Page 67 of Pack Rage
The spectators close enough to hear gasped as they realized who she was to Callaway. What they were witnessing.
She shook her head and lifted the sword, or tried to. Luke wrapped one hand around hers and helped her set the blade to the beast’s neck. Luke’s eyes stayed on my face, in case I changed my mind, I supposed. But I was frozen in place, Brand’s hand on my shoulder the only warmth I could feel.
Mama grunted, then lifted the sword with Luke’s hand over hers, helping steady the movement. I thought she might say something, but all she did was raise her head to the full moon, the light illuminating the scars all over her face, and the tears that ran in twin rivers down her cheeks, as she brought the sword down. Luke must have given her strength, because the blade descended all the way to the ground.
Both of them had done it, had delivered the moon’s judgment, and pack justice.
Mama’s dead.I heard a keening sound in my mind, a pitiful howl, and knew it was my own wolf, grieving the mother she’d never met. I hated Callaway at that moment more than I ever had. He’d stolen so much from me, and now, even in his death, he was stealing more.
Mama took one last breath, her eyes searching, until they landed on me.Love you,she mouthed. Then she fell to the earth,her form shifting in those final seconds, until she lay in her wolf form, half-curled around her mate.
I’d never seen Mama shift, so I’d had no idea what color her wolf was. But I stuffed a hand over my mouth to keep from crying out when I realized her fur was the same red as my hair. Bright, not dark red like me when I shifted. She shone like a flame under the full, silver moon, and I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life, or anything more heartbreaking. “Love you,” I whispered back, just before the crowd began to press forward. “Love you, Mama.”
I couldn’t be sure she heard me, but her wolf seemed to shimmer for a moment before she went completely still, and a cloud sailed over the moon. In the distance, I heard a muffled howling. It sounded like dozens of wolves, far away, mourning.
“Tenebris,” Brand murmured, squeezing my shoulder.
The first Alpha challenge was over. Which meant the danger had only begun.
Chapter 32
Stealing Power
FINNICK
The fading moonlight spurred my father into action. While Luke and Callaway fought, Niall, along with some of Eastern’s most vicious Enforcers, had surreptitiously flanked our small group, separating those of us who had been locked in the lower levels even farther from the circle of observers. I kept some of my attention on them, knowing they would make a move if they saw the opportunity.
My mind worked frantically, as I tried to predict what gambit Father would attempt next. It had to be something to do with our pack’s place in the shifter world. Some new grasping at power.
He’d brought shifters here from other packs in North America, but also from abroad. It was their presence that had tipped him off to my involvement in Tana’s disappearance. He’d had his driver take us to one of the hotels our pack used to house guests when the Mansion was full, and I’d been shocked at the foreign presence. There had been dozens of shifters milling in the lobby, and when one of them began speaking Italian, my heart had raced. I’d thought for a moment that perhaps Tana’srescuers hadn’t gotten her safely away, and I’d sucked in a sharp breath.
My error had drawn Father’s attention at just the wrong moment, and when he’d asked about my most recent involvement with the Italian packs, I hadn’t found a conceivable lie or diversion in time.He’d used his Alpha command to force me to admit to helping her escape. But that was all I’d given him. He hadn’t been able to beat her whereabouts out of me, though he’d tried.
It helped that I truly didn’t know where she was.
All of the shifters from the hotel were here tonight, and a few more. I recognized two from a Hungarian pack who’d visited a decade before, and a few more who I thought might have been a part of a German business contingent in the city a few years after that. He’d brought them here for a reason, to attend this Council, but I still had no idea why.
To watch as he executed the Hilliers, perhaps, so he would have “impartial” witnesses to their deaths? That couldn’t be his reason, or not all of it. Foreign packs were only invited to witness Council meetings when the outcome would affect their packs as well. It had to be a far-reaching decision with international implications.
It was a risky move, though. The scent of silver was overwhelming, and some of the foreign packs had even stricter laws about its use than we did. The obviously displayed guns were the most shocking part of the whole evening, and I noted the appalled expressions worn by many of the smaller packs’ Alphas as they took in just how many of our Enforcers wore them on their hips.
The Long Hunt, my wolf murmured. I agreed. There was something coming. Something bigger than Father being named Alpha, or the Hilliers or Brand being punished, or accepting Luke as Southern Alpha.
Something that involved Mother. Where the hell was she?
I had a terrible feeling the spell that had been laid where we stood—though I had no idea how such a thing would have been accomplished—had something to do with what was taking place tonight. I’d felt the rasp of salt under my shoe as I stepped into the ring, and seen more circles of the stuff even farther out. The way our bonds had been stifled when we crossed into the final ring, and the way even the moon’s light was muted, it was all planned. It was an enormous trap. But for whom? And how would they spring it?
As if in answer, a cold breeze started up, and I scented something over the silver that had my heart racing. Blood. Not fresh, but days old… and I knew whose it was.
My mother.
I wanted to cry out, alert the others to what she’d done, what my father had done. But even though my connection to my father had grown less… central, after Grigor had given me his name, and Flor had marked me again, the decades of Alpha commands not to reveal our family’s secrets was still there, making it impossible to reveal the truth to anyone outside my bonds.
I didn’t have time to think through what the scent of Mother’s blood meant for anyone inside the circle. My father had stepped into the center of the ring, gesturing for Enforcers to haul off the remains of Callaway and Lily. “Get rid of them.”
Before anyone could touch Lily, Flor spat out a curse and flung herself toward her mama, steak knife in hand. Brand moved forward as well, murmuring to Flor as he lifted the dead, red-furred wolf gently, then carried her a few yards away to set her beside Margarette. Someone in the crowd offered up a shawl, and Flor lay it over Lily’s body, while Brand stood watch.
Two Enforcers picked up Calvin’s corpse, but my father didn’t wait for him to be carried away before he announced, “Luke Callaway, you are Alpha of the Southern pack.”
