Page 4 of Claimed

I have no options. None. I’m screwed. My pack is screwed. Those poor girls…

Aunt Shea. Little Halla. Addy. Misty. Caroline. Lukey. Please, no.

“Who. Are you?” he enunciates in a way I know means he’s losing patience.

I’m winded. I’m thirsty. I’m scared. No, terrified. And screwed.

“The waitress,” he states, recognition lighting in his eyes. Without the sparkle.

Nope. No sparkle because I shot an alpha in his pack.

“And my money is onyoubeing the one who’s been poisoning us,” he tacks on, his eyes coasting over me with utter disgust.

And the lump in my chest burns hotter. Shame oozes from me in addition to fear.

I’m so screwed.

The extra-alpha alphas of Arcana Falls are famous. Our pack has whispered the rumored tales of them for as long as I can recall. How large their pack and territory is, how they have several alphas instead of one. How massive the alphas are in wolf form.

Father ranted about being unable to wrap his mind aroundwhy. He said arealalpha rules his pack alone, wouldn’t require help. The strongest should make the rest submit or else tear them apart with his teeth. A pack only needs one alpha, anything else is an abomination.

But I thought it sounded kind of awesome. To have a group of leaders sharing the load, making sure their pack thrived. A committee of sorts, instead of a dictatorship like we live under.

Not long ago, right around the time he kidnapped Aphra and started using her for her magic, buzz started because Wyatt had betas scouting the edge of the Arcana Falls territory under Aphra’s masking. When the team came back with news of a new alpha scent, my brother went on a recon mission and came back stating he recognized the scent as the shifter whose blood he wanted. Whose blood he isowed.

The shifter who killed Father, an abnormally large black wolf with glowing green eyes. Most believe that this black wolf ruined our pack by clearing the way for Wyatt to rule, though they’d never say it to Wyatt’s face because Wyatt doesn’t have to drive us into the ground, yet that’s what he’s doing.

The scent of the shifter who killed Father made Wyatt become obsessed. Obsessed with revenge. With taking that pack and that territory for himself. He cobbled together his plan. His plan that's already failing. He wants all those alphas taken out. He wants to take over and bring us there, to their large territory, their fertile and magic-coated lands, with the infamous pristine waterfalls and the invaluable magic-infused stones embedded in caves behind them. Wyatt says it’ll be even better than when our ancestor ruled the Silver Mountains generations ago.

A while ago, I overheard Malachi whisper to another of our betas that if that green-eyed alpha that killed John Meadows hadtaken over instead of leaving us to Wyatt, maybe things would be better. Overhearing this was what opened communications with me and Mal about change.

Wyatt defeated two of Father’s betas who I’m convinced were evil, but he also defeated a further three challengers who I thought could have been worthy. Nobody has challenged Wyatt since then and he's been running things even further into the ground ever since. And I’ll be the one to face the consequences of Wyatt’s orders to do this today, because not only does my brother get others to do his dirty work, but he also loves to make examples of you when you fail. Even if the failure is Wyatt’s fault because his plans are half-baked.

Wyatt has no patience, so even if he had the sense to put together a workable plan, he'd muck it up by jumping too soon or changing course part-way like when he had Jimmy bring me the gun a few days ago with the order to hand over the rest of the herb and to shoot Tyson even if I hadn’t disabled him with the anti-shifting herb.

I coated the bullets and watched for an opportunity. And now I’ve pulled the trigger, trying to forget that a person was the intended target. A person who, though he was reportedly responsible for my father’s death, appeared to really care about his people by the way he spoke. I’ve spied on them several times and he talks to the others about a woman in a sweet way that makes strange sensations work their way through my system. Because our men don’t talk about females that way.

I don’t even know if Wyatt’s accusation about him being Father’s killer is true; just knew I needed to do what I was told. Despite the fact that I've spent time watching these alphas interact, that I've seen things from them that have me thinking Father might have been wrong about a multi-alpha pack being an abomination.

And now here I am, under the flirting one with the color-changing eyes that now glare at me, demanding answers.

And I might be a murderer. Even if I didn’t take the head shot like I could’ve, I still caused harm to another being. And that’s not who I am, not who I’veeverbeen. But life under Wyatt’s regime, life with the way our pack is dwindling and getting sicker… it’s forcing me to be this person that I’m becoming. And I hate it.

I don’t speak, don’t answer any of this alpha’s questions. Not even when he tugs me up to my feet, demanding to know who I am and why I’ve done this while holding my chin in a firm but non-violent grip. I’m braced and my heart pounds hard as I prepare for him to lash out, maybe backhand me for refusing to speak. But he doesn’t. Instead, he bends and puts his shoulder to my belly, hauls me up in the air, and carries me naked and crying to the village of Arcana Falls where I guess I'll face the consequences of following my brother’s orders.

***

I’m carried for a long time before I smell multiple alphas and Tyson Savage’s blood, which means we’re close, approaching my impending doom.

Terror grips me as I’m carried into a building and down a stairwell into a concrete basement, past a group of men, all with alpha scents who watch him put me in a cell with actual bars on it.

They all then disappear for a long time, and I continue to cry for so long, my eyes burn.

When he returns alone, dressed in dark jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt, he comes into the cell and leans against the bars. He says nothing for a while, just studies me as I sit in the corner with my chin to my knees, my teeth chattering.

He approaches and I brace, but am surprised when he peels the soft-looking gray Savage Construction t-shirt off his muscled upper body and hands it to me. I’m grateful as I put it on. It’s big on me, covers my behind so shields it from the cold stone floor enough to make a difference.

“Thank you,” I hoarsely whisper.

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