by Mark Henwick
Alex didn’t have an issue with taking any of them on, and I wasn’t about to kill anyone else tonight, if I could help it. I liked maybe a half-dozen of them and hoped they would reciprocate when things settled down. I could start with a small group and win the others over later.
I didn’t like four or five of them, and that concerned me. Only time would tell.
Our pack.
Even distracted as I was, I could feel the boost of my dominance simply from being acknowledged as the alpha of a larger pack.
The last El Paso werewolf returned to the crowd. The bodies of the former alphas had been cleared away and somewhere in the building they were being converted to fertilizer.
We weren’t finished.
Felix and Cameron wanted their turn. They wanted us to re-pledge our loyalty to them.
It was clear to me that something had happened while we’d been accepting our new pack members.
Alex, still burning adrenaline from the fight, didn’t like submitting to them at all. He’d been angry at the start, and winning hadn’t made him feel better. The day’s negotiations to avoid this fight had obviously been rough for him. But though we’d grown in dominance, Felix and Cameron were co-alphas of the whole League. I guessed there might be alphas out there who could challenge them, but we couldn’t.
We swallowed our anger, said our piece and stretched our necks.
I saw Cameron’s fangs close on Alex’s neck. It was as much as I could do to hold still. She wasn’t my favorite bitch at the moment. Much the same opinion she held of me, I guessed.
Felix’s jaws closed on my throat. He wasn’t at all concerned by the gore.
I shivered, feeling his dominance ramping up.
This was no touch and go on our throats. Their jaws held us, and both of them were growling aggressively.
I felt my body tense. Fought it to relax. Didn’t push back against that dominance display.
Not enough.
The jaws didn’t slack off.
The crowd stirred, aware there was something going on.
One or both of us would die in the next few seconds. We were too dominant. We were a challenge to Felix and Cameron just by existing. If only one of us died, the survivor would be less dominant. Less of a challenge.
And they needed me for the rituals.
I couldn’t stop my eukori reaching for Alex. Locking onto him. He knew.
If they killed him, they killed both of us.
I’m sorry, Jen. I love you. Sorry, everyone at home. And Bian, Tullah, Diana, Skylur. Sorry.
I should have done things differently, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I’d know I was about to die before. Many times.
I’d known it tonight.
I’d known it back in the jungles of South America, the place where I’d started down this path, where I’d been bitten by a rogue Athanate, the last survivor of the crazy House Chrysos, the lost House of Carpathia.
Blocking out the nighttime stars in front of me is the darkness of Hacha Del Diablo, the Devil’s Axe, a soaring leftover of volcanic rock. I’m slumped against a tree at its base. I touch my neck and know I’m going to die. My arterial blood is pulsing sluggishly over my hand, black as oil in the darkness. My team is waiting for me, wherever it is you go when you die.
I still have his severed head at my feet, the creature that killed my team. The creature I killed, and who killed me.
There’s blood everywhere. His. Mine. All over my face, down my chest...
“Amber.”
One hand in mine. The other touching my cheek. His face close to mine. Concerned.
Alex brought me back gently.
I blinked.
Felix and Cameron were standing in front of us, addressing the crowd.
“...so there will be changes, brought on by what has happened here tonight.” Felix was talking, his voice low and hard. “Cameron and I will take over the task of bringing new packs into the League. That means we will be needed wherever there is a new pack to persuade. We’ll take some with us, for strength and to show how wide the League can be, but we’ll travel light.”
Cameron, her voice all smooth and late-night radio next to Felix’s growl: “So we’ll be leaving our packs in place. And since we’re co-alphas, they are essentially one pack and will behave as such. A challenge to any part of that pack is a challenge to the whole pack. To us.”
She stopped and eyed the silent crowd.
“One pack,” she repeated. “New Mexico and Colorado combined.”
Felix took over. “Given the distances between Santa Fe and Denver, we’re leaving lieutenants in charge locally. In Colorado, we appoint Alexander Deauville.”
“And in New Mexico,” Cameron said, “We appoint Zane Quivira.”
“The new pack will need to coordinate in defense,” Felix said. “This area of the Rockies is where the attention of the Confederation is focused. They’ve tried before and we bloodied them. They will attack again, somehow, somewhere. They must be defeated, which may take all the efforts of the New Mexico-Colorado pack. And to ensure the two parts of the pack work seamlessly and without friction to achieve that end, we appoint Amber Farrell as liaison between Zane and Alexander.”
Oh, shit.
Chapter 26
While I was dealing with that bombshell, there was more.
The entire El Paso pack was to be moved to Colorado as soon as possible. Alex would be responsible for setting them up with jobs and accommodation, using the resources of the Denver pack as a base. Integrating them into the human and Were communities.
At the same time as he settled the turbulence inevitable in the bloody takeover of a pack.
A logistical and emotional nightmare.
To make it worse, Cameron and Felix wanted Nick Grey and Ursula Tennyson, our two skinwalkers, to accompany them and help break down misconceptions and show how welcoming the League was.
They weren’t accepting any argument from me either.
Ursula, strictly speaking, was Felix’s pack, and she wasn’t going to argue with him. How she squared that absence from work with her full time job as a veterinarian, I wasn’t sure.
Nick wasn’t willing to let Ursula go alone, so I’d lost that argument before I’d even started.
Hardly surprising I wasn’t in a polite mood when Rita appeared at my elbow with my clothes and a towel, suggesting I should take the opportunity to clean myself up a bit. I snarled.
The were-cougar let my anger flow over her without so much as a ripple. She led me off into a wet room in the depths of the building.
After being stark naked in front of everybody for the last half hour, it was too late for me to complain about modesty when David came with us.
He wanted to help with healing my shoulder wounds.
“What about Scott?” I asked. “David, you can’t leave him alone out there.”
“The Belles seem to have him in hand,” Rita deadpanned, and David smiled.
Rita’s green eyes gave nothing away, but I knew she was curious about what had happened. She knew about size and power in a fight. She knew about the difficulty I should have had biting the back of Victoria’s neck.
“And Kane?” He was just as much of a worry to me, after what I’d done.
“He’s okay,” David said. “The fight seemed to upset him.”
He was watching me closely.
Great. Both of them suspected more had happened in the fight than had been apparent.
“Come,” Rita said quietly, testing the warmth of the water coming out of the hose. “You did this for me once before. Allow us to do it for you.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
The water sluiced off me and made a red spiral down the sunken drain. It occurred to me that the wet room hadn’t so much been put here for the comfort of the workers, as for exactly this task—getting rid of evidence. How many challenges and deaths had this place seen? I shook my head in frustration. No point in dwelling on it now. I
was going to have nightmares about this night’s work without making them worse.
Rita sponged my back. And front. Ran fingers through my hair as she rinsed it. All business.
When the evidence of the fight was all flushed down the drain, David licked my wounds, the unripe berry smell of healing aniatropics stinging my nose.
It was standard Athanate assistance. I’d done it for the wounds that Rita had received after the fight in Albuquerque she’d mentioned. It felt a little strange to be the one being helped, but David was my House and it was comforting.
While he did that, Rita stood behind me and dried my hair with the towel.
It wasn’t that their help was unwelcome. Absolutely not. It was... intimate, and I didn’t want to reawaken the craziness that had exploded with Zane before the fight.
What had that been about? Other than the obvious?
Rita cleared her throat, uncharacteristically hesitant about what she was about to say. “Cameron suggested we should leave someone here in Denver with you to compensate for taking Nick and Ursula.”
Cameron could damn well kiss my butt at the moment.
I needed Nick.
I needed him to help me repair things with Kane, to help me find out what this power was and how I could either use it safely or not use it at all. And the trouble with not having Nick, was there was no one else in the packs quite like the skinwalker. For one thing, no one with the knowledge of magic and the grounded common sense Nick had. ‘Replacement’ or not, I was still pissed at Cameron and Felix for taking him.
Maybe I could talk to Alice about tonight. She was the oldest Adept I knew about. She had to know something about this kind of magic. And then it was just a matter of whether I could understand what her response was.
Rita spoke again, quietly. “I volunteered. If it’s okay with you.”
I twisted around. “What? Seriously? Of course it’s okay.”
She wasn’t Nick, but adding a cool, lethal were-cougar to my House?
I got a throb of Athanate fangs, but I pushed it away. She meant a temporary position. She wasn’t volunteering to be in my House. Not offering her throat and her Blood.
“It would be me and Lynch,” she said, still not meeting my eye. “He’s decided I’m his alpha.”
Lynch was the only other were-cougar I knew. He’d been a halfy who’d showed up uninvited at the ritual I held in Bitter Hooks. Nick had been the only one who wasn’t surprised when Lynch had turned into a cougar. Lynch hadn’t had a pack, and it was excellent news that Rita would take him under her wing. Paw. Whatever.
And despite the offhand way she said it, Rita was pleased as well.
“Good. And once we’ve got my current problems out of the way, you can help teach me how to fight on four legs.”
I nearly bit my tongue as soon as the words slipped out.
Rita looked up. “Not sure you need it, but I’ll gladly teach you what I do anyway.”
We came back out to find the majority of werewolves had left.
Lynch was waiting for Rita, his face questioning her and clearing as he saw the answer in her expression.
The Belles were still there, looking after Scott, and he looked okay.
But Kane was toe-to-toe with Alex, and I could feel the tension off them from across the width of the old loading bay area.
I ran.
Alex looked like an extra from a horror film. He’d cleaned his face, and dressed, but he hadn’t visited the wet room and there was El Paso blood smeared over his clothes and hands. Even without that, whereas Kane wasn’t a small man, he didn’t have that focused killing-machine look that Alex had tonight.
“Ease off, guys,” I said quickly. “This is my fault.”
“Your fault we’re still alive,” Alex growled, his eyes not leaving Kane.
“Yes, but it’s the way I did it.”
“You pulled magic through him,” Alex said. “I get that. Not great.”
“Dark magic.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed and he turned to look at me with worry in his eyes.
“This is mine to handle,” I said. “Please.”
“I did say I wouldn’t doubt you again.” Alex stepped back and took a breath. Some of that deadly focus seemed to slip away from him.
He looked back at Kane. “She risked her life twice for me tonight. That might not mean much to you now, but you’ll realize she’d do it for anyone in her House, without a moment’s hesitation.”
That registered with Kane—made him blink.
“Alexander!” Felix was calling him from the door.
“I have to settle our new pack,” Alex said. “You’re still wanted here.”
Then he leaned over me. “I love you.”
We kissed.
I got chills. And I also got stomach churn at the thought of the effect Zane had had on me before the fight.
All down to the Call? No. Something wrong.
Not going to happen again, but now I had to work as liaison between him and Alex.
Felix came back inside and I heard Cameron calling me.
“We still need to talk, but are you okay for the moment?” I asked Kane.
He nodded. His face all closed and guarded.
Felix waved me to follow and I had to leave it for later.
Cameron was waiting for me with another alpha, one I didn’t know. Another alpha who wasn’t happy with me, from the look on his face.
I sighed.
At least this one was more restrained about it. If my performance earlier hadn’t been enough for him to remember his manners, then maybe it was Cameron’s comment about any challenge being a challenge to her and Felix.
“Amber,” Cameron said, by way of explanation. “Explain what you instructed Benjamin Stillman to do immediately after the ritual at Bitter Hooks.”
Oh, crap.
I’d forgotten to discuss that with Felix or Cameron.
“I told Ben to collect every name and contact number of every halfy and make sure that they all had each other’s information,” I said, rubbing a hand across my face. It’d been a long day and it looked like getting even longer.
Ben Stillman was a cub from the large Cimmaron pack, neighbors to both Felix and Cameron. I’d saved Ben from Zane down in Albuquerque and, in return, Ben had been eager to help me with the rituals. I thought his confidence in me, a confidence he enthusiastically communicated to the halfies, had been one of the reasons the Bitter Hooks ritual had worked so well.
“Why?” Cameron asked.
I huffed. “It was just so they could talk to each other. Maybe, in the future, help with other newbies in their packs who have difficulty changing the first time.”
“Not undermining pack authority?”
“No,” I said, though I’d known at the time that some alphas would see it like that.
“Have you instructed him to go beyond that?”
I frowned. “No.”
“Anything to say, David Thaler?”
David gave an embarrassed cough behind me. “I helped Ben,” he admitted.
Someone had brought out a laptop and set it up on a table. I had no idea where this was going until David connected to the internet and went through a security and password system.
PACKCHAT said the banner across the top of the screen.
Oh, hell.
“Keeping track of people’s contact details would have been a full time job,” David said. “Ben asked me for a solution, and I suggested it would be easier to make them update their details themselves. Once you have that, well, it’s only a couple of steps until you have a sort of social media for werewolves. We made it very secure, of course.”
“And very popular,” murmured Cameron, taking control of the cursor and making an idle loop around a number at the side of the screen recording the people online. Nothing in comparison to human social media, but many more werewolves used Packchat than had actually attended the rituals.
She clicked and scrolled until she found a fema
le werewolf’s profile page.
The girl had posted a human profile picture of herself about to change to wolf. I knew she was about to change to wolf because she was stark naked, on all fours.
There was a tagline underneath: Can you catch me? It’s worth it.
Some posts below suggested, colorfully, what might happen.
Cameron clicked again and found something very similar with a young male. Want me to go all alpha on you?
David blushed. “There aren’t any moderators, so we don’t actually censor the pictures or the messages they post. It’s a bit of a free-for-all, I’m afraid. I didn’t anticipate what would happen. I accept it’s my fault.”
Werewolves. Free-for-all. I could imagine what was going on, and a lot of it between neighboring packs. No wonder this alpha’s nose was out of joint.
David and I were in such deep shit.
Felix started laughing.
Everyone turned to look at him.
“You’re worried about stuff like this when humanity is about to find out that werewolves exist?” He snorted. “If we survive that, and I really mean if, then there’ll be werewolves on human social media making indecent proposals to each other, and to humans as well. Nothing we’ll be able to do about it.”
Cameron nodded her agreement and the angry alpha who’d complained shrunk a little.
“David, make sure there’s a facility for all alphas to get access and monitor their pack members,” Felix said, “but otherwise leave it as it is.”
He draped an arm around the angry alpha. “Come, Ernesto, we’re done here tonight. Let’s go and have a drink.”
That was so not the grim Denver alpha I’d known. Mating with Cameron had uncovered some old people skills in Felix I hadn’t thought existed.
Everyone stirred and started to head for the doors.
“I have my truck,” Rita said. “I can drive you home.”
“Your home too, at the moment,” I said. “Yes, please, but not straight there. Gotta go see Weaver. David, call Julie and Keith. Get them to meet us there.”