, Rhianne would be within her rights to banish her from the pack.
She turned to face her pack, drawing herself up to her full height and using every ounce of her self-control to hold her spine ramrod straight. Her gaze traveled over the room, meeting the eyes of every individual in the room.
“I’ve been a good lupa for you,” she said quietly, but firmly. “I’ve kept you safe, kept you fed. I’ve helped more than one of you through your first chang
e, cried with you as you said good-bye to your human lives. You have all been like family to me.” She raised a hand and pointed to Rhianne. “Some of you begged me not to let Rhianne into our pack. When she came to us she reeked of old blood and had the light of insanity dancing in her eyes. Some of you said that witnessing the massacre of her last pack had broken her, had made her too dangerous to be welcomed into our pack.”
She lowered her arm. “I took her in anyway because I know what it means to be a true lupa.” Her eyes darted over to Sorin and she could feel her heart soften for him. “You don’t turn someone away because they are damaged. It is the ones who seem so damaged that truly benefit from the loving comfort of a pack. I believed we could heal Rhianne and I took her in anyway.”
A spike of anger pierced her warm feelings and she let it burn her eyes as she glared at her pack. “Claudiu did not instigate a challenge fight. We fought, as lovers do. Rhianne is trying to use our fight as a technicality to become lupa because she knows she could not do it any other way.” She took a deep breath, so angry and hurt she could barely breathe. “And you all are letting her get away with it. Not one of you males would pair up with Rhianne to fight a challenge fight before tonight—and why? Because you know I am the better lupa. Why don’t you—”
“You were the better lupa.”
The voice echoed into the room like a cannon fired over a peaceful village. Gia’s stomach clenched as Marco stepped forward, his face a mask of quiet anger.
“You have something to say, Marco?” Gia fought not to wince as the catch in her voice. In her mind’s eye she could still see Marco’s neck gushing blood from where Sorin’s fangs lay buried in his flesh. Worse, she could still feel the thrill of desire that had run down her spine as she watched Sorin do it, turned on by the fact that he’d fought for her and won.
“You were a good lupa, Gia. For years.” He pointed a finger at Claudiu, disgust clear in his eyes. “Then you saddled us with him. We begged you not to do it, but you made him our lycaeon. He is too weak, physically and politically, to be lycaeon and you knew it. You made us show him respect anyway, you punished us if we dared to make our opinions known. We put up with it for years because we knew you loved him and you’d been so good to us we didn’t want to lose you.”
He rubbed his hands over his face and shook his head. When he finally lowered them his eyes seemed half dead. “Aphrodite’s Hunt was our chance for a win-win. The goddess of love would have found you a mate who could make you happy, one who could also serve our pack the way a lycaeon is meant to.” He stared into her eyes and Gia suddenly couldn’t swallow past the lump in her throat. “But you failed us. You insulted us once again with your choice—a vampire. Byron has served as your beta for years, how could you do this to him?”
She couldn’t speak. No matter how hard she tried to force her brain to work, no words would come to her aid. The back of her head burned and she knew Byron was watching her.
“Rhianne may be using a technicality to unseat you, Gia,” Marco said quietly. “But we are all behind her.”
Anger, frustration, and fierce helplessness raged inside her until it all came to a peak. Drowning in her own emotions, Gia fought to keep her feet under the weight of her pack’s condemnation. Heat built in her cheeks until her head swam with it. Her life as lupa flashed through her eyes. She’d been a good lupa. It made this betrayal sting all the more.
A furred head prodded her hand and she looked down to see Sorin’s huge white wolf form staring up at her. He butted her body with his head, but she couldn’t quite get the energy to smile at him. His affection couldn’t heal the damage her pack had inflicted on her.
He growled and nipped at her leg and she yelped. Staring at him in shock, she barely noticed the whispers of her pack around her. Preferring to concentrate on anything other than her response to Marco’s condemnation, she focused on Sorin.
He rose up onto two legs, his paws on her shoulders. She stared at him like he was insane, dumbfounded as to what he was trying to tell her. Too frustrated to try and guess, she reached inside him and took hold of his human form, pulling it free from the wolf’s body and freeing him to speak.
Before she could ask him what he wanted, Sorin took her hands in his.
“Gia,” he said, loud enough to be sure the entire room heard. “Will you fight with me for leadership of the Red Water Clan?”
The room erupted into howls of objection.
“You cannot fight a challenge fight, you are not a werewolf.”
Rhianne’s voice pierced the din of objections and the room fell silent. All eyes turned to Gia. It was a small comfort to her that they still looked to her at times like this. Her reactions still mattered.
“Gia is not lupa! It is up to me to say who can and who cannot fight in a challenge!”
Before Gia could respond, Sorin squeezed her hand. He faced Rhianne.
“Over a month ago, Gia offered me entrance to the Red Water Clan. At the time, she was still lupa. As such, I believe I have been recognized as werewolf enough to fight.”
Rhianne’s face nearly turned purple as her features contorted with rage. She opened her mouth to retaliate, but Byron cut her off.
“I will fight him.”
Shock replaced the anger on Rhianne’s face. “Don’t be a fool, Byron. We can keep him from fighting—”
Byron turned to Rhianne and Gia’s eyes widened at the expression on his face. She’d never seen the gentle giant look so . . . dangerous.
“I said, I will fight him,” he repeated quietly. “I am lycaeon, am I not?”
Rhianne nodded, but her face clearly said she wasn’t happy. It raised Gia’s spirits to see a flaw in Rhianne’s precious plan. The upstart had clearly not counted on Byron wanting an active role as lycaeon. His contentment at being Gia’s beta had obviously lead her to believe Byron would be a figurehead and nothing more.
Gia’s pleasure was short lived. When Byron turned to look at Sorin, she saw a hatred in his gaze that inspired a primal fear down to the depth of her being.
“We will fight tomorrow evening.”
Sorin bowed slightly. “I look forward to it.” He glanced at Gia. “That is, assuming my mate desires to fight with me?”
Gia looked at him, a swell of gratitude finally freeing the tears to fall from her eyes. “I will.”
Chapter 14
The tears in Gia’s eyes glistened like diamonds, nearly blinding Sorin with their radiance. Her face took up his entire world so that he was only barely aware of all the eyes watching them. He raised his hands to her cheeks, slowly lowering his head until his lips brushed hers. She came to him willingly, returning the kiss with all the tenderness he offered.
His body stirred as the taste of her mouth brought back his earlier desire. From the moment he’d taken her in his arms, his beast had gone from snarling demon to a contented wolf. It was as though a part of him had been missing and its absence had turned his world inside out. With Gia in his arms, he felt whole.
Waves of peace rolled over him as he pulled back from their kiss and gazed into her eyes. Taking her hand in his, he gently led her through the throng of werewolves toward the door. All eyes in the room bored into him and his wolf growled. He straightened his spine, looking into every set of eyes with the confidence of a man who knows he’s going to be alpha. One by one, the werewolves backed down, some just averting their eyes and some actually bowing their heads. He didn’t turn around to face Byron—that moment would come soon enough.
When they finally left the cabin, Sorin drew a breath of air into his lungs, inhaling the sweet perfume of the forest. Green life filled the air with its fresh scent, overlaying the moist earthy aroma of the dirt and leaves covering the forest floor. His nose twitched as it sorted through the myriad of scents.
“Since Rhianne is technically lupa now, this cabin is hers.”
Sorin winced at the sad tone in Gia’s voice. He cursed himself for getting so caught up in his own contentment that
he forgot what she’d just been through.
“Gia, of course you are welcome to come back to my home.”
The corners of her mouth tilted up. “It’s possible that some of my brethren may come looking for me to try and talk me out of fighting with you. I would hate to bring that down on your home.”
Something primal reared its head inside him and a surge of protectiveness flowed like molten lava through his muscles. Sorin stopped walking and jerked around to Gia. She gasped at his sudden movement and he took advantage of her surprise to grab her arms and pull her body to his. The denim of her jeans grated against his tender flesh, reminding him that while he was naked, she was still fully clothed.
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