Page 31 of Pack Ruin
Setting my teeth to his throat, I bit down as gently as a mother wolf carrying a pup. I called to her in our bond.Mate.
She answered, stepping into the circle, leaving Glen at the edge. Her feet were bare and human, but her eyes glowed with gold fire as she kneeled at my side. With my teeth still holding my father’s neck, I went still, diving into that place where I had widened the bond. Flor met me there. Her wolf, her red-black fur gleaming, pressed its muzzle to my side.
Can we?I wasn’t sure what I was asking.
It didn’t matter. Her reply was instant.Yes.
Glen’s voice echoed her.Yes.
More than any one wolf can hold,I thought to them both. The moon, and blood, and our intention.
I let go of my father’s neck and turned my bloodstained muzzle to the sky, loosing a deep, long howl.I am Alpha,I called to the moon.I am Alpha!
The pack joined me, though the closest wolves seemed confused. The ones who could see that my father still breathed. Still lived.
I am Alpha!I howled.
Alpha! Alpha! Alpha!the pack repeated.
The moon’s light shimmered, painting us all silver, and I felt a surge of power falling as if from the sky itself, onto me. Crushing me. I was driven to my belly, my head bursting with light, with energy. Too much.
I felt Glen reach for some of the power, some of the weight. Then Flor rested her hand on my neck. She cursed and fell to her knees. “Shitfucking son of a bitch!Ah!”
Someone gasped. Someone laughed. I shivered with apprehension. I could smell her blood on the night air and knew she was being crushed alongside me.
My father growled, snapping at my muzzle. Demanding. I knew, if I killed him, the power would flow smoothly into me. He’d told me how it felt, when he became Alpha. “The power will flow to you naturally, once I’m gone,” he’d whispered that morning. “The moon will guide it to you.”
But that wasn’t happening. With my father still alive, there were two branches the shining river of the pack’s power could follow. Two pulls, two competing tides. Perhaps if I was trying to encompass a smaller pack, one with weaker members—Southern, for instance—it would have worked. Or if the other Alpha was far weaker than my dad, or had held the pack for less time.
I’d been a fool, to think that I could stretch wide enough to fit my pack’s bonds inside my own spirit. I was born to be Alpha someday, but reckless to think I could do it on my own, pull the bonds of six thousand souls to mine, with only a new mate bond giving me added strength. Even if that mate was a wonder. Even if she brought the power of the Northern Heir along with her.
Flor was still being drained by Luke. It was a slow dripping of power away from her, but present. Finn’s betrayal had wounded her even deeper, and her wolf’s heart had been weakened. Glen was strong, but cut off from his own pack.
It wasn’t working. We were all dying, would all die together: Flor and Glen, Luke and Finn. I tried to hold the pack, to wrap the power that flooded me in bands made of my willpower alone. They burned away like cobwebs.
I felt something hemorrhage in my brain. Heard Flor cry out. Dad growled again and stretched his neck long, his expression panicked. I could almost read his thoughts:There is no other way. Don’t make me lose my son.A tear fell from his bloody eye.
I set my teeth back to his neck, praying for the Moon Goddess to help. But it wasn’t the moon that saved us. Another invisible presence, a dark, sly energy slid through the bond.
My father’s head slumped as he fell to the ground. And the pack fell into my soul.
15
A Ruined Pack
GRIGOR
The wing of the Southern Pack House where Luke Callaway’s sickroom resided was dark and deserted. Almost too quiet, except for the sound of the machine that pumped air into his lungs and the buzz of electricity that ran the device.
I stood in a shaft of moonlight, unconcerned that I would be seen. No one in the pack cared enough about this male to check on him. I wasn’t even certain the pack knew he was alive. If this could be called living.
I stared at his gaunt, wasted face, half-obscured by a mask, wondering how the moon could have seen fit to burden my littlebehrserkwith such a mate. I’d heard stories about him from many members of this pack. Well, perhaps it was more accurate to say I’d forced stories from the lips of former pack members, before I killed them to add their entrails to my bouquets for Flor.
Only two of them had shared tales of this dark-haired male standing up for his true mate. An older male had mumbled something about Luke as a child taking a beating meant for mylittle mate when she was barely old enough to walk. He’d died before I could glean any details, and no one else seemed to remember that moment.
A younger shifter had shared that a few years ago, not long after the rest of the worthless males had begun to hunt my mate-to-be, Luke had stepped in again, protesting her treatment. Supposedly, he’d been starved for weeks, locked up for months, and beaten on the Alpha’s orders. I might have softened toward the useless Heir, except for one thing. After that, he’d allowed the Hunt to go on, leaving Flor to evade forty males for years on her own.
Though had she truly done that? I suspected the mate bond, even if he hadn’t felt it, would have driven Luke to do something to protect her. Small things, perhaps. Unnoticeable by the other Enforcers.
