Page 69 of Pack Rage
Chapter 33
The Stronger Mate
FLOR
My heart was still beating, but I wasn’t sure how. It felt like someone had torn it out when Mama had died, and stomped it flat. The bonds that connected me to my mates, even muted, were all that was keeping me on my feet right now. Well, that and Brand’s strong arm. He was trying his best to take some of my pain away, but there was nothing that would do that, nothing except time.
And maybe killing a few of these toadfuckers before the moon set.
“Stole your position?” Aidan’s calm reply had me jolting to attention. Flanked by two tall Enforcers, the red-haired Alpha was staring down Bradley Hillier like he was no more threatening than a bug on his windshield.
I was worried that if they fought, he might wipe Bradley out just as fast as a bug. Glen’s dad was wrecked, weak not only from the past few weeks of starvation and silver exposure in the lower levels, but the previous ones spent in a coma at Northern. It was brave of him to challenge Aidan, but foolish. He might win, but it was by no means a sure thing.
“No, Bradley, I’ll do it,” Brand said, at the same moment Finn replied, “I’ll challenge him.”
Aidan’s face began to turn red as he focused on Finn’s words. “You already betrayed your pack once, boy. I was merciful and let you live. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Bradley faced Brand and spoke earnestly. “We both know you’re not some power-hungry Alpha, but Aidan’s done a good job riling up the crowd. If you win, there’s no way they’ll see it as anything other than the world’s strongest Alpha trying for more power.” Bradley’s lips tipped up. “The world’s most honorable Alpha, as well. I… am proud to know you.”
I didn’t like that pause. Like he’d been about to say, Iwasproud to know you.
Finn interrupted. “Bradley, no. Let me challenge him. I deserve to give him back some of what he gave me.”
“No, Finnick. It’s my place to fight him.” Bradley’s voice rose, before he pressed a kiss to his mate’s hair and stepped away. Margarette’s expression was grim, her eyes haunted as she watched him walk into the center of the ring. “Aidan stole my position while I was recovering from illness and injury. He used that role to accuse me and my mate of being traitors to our own pack, in an effort to hold onto that power.”
Aidan scoffed. “Or so you’d like to believe. Do you deny whatyoudid, Bradley? Do you deny slaughtering a large number of your highest ranked Enforcers, executing them when they only followed your leadership, your pack laws?”
Bradley stiffened. “I don’t deny killing them. And I don’t deny that the rules we had in place not only caused suffering to our unranked, our most vulnerable, but created an environment where the most reprehensible urges of many of my Enforcers were given the chance to be expressed, and harm our pack.”
Aidan blinked in shock. “You admit you don’t deserve to be Alpha of Northern? Then how can you pretend to be fit to challenge me as the Head of the North American Council?”
Bradley’s voice cracked as he replied, “I may not be worthy of any role. My Heir is Patrick Hillier, and I believe he will far surpass me as Alpha of Northern.”
Aidan’s face went comically red, and Brand smiled. “Nice one, Alpha Hillier.” When I shot him a questioning look, he leaned down and murmured, “Bradley just named his Heir in the Council ring, before witnesses. Pretty sure Aidan was hoping to vacate the position without an Heir and place one of his shitheads in the spot.” Finn nodded in agreement.
“I may not be worthy,” Bradley repeated, lifting his chin. “But you definitely aren’t, Aidan. I challenge you now as Alpha of the North American Council. How shall we fi—” Before he could finish, Aidan had already attacked, leaping forward and delivering a brutal roundhouse kick to Bradley’s chest.
Margarette cursed as her mate skidded across the dirt, a cloud of dust rising up from his fall. I nudged Brand, and we slowly worked our way closer to her as the fight went on. If this went to shit—and from the first few exchanges of blows, it was going very wrong for Bradley—she would need us close.
Aidan and Bradley fought without speaking, and even though I didn’t want to see anything to admire in the elder McDonnell, his fighting style was impossible not to appreciate. Every move was efficient, every response to an attack measured and calculated to use the least energy. He caught Bradley’s fist and turned, pulling the Northern Alpha in a circle and rotating his right arm. There was a sickening crunch, and Bradley cried out, the first sound besides heavy breathing and grunts either had made.
He broke away, his right arm dangling loose at his side, the shoulder dislocated, or something in the joint broken. He didn’thave time for it to heal, and I wasn’t sure it would anyway. It was our connection to the moon—or an Alpha’s connection to his pack—that gave us our quick healing. The moon’s power was shut off somehow, and there was only one other Northern pack member for him to draw strength in the closed circle from.
I glanced up at Margarette, who had moved a few steps away from Mama’s body, and was staring intently at her mate, probably trying to channel into him whatever power she had left after their imprisonment. I was pretty sure it wasn’t working.
Before I could check to see if Luke’s cuts had healed from his fight—don’t think about Mama,I reminded myself as my wolf whimpered.Don’t think about it now, we can grieve later—Aidan had attacked again. Bradley was thrown across the ring entirely, and I knew Aidan had to be pulling on his pack’s power to strengthen his blows. This time, though, Bradley landed at Brand’s feet, lying only a few feet away from Margarette and me.
No one approached Brand, not even Aidan, for a moment, as Margarette dropped to her knees and crawled toward her mate, cupping his battered face in her hands. He didn’t have the strength to do more than lift one hand. “I’m sorry, my love,” he rasped.
“No,” she half-shouted, pressing her forehead to his bloody one before staring into his face, wild-eyed. “No, Bradley,no. You can’t?—”
He pressed two fingers against her lips, and smiled somehow. “My love, I need you… to promise me…” He coughed, and a dribble of blood fell from his mouth to the ground. He gasped a few more times, trying to speak, but the only sounds that emerged were those of his lungs wheezing. Had a lung collapsed? He groaned in pain. Behind him, Aidan slunk closer, and Brand snarled a warning.
Finally, Bradley drew a small breath and whispered, his voice as quiet as leaves falling, “Love, promise me… you’ll go on. Fighton. For Patrick. For our pack. We… have so much… to make right.”
She pressed kisses against his mouth, then his cheeks, his eyes, everywhere she could reach. Frantic, as if she could create a shield formed from her love, to carry back into the battle. To protect him, when she couldn’t. “No, Bradley, you have to live. I can’t go on without you.”
He smiled again, though his eyes were already clouding. “My love, you can. You were… always the stronger… of us. You made me… a better?—”
