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By the time I reached the battlefield, both sets of combatants were four-legged and entirely intent upon sowing havoc and reaping mayhem. The fingernail moon had drifted behind a cloud in the interim, so I was left guessing about which wolf belonged to which clan. Based on scent similarities, though, I suspected the two sides were relatively evenly matched. Eight young males battled eight other young males, all doing their best to rip off ears and shred enemy skin.
The warriors appeared so intent upon each other, in fact, that I was a bit surprised the female hadn’t taken advantage of their inattention to run back the way she’d come. Instead, the girl hovered just beyond the field of battle, the rich odors of honeysuckle and rose petals whirling around her anxious form.
“You’re a Gray,” I guessed aloud, watching the teenager jump and twirl to face me. The pungent aroma of fear filled the air and I took a step backwards so I looked less like a dark, looming figure and more like the nice guy I was attempting to become.
“Who are you?” she demanded, chin raised to hide her fright. If I hadn’t been able to infer the girl’s heritage based on the path her kidnappers had so recently taken, then I could have easily told now from attitude alone. The Grays were a more powerful clan than the Prices and this young woman possessed all the poise and arrogance of a blue-blooded pack princess.
“Tribunal enforcer, ma’am,” I told her, dipping my own chin in a show of respect that I hoped would mollify. I wasn’t particularly impressed by Miss Gray’s bloodlines or by her inability to save her own darn self. But she was the wronged party here, and there was no reason not to stroke her ego a bit if it would keep her calm and collected.
Sure enough, my show of submission had the desired effect. The teenager stepped closer and her scent transitioned from fear to interest. “Yes, I’m Chief Gray’s daughter,” she said finally, belatedly confirming my guesses.
She didn’t offer her first name, but I’d memorized all relevant bios during a short lunchtime pit stop earlier in the day. Based on age and bearing, this particular female had to be Ophelia, Chief Gray’s youngest daughter at seventeen years old.
In other words, she was just as well-bred as I’d originally assumed.
The teenager was quite a catch too—young, nubile, and quite refined. By human standards, she was just barely old enough to marry with parental consent. By shifter standards, she was at the prime age for a forced mating, assuming the old-fashioned tradition was still permitted in this backwards clan.
I only realized I was growling when Ophelia jerked back the hand she’d been reaching toward my chest. “Are you okay?” she asked tentatively.
“I’m fine.” Brushing away her words, I turned toward the field of battle. I could guess which shifters were Ophelia’s relatives and which were her attackers by scent and by actions, but I wanted confirmation before doling out judgment.
Because that judgment was going to be particularly harsh.
So I softened my shoulders and cocked my head as I returned my attention to the girl. No need to scare her shitless if I wanted her to speak openly. “You were taken against your will from your home by the Prices, am I correct?”
“Um...yes?” The teenager’s tone didn’t entirely match her words. But I figured she’d been spooked once already when she was dragged out of her bed, then she’d received a second scare when I abruptly descended into lupine overprotectiveness. So I softened my voice yet further as I attempted to draw her out.
“To be entirely clear, you didn’t want to come here tonight? You wanted to go back to your parents?”
Ophelia glanced over one shoulder before answering. Far in the distance, I could see the glow of a porch light although the rest of her residence was cloaked in pitch darkness. The Prices might be a secondary clan without much standing in the community, but their young were good hunters to drag a pack princess out of her father’s home without waking the alpha himself.
“Ophelia?” I prompted gently.
The moon burst out from behind its watery curtain in time for me to peruse my companion’s face. She was as easy on the eyes as her scent had suggested, only a hint of weakness around her chin preventing prettiness from turning into outright beauty.
I could see why the males were willing to fight over her attentions.
Although, now that I remembered the warriors in question, I realized the field of battle had gone abruptly silent. And when I turned my head, I found fourteen wolves quietly panting in the grass in fur form, gazes fixed on me.
Yes, most of the audience lupine. But the last two combatants had drawn erect in their naked human flesh. Unlike their lackeys, these leaders strode toward us, more interested in the female at my side than in the strange male trespassing on pack land.
“Ophelia?” said one of the men, mirroring my own words in a tone as seductive and smooth as honey. This male was a Price, I could tell. And for a moment I thought perhaps I’d gotten my wires crossed after all. Was tonight’s battle really a farce, cover for a pair of young lovers sneaking off to elope against their parents’ wishes?
But, no. Ophelia had been shrieking and complaining long before kin reached her side. And now she glared so hard at the Price male that I thought he might implode from sheer force of will alone. “I want to go home with my brother,” she told me, stepping toward the other naked man, the one who had not yet spoken.
“Just a moment.” I stilled the girl with a hand on her arm, not wanting an innocent to be caught up in the backlash of the dominance display I was about to unleash. I didn’t particularly care if the compulsion ripped up her brothers and cousins—according to their file, Gray males had been as guilty of raiding as Price males in the past, even if the former were attempting to rescue their relative this time around. But a kidnapped teenage girl shouldn’t have to deal with a third trauma on top of what was already bound to have been a difficult night.
Obediently, Ophelia paused and I took advantage of the lull to step in front of her. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” I told the entire crew of teenagers and twenty-somethings, glad the moonlight allowed me to meet each eye in turn. I hadn’t yet bothered to whip any dominance into my words, but already one wolf in the back whined and made as if to turn tail and run.
“Stay,” I chided, letting my words wash over everyone in front of me rather than focusing on the runner alone. The males froze statue-still and I stalked between them like a commanding officer analyzing a company of new recruits in boot camp. Like my own CO back in the day, I didn’t particularly like what I saw.
“Taking a female against her will is an act of animals, not of men.” I spoke quietly, knowing from personal experience that painful words hurt even worse when you had to strain to make out their meaning. “A woman is not chattel. Ophelia is not a thing, a possession. She’s a human being like you and like me. And she deserves better than this sorry set of shifters out playing games with her life.”
I ended up inches away from Mr. Smooth-talking Price. The male would have cringed backwards if my compulsion hadn’t been holding him in place. But his submission wasn’t sufficient to illicit my pity. Instead, jabbing my index finger into his bare chest, I spoke directly to the primary instigator of the night’s battle.
“I think you need a reminder of women’s rights and personhood,” I told him, letting my power to sway and command roll more fully into my voice while also ensuring that the resultant energy swelled out to affect the males arrayed around us with its repressive shadow. “So whenever you look at Ophelia...or at any other female...for the next month, you’ll see your mother’s face juxtaposed on top of her enticing young body. And when your eyes drift south and you take in that girl’s curves, your balls are gonna ache so bad you’ll want to...cut...them...off.”
I heard one of the shifters behind me gasp, his gaze apparently having been accidentally trained upon the female in question when my command went into effect. Mr. Smooth-talking Price managed to flinch as well, this new compulsion supplanting the one that had bade him to hold his current pose.
“But...” he began.
Ignoring the expressions of alarm, confusion, and complaint all around me, I raised my voice so it could be heard above the din. “Go home, all of you. And think about this before you get the next urge to come and raid your neighbor’s property, whether that property is cows or daughters. Because next time, I promise you, I won’t let anyone off so easily. The repercussions will be much, much harder to bear.”
Looking around at the drawn faces and pained stances, I felt confident that my uber-alpha dominance would give the males something to mull over the next time they considered raiding. Still, I didn’t want to depend on sleight of hand alone to get my way.
Good thing I have another inducement up my sleeve.
My ace in the hole—my inner beast—was already awake and restless within my human skin. He wanted to rip and tear, to punish these males soundly for their attempted kidnapping and potential rape.
Just what the doctor ordered, I decided. So even as the last word left my lips, I released the compulsion that held the shifters before me in line. And at the same instant, I relinquished my iron control over my human form.
My wolf burst out of furless skin with a snarl of barely repressed rage, chilling the air around us from summer cool to winter frost. In response, the males and Ophelia alike scattered like fallen leaves before a hurricane. A mere glimpse of unbridled animal aggression was sufficient warning to ensure they wouldn’t soon forget my words.
By the time I was able to rein in my wolf’s rage, in fact, I was left alone in a field that I suspected would become a raiding grounds no more. Only then did I allow my mouth to loll open into a lupine grin.
Mission accomplished and job well done, I decided. Chief Stormwinder would be proud.
