This was only dialogue. He was talking at them, and they weren’t listening to a single damn thing.
“We know who has been doing all this,” Destiny said, managing to find his voice again. “We found them. We know where they are. We can make plans to fight back against them. We can make sure the city stays ours.”
“What do you mean, ours.”
Destiny was pretty sure his heart stopped beating altogether at this point, because the speaker giving voice to his bitterness was none other than Brock.
The leader pushed forward from where he had been standing with the rest of the crowd, his gaze sharp and intense. His solid form drew attention and focus like the moon pulled the tide, wrenching it around in his direction whenever he moved.
“You mean that you want it to belong to you,” Brock snarled. “Coming in here and telling your stories, trying to convince all of us that we should listen to you and a random omega that isn’t even in a position of authority.”
Markus’ shoulder twitched, the barest sign of a flinch at the words that must have wounded him deeply. Destiny moved forward, aiming to give Brock a piece of his mind, and then Markus cut him off by standing in front of him with one arm held out. The meaning was clear. Back off.
Heart aching, knowing this was as intensely against his better judgment as anything would ever be, Destiny moved back again.
Be careful, please.
Another slight twitch from Markus, though this one seemed different somehow. It was almost as if the other wolf heard his thoughts and reacted to it.
Markus’ strong, clear voice rang out through the park, bringing all the attention upon himself. The few humans who still lingered in the area, despite the threat of so many bikers in one spot, even turned in his direction. It was a command any alpha would have been proud of.
“I think I’m in exactly a position of authority, because I am one of the ones who was attacked. I know who attacked me. I saw him there. I heard the scheming, same as Dusty did. In fact, I think I know more about this whole thing than you do, Brock.”
Brock forced himself even further through the crowd, finally emerging through the last layer of bodies so he could stand directly in front of Markus. However, instead of addressing his brother, he spun around to face the assembly.
“These wolves have lied to both of us. I don’t care what side you’re on. They lied. They went behind our backs to do this, instead of confiding in us. And they did it for their own selfish gains.”
Destiny squared his shoulders, trying to hold back on the rage flooding through his entire body. The wolf inside him knew that it was being challenged, and it so desperately wanted to respond. Doing so would earn him no favors, it would in fact make Brock seem as if he was right. But goddamn, how good it would feel to give in to his instincts! They could battle this out, wolf to wolf, man to man, and the victor would have his way. That was, after all, the way of animals.
But, so was taking over territory, invading better land for the personal betterment of a pack.
They couldn’t go about this just as wolves, just as they couldn’t answer the challenge while relying only on the calculated thoughts of their human halves. There needed to be a balance struck here, somehow.
Markus growled softly, deep down in his chest. “That’s not fair, Brock. And that doesn’t matter right now. So, we did this together. Who else was going to? Not a single fucking one of you even tried to figure out what was going on. You just both blamed the other side. But Lethal Freedom isn’t the other side. Shadow Claws isn’t the other side. Those wolves, the ones who are responsible for the attacks, are the other side. You should be blaming them.”
“So says someone with a vested interest in all this,” someone muttered from the front row of the crowd.
Destiny turned in the direction of the speaker, horrified to recognize the voice as belonging to one of his own. “Excuse me? We have lost three wolves. That’s from both of our packs. We would have lost five if Reuben and Markus hadn’t survived this most recent attack. This isn’t going to stop. They’re going to keep attacking. Any one of you could be next. Shouldn’t all of you have a vested interest?”
He swept his gaze across the crowd, trying to judge reactions. A few wolves here and there looked appropriately bashful, like children scolded for being rude for no reason; also like a child in that situation, they didn’t seem regretful. They weren’t changing their minds, weren’t even considering listening.
This was all a lost cause. He was never going to get them to listen.
“I think Brock is right,” someone else said, to a scattered murmur of agreement. “This should have been both leaders. But it’s a leader and an omega.”
“Destiny’s trying to take advantage of us,” a Lethal Freedom wolf said.
“Shouldn’t listen to that fucking liar. He only wants to get laid.” This declaration was met without much support, unlike what the others were saying. Everyone knew this was more serious than a matter of sex.
“You’d think Destiny would know better than to deal with that jerk after what happened last time.”
More and more murmurs broke out, which might not really have been a problem if there weren’t so many wolves all trying to speak at once. They all wanted to be heard, to have their opinion come across as the most important. They meant well, Destiny knew. They all did. Each and every speaker believed wholeheartedly in what they were saying, believed that they were doing what was right. He wanted to love them for that, love the defense coming his way, but it was all so misguided. There were too many of them. They couldn’t think properly. The noise level rose as the members of the gathered crowd tried to speak over one another, though speaking quickly escalated into shouting.
Later, no one would be quite sure who threw the first blow. Even when asked directly, there was no one who professed to have seen or done it. Maybe it didn’t matter afterwards, though it damn sure mattered to Destiny at the time. He would have liked nothing more than to be able to grab the instigator and smack them upside their thick head for being so stupid.
Then again, that would have made him no better than them.
Either way, someone threw the first blow. A fight broke out, an alpha and a beta grappling so viciously they dropped to the ground. They rolled over and over together, fists flying, bodies writhing. Fangs flashed. Claws ripped. Fur appeared, and suddenly they were no longer men but animals. Where they knocked into other people, those people immediately dove into the fight to try and back up the person on their side. Like a droplet of water falling into a puddle, ripples of aggression radiated outwards until the crowd had become a chaos of motion. Everyone was fighting, throwing blows, biting, clawing, shoving. It was impossible to tell who was who. There was no separating one pack from another, no guessing who might once have been friends or foes.
Destiny stepped back as a beta wolf from Lethal Freedom careened in his direction, saliva trailing in strings from his open maw. The wolf sailed by with only inches to spare, landed, and then whipped back around with the extreme, careless sort of grace that only adrenaline can inspire. His gray fur bushed out, his hackles spiked up. His tail rose up high over his back in a subconscious display of aggression and dominance.
Destiny moved further back, holding out one arm in front of Markus as if this could possibly provide some form of protection for him.
Bracing itself, haunches bunching up, the beta wolf leaped through the air again.
Twisting around to the side, Destiny wasn’t quite fast enough. Claws sliced through the material of his shirt, barely nicking his skin between two ribs high up under his armpit. The scratch burned.
And he burned.
The rage burst outward from where he had been clutching at it, trying to hold it under wraps. His vision was swamped in a veil of red, turning the battle into a horrific vision of a crime scene where none had survived.
Omen, he thought, the single word slashing through his mind. In the next instant, he wasn’t thinking at all
. His hackles were up, fur sprouting rapidly across his entire body as he dropped to the ground and careened forward to tangle his claws in the beta’s fur.
He felt so fucking alive, so goddamn powerful. He could feel every tense muscle in his entire body, his bones like steel, his tendons like pistons. He was a machine of death, a beautiful design crafted all towards the purpose of killing.
He was alpha, more right now than he had ever been in his entire life.
A blur of fur and muscle shot out in front of him, as black as night and just as massive, shoving the beta away before Destiny could reach him.
The black wolf snarled, shouldering the beta roughly away. The size difference between them was more than a little substantial. Rather than pick a fight he couldn’t win, having regained some of his senses, the beta jumped back into the fray to find someone else to ravage.
Swinging around to face his new opponent, Destiny pulled his lips back from his teeth to expose the blunt, ripping curves of his fangs in all their glory. He pressed his ears back flat against his skull, narrowing his eyes.
The black wolf drew his head up, ears twitching forward for a moment in a gesture that Destiny almost missed, lost as he was in the midst of a storm of his own emotion. He drew back a step, uncertain, hesitating, struggling to figure out what that brief flicker of peaceful expression could possibly mean. The park had turned into a fucking war zone. There could be no peace, not even as much as he had wanted that to begin with.
He had wanted that, hadn’t he?
Stepping backwards again, Destiny blinked. Red rage pulsed in front of his eyes before abruptly dropping away, like a filter being removed from a digital picture. The black wolf snarled at him, no longer possessing any friendliness, and advanced on him to make up for the extra space that had been put between them.
Destiny blinked again and the fuzziness of the world went away, solidifying into the version of reality it should have been. His blood was still up, heart pounding so hard he could feel it shaking through his entire body, but things were no longer soaked in a red glaze of anger.
He recognized the black wolf now. Cain.
Cain advanced on him again, bringing their bodies so close together they were nearly bumping snouts. Cain twisted his head to the side, then thrust his shoulder at Destiny’s chest.
Just before contact was made, Destiny realized what was happening. He staggered back with the shove, moving with it instead of being propelled by it. He kept a snarl plastered to his lips and flicked his ears forward to mimic the gesture Cain had made.
Bit by bit, Cain pretended to force him back from the main body of the battle. Destiny pretended his second-in-command was being successful in these attempts, staggering back and allowing himself to be knocked over when the feint called for it. By some miracle, no one seemed to notice this was happening.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t much of a miracle at all. Everyone else was fighting for their own lives. Why should he consider his to be important to them?
Cain pushed at him again. He wasn’t prepared for it this time and really did stagger, dropping down momentarily before he was able to push himself up again. As he was getting his paws underneath himself, Cain dashed around and swiped at his haunches with his blunt claws. No contact was made, although Destiny was so distinctly aware of those nails sliding through his fur that he could almost count exactly how many strands were pulled out.
Then, Cain darted back around in front of Destiny and shoved him again. His green eyes were open wide, filled with pleading.
It was the pleading look, the glimpse of fear, the shine of concern emanating from deep within Cain’s gaze, that really drove home what Cain was trying to accomplish. His loyal pack member, the voice of his second opinion, wasn’t just trying to keep him from getting hurt.
Cain wanted him to run, leaving this mess behind.
Destiny let out a soft whine, a plea in return. All the fight was draining from his body in the face of this conundrum, to the point where he couldn’t even pretend he was mad anymore. His fur flattened. His tail went down, brushing against the grass. His tight, impressive muscles suddenly felt like they were made of jelly.
Cain snarled. He whipped his head around, just in time to catch a fierce blow from another wolf who had apparently noticed the charade. His head snapped back in the other direction so hard that Destiny actually heard the joints creak with strain. Cain wasn’t one to take something like that lying down, and he whirled his body around with the motion of the blow so he came back and landed a fierce bite on his attacker’s flank. Blood sprayed from the bite wound, gushing into his face. The other wolf squealed, thrashing its body around furiously to try and dislodge Cain; tangling together, the two rolled over and over on the grass, biting and clawing without finesse or planning. There was only savagery, which could have been appropriate when given Cain’s last name of Savage. The only problem with that was Destiny didn’t know who was winning.
There couldn’t be a winner.
Not like this.
Throwing his head back, Destiny let out a howl of despair, whipped around in the direction of his motorcycle, and ran as fast as his four legs could take him. He felt others notice his escape, their eyes training on him like lasers from a sniper’s rifle, and they took off in pursuit. His breath started to rasp in his lungs almost immediately, his chest aching, his body rebelling against this action that it didn’t consider itself to be meant for. Teeth caught at his tail, ripped chunks of fur off his ass. Some wolf behind him kept getting so close that he could feel their breath on him, hot and foul, and their claws kept clipping against the backs of his rear paws and legs.
He didn’t dare turn around. He didn’t want to know exactly who might be chasing him. If he saw familiar faces back there, it just might kill him.
But, at the same time, it seemed like he just might be killed anyway. He hadn’t thought of the park as being so big, hadn’t realized how far in they were until he had to run for his life. He didn’t know if he could keep going like this.
His front paw came down hard on a pointed rock, puncturing straight through the pad. He hardly noticed the pain, wouldn’t have noticed the way blood spattered the grass now with every step, if he hadn’t also stumbled on the damn thing. He was going so fast, was so frantic to escape, that he kept going for nearly 20 feet while in the middle of falling the entire time.
His shoulder collided hard with the ground, grass ripping up at the roots with the force of his collapse. He tumbled, slid, and ended up facing back the way he’d come.
There was no one following him, because they were occupied with pouncing on top of an omega wolf a short distance away.
Destiny gave a snort of relief and was about to use this as his chance to get away when he realized exactly who that omega was. Silky dark brown fur, splashes of milk-white.
It was Markus, lying on his side, struggling to break free of his attackers. He nipped at one, shoved furiously at another who was bent over him with jaws parted for a devastating bite.
Lunging back around, Destiny raced to save the fallen omega. Red fury flooded over his gaze once more, and he sank into it like a frozen man into a hot bath, relieved and hurting all at once. Before, it had taken so much of his strength to keep running away, and now he felt so full of energy, so completely and utterly purposeful.
He hit the first attacker like a runaway freight train, shoving them with the broad side of his chest. The attacker flew through the air, entire body off the ground, before dropping back down hard. They lay there, chest heaving, unmoving.
Spinning around, Destiny lashed out with his paw and knocked away another wolf. This one was an omega, incredibly light on her feet; she twisted around in the air, landed, and then threw herself right back into the fray.
Snarling, Destiny lunged at the omega, slamming his paw down on her flank and then ripped his claws across her flank so deep and hard that he saw a flash of rib before blood welled up to disguise the bone.
Sh
rieking and squealing, her voice almost human in her despair and anguish, the omega fled. She left a trail of crimson across the grass.
Destiny didn’t stop to watch her go, didn’t feel any regret for what he’d done. In fact, the only thing that he was feeling now was satisfaction like nothing else. He had done what he had to, to protect what belonged to him.
Mine, he thought, while biting another wolf’s tail nearly in half. His claws scored through muscle, strips of flesh and fur littering the earth in a pile by the time his victim managed to escape.
Mine, he thought, wrapping both paws around someone’s head and smashing their face against the ground. Something in their snout shattered with a sound like shattering glass.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Suddenly, Destiny went to face another opponent and there was no one there. They had all fled. Throwing his head back, he let out a howl of triumph.
A hand clamped around his muzzle, cutting off his howl. He shook his head and stared in the direction of this new attacker, opening his jaws to bite.
Markus held his hands up, jumping back. He was smudged with blood, simply so much blood that there was no way of knowing how badly injured he was. “Don’t attack! It’s just me!”
Destiny stared up at him, mentally battling the fog of anger so thick in his thoughts. He blinked and the fog cleared. It really was only Markus, not yet another attacker. He wanted to ask Markus what the hell he was doing, being a human right now when he should have been relying on his wolf speed to get out of here.
Markus seemed to either be able to read his mind, or else decipher whatever look was on his face right now. “If you kept howling, you were going to bring attention to us! Look!”
Destiny turned to look in the direction where Markus was pointing. He saw the furious battle still raging in the middle of the park. No one seemed to notice that they were gone anymore.
“We can get out of here. But I’m not going to leave without you. Are you going to come?”
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