Page 112 of Untamed

"Alpha. I'm sorry to interrupt, but you're needed."

Blue-Sky walks up to us, wary and alert. Mactiir looks at the older male for a moment, then suddenly, his gaze snaps back to Blue-Sky.

"You called me 'alpha,'" he says, sounding stunned.

"Your uncle is dying. We need you to make the next decisions regarding this pack, Inuit. The Mauja are yours, now."

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Inuit

I kneel next to my uncle. The older Alpha desperately gasps for air on the ground, eyes closed, face grey. Pink-frothed air bubbles up from the holes in his chest. Lung punctures are a nasty business but not entirely unrecoverable.

I don't feel an ounce of sympathy. Memories, hazy ones from childhood, play through my mind. Disgust wells up in my mouth. Alpha Jax believes that Willa's mother was my Father's truemate. There is no proof. Anya Rivers was told this by her male, by Willa's Father. Anya never shifted, never knew whether my Pa was hers.

But... it's suspicious. Anya was kidnapped by Thomson and dragged into the wild. Raped, impregnated, but never Marked as his. She was only thirteen. Fourteen when Willa was born.Fourteen. She has no reason to disbelieve Thomson's story, that someone in Adlartok paid him to make Willa's mother disappear. Someone like my Father, her mate.

But, my Pa never spoke to her. She only has Thomson's word for it.

It killed her wolf. Would just the idea of being rejected do that if my Pa wasn't her mate? What was my uncle talking about earlier? Did he think that my pa betrayed Ma? If... do these pieces fit together, and I just can't see it yet?

My puphood memories are only of the Adlartok, never the Mauja. I can remember my Pa, his brothers, my uncles. I can remember our home, made from sawn logs, sturdy and plain but warm and cozy, too. I can remember the smell of meat cooking on the central fire in the longhouse.

I don't remember Ma's Father, my Mauja grandFather. I don't remember playing with the cousins lying dead on either side of my dying uncle.

"Alpha, do you want us to save his life?" Rhet asks me, his voice low.

"Will he be able to answer questions?" I rasp out of a hoarse voice. I damaged his throat with that grip of a monster. Shuddering, I close my eyes, blocking out the sensation of beingmore, of beingother. The creature I turned into was no wolf.

Elias had called me a werewolf, but that's kind. A TrueBorn with a HalfForm. A monster so grotesque that humans tell horror stories about them.

Goddess. My sweet mate fucked a monster. I'm a disgusting beast, and she deserved better than to be Mated in the dirt by a nightmare.

"That's not a question I can answer," Rhet replies with a dark, vicious ring in his voice. He's thinking of Thjis, our brother and a trained medic, who is lying in the clinic after being shot by my wolves in league with my uncle. Thjis would know if my uncle was worth saving or not.

When I stand up, I rip out my uncle’s throat with a flick of my wrist. Surveying the area around me is like looking at a little patch of hell.

I take a step onto Mauja land. It rolls over me, uncomfortable. Power and authority belong to me. I killed the alpha and both alphasons. Rhet realized it first, calling me 'Alpha.'

I am the Alpha of the Mauja. All rights over the leadership of this pack belong to me. Ironically, I defeated my uncle and claimed Challenge, but I am blood, so I have a blood claim to this pack, too.

"Beta," I call my brother over to me. Rhet's blue eyes are dark with worry when they meet mine. "How many dead?"

"A few on our side. More, maybe a dozen, of... of Mauja." He stumbles over not referring to the Mauja as 'them.' Now they're 'ours.' Shit.

"Who was the Beta?"

"This dead one," Elias inserts. For once, the mischievous twinkle is gone from his eyes. He toes a body at his feet. I look at the elder. He's shaken, but his spine is stiff, and he's holding it together. Next to him are ClearHowl wolves, three of them all covered in blood. The Beta of Mauja must have thought taking out this old wolf would be easy. He paid for that mistake with his life.

"Gamma?"

"Not here," comes another voice. This one is foreign, with the faint French-Canadian accent that the Mauja tend to have.

"Find him. Records. I want to know what we're dealing with. Take everything back home. Takeeveryoneback home."

"Take them backhome?" Asher asks me in a hoarse voice. I think he may be in slight shock.

I look at my friend. "The BlueSnout were involved with this. I was going to kill as many of these fuckers as I could and take my mate home, Asher. Now, I'm the fucking MaujaAlpha."

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