Chapter 48

Kyp

He had Rachel. No other thought entered or exited my brain. I just looped over on that one fact. Wolf frothed and struggled against the restraints that tied me to Victor. Rachel! Mate! I blanked my face as Victor led me to the middle of the circle of the pack.

Dread cramped my gut.

“We’ve got a treat for our Beta!” Victor crowed. My stomach revolted and I swallowed down the bile, burning a trail of blistering fire down my throat to mix with the fear racing through my veins in place of blood.

Two wolves yelped and whimpered like they were in pain and my eyes ripped away from Rachel long enough to assess that they weren’t a new threat.

Victor growled low in his throat and the scuffle stopped. He turned back to me, his eyes cold and calculating.

“We’ve stolen something back from the Wolfe pack for you. I trust you know what to do with ungrateful dogs who do not accept our leadership.”

Kill her.

It was a strong suggestion, but not a command. My chest tightened. I could make my stand without revealing my greatest asset. But there was only one thing I could think to do to save Rachel.

“I’ll fight you for Alpha instead. I challenge you for the right to lead this pack.” The words dropped like lead, and for the first time, true surprise flashed across Victor’s face.

The surprise quickly morphed into fury and black rage that crescendoed in a howl that ripped from his still-human throat. Every hair on the back of my neck stood straight and my flesh crawled with horror.

I could hardly believe the words had passed my lips. Wolf growled low and menacing inside me. As Victor’s Beta, I was the only one who could challenge him. I guess Bowen could have since he was blood related, too, but he’d have had to fight me and Victor. I gulped. Alpha passed to the eldest offspring.

“Bring the stakes,” my father growled while giving me a murderous glare. Wolf rose within me, Alpha power tingling. I was still Victor’s Beta, but he did not hold the sway over me that he thought he did. I readied myself for the pain of what I knew would come. I couldn’t break the mental ties to him, or the fight would be for nothing. If I didn’t take his place as Alpha of the pack, his wolves would only turn on me next, wild and leaderless. And that still wouldn’t save Rachel.

I had to take my place as Alpha. Of Victor’s pack.

I’d have to kill my own father.

Anguish, fury, and fear curled into a piercing ball of emotion in my belly.

While half my brain grappled to come to terms with what I had to do next, the other part of my brain watched as pack members brought bundles of sharpened two-foot wooden stakes out from one of the trailers and drove one end into the dirt, leaving the other pointed end exposed and forming a fighting ring. They didn’t hurry. I knew the slow pace was deliberate on Victor’s orders to make my dread of the coming fight even worse. Victor’s favorite weapon in his extensive arsenal was fear.

Some of the pack sent me looks of pity, alarm, or sadness. It took a solid twenty minutes for the stakes to all be put into the ground, leaving me plenty of time to confront my raging terror. Victor stood immobile, arms crossed, black fury emanating from him. The last stake was pushed into the earth.

I stole one last look at Rachel’s ashen face, nodded to her, and braced myself for the coming fight.

“To the death,” Victor said, his voice already changing to a growl.

We stepped into the ring.

With everything to lose, I didn’t wait. I shifted. My clothes fluttered to the ground around me. I gave Wolf his head and felt my muscles bunch and cord. My head lowered, my hackles raised, watching the man who fathered me—the man I’d have to kill to save my own skin and my mate—as his face darkened in rage and elongated.

Black hair that seemed to suck the moonlight right out of the sky pushed through his skin. Ears came through. Wicked canines curved and glinted in the night. He took his time, letting his shift stretch out so I could see every hardened muscle, every inch of him that towered above me.

I refused to be cowed. He was bigger than me. Bigger, meaner, nastier, and he knew it. But he didn’t know that he couldn’t control me.

He would have to win this fight on his fighting merits alone.

It was the one trump card I held. But I wouldn’t be able to hold it forever. I had to end Victor. Before he ended me. Before he ended Rachel.

Saliva dripped menacingly from his canines as he lowered his head, his eyes red slits in the moonlight.

We circled. His voice echoed in my head.

Little boy. You cannot beat me. You cannot win. One word from me and you’ll be a quivering mass on the ground, willingly offering me your neck.

I blocked it out. Until he started a new line that sent my blood pounding and bile rising.

I will wait to kill you. I will make you watch as I take that girl. Over and over. She’s pretty. Nice curves. I’ll show her what a real man feels like.

My jaws snapped as he went into more detail. Ironically, the link I’d spent my life desperately trying to find was the one thing I now wanted to tear out of my head.

With no warning, he lunged at me. His bulk gave him the ability to jump quick and jump high.

Wolf rolled us under his feet, missing his pounce by inches.

His wolf chuffed as we righted ourselves. My heart thundered. We circled.

Little snipes, little jabs, flashes of teeth, and occasional tufts of fur. Each of us boasted a few nicks. A few drops of blood spattered the ground. He was trying to wear me down with his mental tirade and show himself the supreme leader to the rest of the pack before he used his command. He had to make a show of it. I danced out of the way of his teeth as he gnashed at me again.

A familiar wolf howled in the perimeter of the forest surrounding camp, and Victor jerked to attention.

“Dominic!” Rachel shrieked.

The others had come! This was my chance.

I leaped from the ground and launched myself at Victor’s throat. I would have had a clean bite, but my foot caught on a protruding stone, sending the rock skidding from its resting place, and making my landing just off-center. I caught part of his shoulder and his ruff. Without hesitation, I bit down and tasted the bitter tang of his blood as it entered my mouth.

Victor howled in rage and nipped my flank, catching mostly fur before he shook me loose with another bite to my side. I had to let go or he’d disembowel me with a swipe of his claws.

I stepped back, ready for the next attack, Wolf surging with hope. Dominic was here. Risking a quick look at the tree line, I recognized wolves from both the Wolfe and Thornehill packs melting from the trees. They were here.

Lay down so I can kill you.

I threw back my head and howled my defiance to my father, signaling Dominic and Austin to move in at the same time.

Victor jumped a step backward, realization crashing into him the same instant that the packs came charging to swarm over Victor’s, meeting with a clash of fur, flesh, and howls of rage. The scent of blood saturated the air within seconds as growling, cracking, and ripping flesh filled my ears.

Move! Attack them!

I could hear his commands. Victor’s attention was divided, controlling, commanding his pack.

Careful to keep my footing, I sprung for a second assault.

He met me, our teeth tangled, biting, nipping, making purchase. Pain seared down the shoulder I’d injured fighting Bowen. It wasn’t fully healed. It was still tender. Victor gnashed at it, catching some of the unhealed skin.

With a yelp, I jumped back, readying my stance again.

Again, and again we went at each other. Victor grew more and more desperate to control the fighting around him and keep me off him. A wheezing noise sounded in his chest, and I realized he probably hadn’t had to actively fight for some time, able to merely command his wolves to do it for him.

He turned and barked instructions and I used my skull like a battering ram. I caught him square in the side and he skidded back several steps.

The dirt below us was speckled with blood as the battle raged around us, steering clear of the ring of spikes, leaving us locked in our own fight.

Like a knife, Rachel’s scream cut through the air. Immediately my head swung to her where a large wolf was approaching her.

Rachel! My brain screamed.

Teeth sunk into my back and agony ripped jagged lines of fire down my limbs. Victor heaved and my paws left the ground. He yanked his head around and I felt the raw power, and sensed his fear, as he threw me to the side of the ring. My back hit the ground and I skidded into the base of the ring of spikes, sending a fresh wave of torture whipping over me.

I lay there, exhausted, in pain, bleeding.

“Kyp!” Rachel’s shout broke through the haze in time for me to register Victor catapulting himself toward me.

Scrambling to get my feet under me, I rolled to gain enough purchase to keep Victor from landing on me and finishing me off.

Victor roared, rage coming off him in waves as he lunged through the air toward me. Desperately hauling myself out of the way, time slowed. This was the end. I could not move fast enough. He would land on me, and it would all end. I’d given it everything I had.

Moonlight glinted on teeth that reached for my neck. But then, just as his teeth should have closed over my flesh, I rallied the last of my strength and with my back paws, flipped his body backward over the top of me. A whining yelp tore through the air.

I rolled the rest of the way over, tugging my front legs trapped under the sudden weight of Victor’s torso.

There.

On the spikes he’d set out, Victor’s head lay impaled. Blood dripped down the spike, his tongue lolled out of his mouth as his body spasmed.

Even in wolf form, I heaved my head to the side and wretched.

Silence descended as I pulled my broken body out from underneath my dead father.

Tingling started at the base of my paws and worked its way up my shaky legs.

My Alpha senses returned, and my head filled with the sudden onslaught they brought. I tipped my head back and howled to the moon, my voice answering an aching primal call that trembled in my gut and sent power racing through my veins.

My eyes found Rachel. She nodded. She was safe.

Wolves limped toward me, as the fighting ceased.

I needed my voice.

I grunted, trying to hold back the second howl of pain that tried to escape my lips as I shifted back. I felt my body retracting to its human form, but growing, muscles cording, bones lengthening, shoulders widening, mind sharpening, torn places mending together.

Raw and throbbing all over, I stood, realizing I was inches taller than I had been as the full role of Alpha fell on my shoulders. I’d changed when I’d become my own Alpha, but now that I’d inherited a full pack, somehow, I’d inherited Victor’s mantel as well.

I surveyed the stunned wolves around me. I was the only one in skin and I had to find the voice I so desperately needed.

“I am not your enemy. But I am your Alpha.” The words reverberated around the clearing and I felt a quiver of wills from the wolves in front of me. “I will not hold anyone here who wishes to leave. But those of you who stay will obey me.” Wolf puffed his chest inside me, and I stood straighter despite the lingering pain in my back.

A snarl ripped through the stillness and the dark brown wolf—Victor’s right-hand man, Drew—lunged at me.

Before I could shift back, Bowen, bloodied and standing at the sidelines, dove in front of me and tackled Drew with a heavy bite to the brown wolf’s throat. Bowen snarled menacingly through his teeth and Drew relented.

I’m with you, Bowen thought to me. I nodded solemnly. Bowen was Beta again. My Beta. My brother. My blood. Behind me, Dominic and Austin’s packs closed ranks, moving in closer to stand behind me. Their numbers and their support swelled Wolf inside, humbled but elated with their confidence.

“Anyone else?” I called out. A clear challenge. A few wolves paced. I felt their tethers wiggling in my mind.

“You may go.” I released the knot of seven wolves in my mind and I suddenly felt their absence. It was one thing to leave a pack of your own volition. It wasn’t violent, I then understood, if it was mutual.

I stood as tall as I could, heedless of my naked state, and met the eyes of every single wolf in my pack. We were a motley crew of misfits and broken minds, but misfits I understood, and we’d find help for the broken ones. Lastly, I met Rachel’s eyes.

Her hair made a wild halo of red around her head, and her eyes were shining.

I love you, she mouthed.

I love you back, I answered clearly in her head. Her smile nearly stretched off her face. Surveying my pack once more, Wolf sighed in satisfaction.

Shifting back to my wolf form, I allowed myself to feel a moment of embarrassment at standing stark naked in front of three packs of werewolves. I pushed it aside though and paced up to Bowen, still with his paw on Drew’s chest.

Looking down at Drew, I let him see every bit of dominance Wolf possessed. My lips curled back from my teeth in a wicked growl.

He had not been released but I would not have him in my pack.

Get out. I thrust his will back at him. He howled and shook his head back and forth. I nudged Bowen’s shoulder and with one more snarl at Drew, Bowen backed up.

With a yip, Drew was up and streaking for the trees, tail tucked between his legs.

Bowen leaned over, tipped his neck up in a show of vulnerability, then scented me. I scented him back. Seconds later, the rest of my pack was queuing up to exchange scents. To reacquaint themselves with each other after such a massive shift in power.

When at last it was Rachel’s turn, blessedly back in her wolf form, she rubbed her head against me, and heat filled my chest. Wanting to show my pack exactly who Rachel was and where she was in the hierarchy, I nudged her back, barked for everyone’s attention, and then gently closed my mouth over her nose. There was a rumble from my pack as they acknowledged her as my mate.

Rachel licked my cheek and stood close enough to me that our shoulders touched—although she was a few inches shorter than me now. That would take some getting used to.