And there it was again. I was the alpha; Chase was putting my welfare above the pack’s. Love was so much less complicated when I was halfway dead.
As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, Chase gave a wry little smile and brought his head to rest on top of mine. I can’t help it, he said. And neither can you.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
The call pushed Chase back from my body, and as he melted into the rest of the pack, I searched for the right words to say to the others. Our pack had never been much on ceremony. On the nights when we ran together, the power just burst out of us, like water breaking through a hole in a dam. At most, I nodded to usher it in, but this wasn’t just another night at the clearing.
Too much had happened, and for better or worse, every single one of us was changed.
“Brothers and sisters.” Those were words I’d learned from Callum—or at least, the brothers part was. “Tonight we mourn the loss of one of our own. He will be remembered.” For a moment, I felt less like the alpha and more like myself. “I will remember him.”
Unbidden, Lucas stepped forward, and Chase matched the lone wolf’s movement with a subtle movement of his own, quiet and understated, even as he kept one eye on Lucas and one eye on me.
“We protect each other,” I continued, the words coming faster now. “That’s what packs do, and I like to think that even when we’re hurting, none of us are the kind of people who could hear a request for protection and turn that person away.”
I nodded to Lucas, who took another step toward me. The pack spread out around us, then crowded inward, until we were surrounded on all sides, alpha and lone wolf separated only by inches from the rest of the pack.
“We know what it’s like to be kicked around, to be small and weak and feel like no matter what happens, there’s never going to be a place where we really belong.” My breath turned to frost in the night air, and unwillingly, I shivered. “We were wrong.”
Normally, at this point, the alpha would call Lucas by his family ties, but I didn’t know his mother’s name, or his father’s, and I wasn’t about to mention his severed relationship with Shay.
“Lucas,” I said slowly, “beloved of Maddy, step forward.”
There wasn’t much of anywhere for Lucas to go, but the words and the ceremony of the moment seemed to have taken on a life of their own.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
The feeling rose inside me—unbearable ecstasy, unbridled joy. I lifted my right hand. Lucas knelt. The lines on the back of his neck—a half circle embedded with a four-pointed star—were still faintly visible, and in a single motion, I slashed my nails through them.
A tiny bead of blood rose on Lucas’s skin, mixing with sweat and adrenaline and the smell of things to come. I closed my eyes and reached for the connection, the invisible cord that tied me to Maddy and Chase and Lake, Lily, the twins, and all the others. I felt it.
I owned it.
And then I threw it at Lucas. Power surged through me. All around us, the others began to Shift. Lucas’s back arched, and his pupils went wild and wide.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
“You’re mine,” I whispered, “and you’re theirs, and all that we are is yours.”
The low hum of the others’ minds gave way to Lucas’s as a familiar scent filled the air.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
Lucas rose on unsteady legs. Maddy was beside him in an instant, and they leaned into each other, as if his body had been made only for hers. My stomach lurched, and without thinking, I reached for Chase, and he was there, beside me.
There as the urge to run became overwhelming.
There as I tasted something sharp and bitter and electric on my tongue.
Maddy must have felt it, too, because her face went pale and she stopped breathing, her chest frozen and still.
“I was always the weakest,” Lucas said, and though neither his tone nor his words surprised me, there was something about the set of his eyes that made my stomach roll. “I never hurt anyone, but that never stopped anyone from hurting me.”
I wanted to tell him that it wouldn’t be like that here, that he could trust us not to do to him what had been done again and again and again. I wanted to make him see that he could trust me, but now that I could feel his emotions, now that I was in his head, I could taste the tinny, sour flavor of blood in his memory and see for myself the number of times he’d been forced to swallow his own.
I looked in Lucas’s eyes. I looked inside him. And no matter how hard or how far I looked, I saw nothing but hurt.
Anger and hurt and helplessness—and the desire to never be helpless again.
“I know what Shay must have been thinking when he sent me here. I know what he wants me to do, and the real kicker is that as much as I hate him, I hate myself more. I hate weakness more.”
“Lucas—” Maddy choked out his name, and he silenced her, pressing his lips to her temple in a tender, bittersweet kiss.
“You understand, Maddy,” he said, his voice a hoarse and heady whisper. “I know you do.” His eyes flickered from hers to mine, and this time, there was no submission in his gaze. He met my stare with his own, and he spoke down to me.
“I told you once, for reasons that I can’t really fathom, that by the time this was over, I’d be six feet under, or I’d be free.”
The real meaning of Lucas’s words—his definition of free— hit me a moment too late. I’d believed—we’d all believed—that Lucas just wanted to be free of Shay and the psychics, that he’d wanted to transfer to Cedar Ridge because he knew we’d keep him safe.
It had never occurred to me that to Lucas, giving himself over to another alpha—any alpha—might feel like a trap. I’d never thought, even for a second, that he might have something else in store for us—for me—once his transfer into our ranks was complete.
I should have seen it. We all should have, but for a werewolf, Lucas was small, weak—not a threat to anyone or anything.
Unless you were human.
Dead-eyed and sure, Lucas spoke. “As a member of the Cedar Ridge Pack, I question your right to lead us. I question your power over me.”
I felt the pull of the pack-bond like a noose around my neck. The hair on my arms rose, and a growl worked its way up from my diaphragm. My lips curled in warning.
Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t say the words, Bryn.
But as alpha, I had to say them, and the instinct that propelled me to do so became clearer and more insistent in my mind. “Are you issuing a challenge to your alpha?” I asked, Shay’s warning that Lucas would bring me nothing but trouble echoing through my memory, taunting me with every sign I hadn’t wanted to see.
“Yes,” Lucas said in the same throaty whisper he’d used with Maddy. “I am.”
Pack. Pack. Pack.
There was growling and howling and the snapping of teeth. The pack, already on edge before our run, felt the call of darkness and blood at the very sound of our newest member’s words.
Challenge. Challenge. Challenge.
The word passed from one mind to another, and it didn’t matter that none of us had ever seen a challenge. It didn’t matter that our pack wasn’t supposed to be like any other pack. The animal part of their psyche knew what this meant. I knew what this meant.
Saying no was never an option.
A direct challenge to the alpha always ended with a fight to the death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
INSTINCTIVELY, THE PACK MOVED OUT, ENCIRCLING us, but leaving space enough to fight.
I had no weapons, a bum arm, and none of Lucas’s speed or strength. I was human. He was a Were. It didn’t matter if he was weaker than others of his kind. It didn’t matter if he was smaller. It didn’t even matter that I was Resilient.
I would have stood just as much of a chance against an atomic bomb.
The only reason I’d lasted this long as the Cedar Ridge alpha was that the others had chosen me to lead in the first place. Any one of them, at any time, could have done what Lucas was doing now. They could have challenged me, they could have killed me, and they could have claimed leadership of the pack themselves.
The laws that forbid one werewolf from killing another only applied between packs. Within our own ranks, Pack Law and survival of the fittest were one and the same—at least when it came to being alpha.