Page 8 of The Girl in the Forest

The differences would incite wolves who remembered the rivals I’d had to kill. It opened the door to those who would challenge me now, so Mosbach wouldn’t be at risk. All he had to do was push others in the right direction. Provide a reason to act. Prey on pack emotions and watch while someone else ended up dead.

Which had me reassessing the purpose of Mosbach’s conspiracy. This was more than discrediting me or turning the wolves against Noa Bishop.

I was the Alpha of Sentinel Falls, tasked with judging traitors, and if those traitors were found guilty, the punishment was my responsibility. Death by law and custom.

How easy to confront me in front of the entire pack, put my decisions on trial, not those of the enemy. He’d pre-planned this scenario, pushing a reaction. Trying to force me into proving my authority. Narrowing my options down to violence. Killing two women in front of a pack that was already uneasy. A manufactured repeat of the feral that I’d killed in Sentinel Falls.

That day, my wolf had been forced into attacking in front of children—and there were children here today. Many of them from Mosbach’s mountain settlement.

The breeze quickened. Sunlight danced across the restless lake. The wolves waited while I met Mosbach’s defiant gaze.

“You were part of that decision,” I pointed out. “Azul would remain secret until we could accommodate all the wolves who wished to come. Your fellow elders agreed. Are you saying now that we should have bent to your hindsight?”

“I say that you ignored the resentment instead of seeing the obvious.”

And no sign of submission from the elder.

I relished the razor-sharp silence when I ordered the women forward.

“What defense do you offer against your elder’s accusations?”

The females stood with hands fisted and lips tight, but heads unbowed, leaving me little choice. Through the pack bond, I dug into Jo-Rae’s mind, wading through envy and long-standing resentment. Jo-Rae liked to visit a bar in Priest River, owned by the Alpen, where she met a woman who offered sympathy and a willing ear. Jo-Rae revealed Noa’s relationship to Leo when asked, and she’d exposed Noa’s location in Seattle.

Jo-Rae was the reason Leo nearly died in the med-van accident, and why Noa’s life was now in danger. But while Jo-Rae’s actions put lives at risk, the second woman betrayed the entire pack.

Greed drove Karla Asper when she sold information on Azul, providing lists of the wolves who sheltered there. Even where some passages might exist. She was also well-named, since her words held the poisonous bite of an asp. She’d called Noa a ’pu, the shortened version of rompu, and because the intent behind the word meant Noa should be broken, the way some people broke a stick before throwing it on a fire—I would break Karla first.

Without raising a hand or moving from my position, I sent a wave of dark energy toward the woman, forcing my way into her mind, digging in like a scraping claw. Ripping back, inch by inch. Her legs trembled. Her spine arched, the muscles contracting. A grimace twisted her mouth.

Slowly… painfully… I drove her to her knees, watching as her expression changed. Defiance faded with the tightening of her jaw, with her hands clenching as she gasped for breath, perhaps because I held a mental fist around her throat.

The first rippling apprehension moved through the pack when Karla’s face reddened. Shock bulged her eyes. Then panic as her gaze darted frantically from wolf to wolf.

The wolves closest to her looked away, unwilling to make eye contact.

No one would help her.

They couldn’t, even if they dared. Their fear mirrored hers, although it wasn’t over what I would do to traitors. They feared what I was doing in front of them. A dark ability none realized I had, or would wield with a lack of compassion. An act of retribution, aimed at Mosbach as much as the two women… and I was just starting.

With a lazy aggression, I pushed through Karla’s memories, uncovering her glee over exposing Azul to the Alpen, and how the attackers used that information to find Noa and Laura. When I sent those images through the pack bond, every wolf present understood what had happened, how they’d been betrayed. And as their alarm crested, I shifted my attention to Mosbach, pleased when his face paled. Perhaps he fully appreciated the danger. Understood how I’d gotten proof from a dying man.

He had no defense against my mental intrusion. I could stop his heart with a thought. A single breath. No alpha challenge needed. No justification given.

A pity, how his heart gave out… but expected at his age...

Sweat became a sheen on his skin. His fleshy lower lip turned flaccid with the realization of how close to death he stood.

Still sitting, still nearly bored, I ordered, “Give her your knife.”

Mosbach fumbled with the blade, offering it hilt first to Karla. She refused to grasp it, despite my hold on her mind. Terror left her incapable of moving, beyond tightening her fingers into shaking white fists.

I focused on her hands, forced her to uncurl stiff fingers, straighten them as joints popped. Her mouth stretched into a thin line of agony and uncertain terror. I considered snapping her bones, but not with children present.

I stared at Mosbach.

His game, but my fucking move.

“Since she refuses to take the knife, you will do it.”

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