The Alpha's Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  Gabel raised his right arm to strike, his claws yellowed bone, and snapped his arm down.

  His claws cleaved into Romero’s neck, piercing all the way through, the yellowed bone-tips peeking out the other side.

  Gabel curled over Romero, maw open, spittle dripping onto Romero’s shuddering face. Blood pooled under them and pulsed from around Gabel’s claw tips. A clicking sound came from Gabel’s throat.

  “Alpha.” he growled in a tone that commanded me to drop to my knees. I remained on my feet, as did Flint, Hix bowed his shoulders, but many of the others dropped to the ground. Some were so frightened they shifted to wolf form and wriggled on their bellies, whining obedience.

  It had been summoned like a beast from the Moon’s darkest voids.

  Romero gulped like a fish, gasping and dying by ounces and drops. Gabel’s lips pulled back in a grin, and he twitched the hand holding Romero, eliciting some kind of gurgle of agony.

  Gabel yanked his claw back. Blood surged out of the holes in Romero’s neck, splattering the sand. Gabel got off him and walked toward me, yellow-blue eyes holding my gaze.

  Alpha Gabel of IronMoon, with the form and fur of the Moon’s monsters.

  His fur melted away, his form shrinking as he walked. He swept low to retrieve his kilt as he passed it, then sashed it over his hips.

  Hix did not look at Gabel and kept his head bowed, but I did not look away. I couldn’t.

  What are you?

  “Clean that up when it is done dying,” Gabel commanded the low-ranked warrior closest to my left. Then he turned to me, took my arm, and led me away.

  The New Unwritten Rules

  “Well, that was interesting.”

  “Interesting!” I exclaimed.

  Gabel removed his much-abused kilt and tossed it in the general direction of the hamper. “What else could it have been?”

  “A very bad ending.”

  “Buttercup, were you worried about me?”

  I glared at him.

  “You were worried.” He came over to me and pulled me against him. “I am not sure if I should be insulted or flattered.”

  “You didn’t notice some of the other wolves there agreed with him?” I tried not to look at the four deep, bloody rakes carved into his shoulder. He probably needed stitches but wouldn’t get them. Just as easy to imagine them across his throat, and then Romero would have thrown me to the dregs.

  Blood wept out of his shoulder, but he didn’t notice it. “They are of no concern. Romero has been dealt with. He danced at the end of his line for a while, and I would have kept him there if not for you showing me how unwise that was.”

  Nauseating realization moved to the side as something colder replaced it. I grabbed one of his hands and tried to pry him off me.

  He held me firm. “Let me tell you about the vision, buttercup.”

  “Go on.” I stopped trying to wrest myself free.

  “You told me that the visions show the path we are currently on and the most likely outcome. I wasted my time squabbling over unimportant things with wolves who did not matter while the world turned. I ignored everything Flint taught me and lost my balls in the process to a similarly impotent wolf. Even when he shook off death to sing the queen’s battle song, I didn’t listen. I tried to silence him instead. A weak, foolish choice.”

  “Your question, your answer,” I said warily. It didn’t explain the souls I had wrapped around my neck, the runes I’d seen, or why Hix had looked on.

  He lowered his face to mine, darkly amused. There was no tenderness in his tone. Just gentle mocking. “Well. Now I have heeded. What are you so afraid of, buttercup? I am alive, you are safe. I heeded the queen’s song before it was too late.”

  I licked my dry lips. If that was how he saw it, then the future had changed. My guts crawled like they were full of ants. “I was there, too. Wearing a necklace of fangs. Thousands of fangs. A necklace of souls. Flint called me to war.”

  His handsome face broke out in a smile as bright as the setting sunlight from the jungle vision. His scent bloomed with hot pleasure. “Yes, I remembered you said that. It occurred to me when I chose this course of action.”

  I shivered. The vision had warned Gabel off his path, but it’d forged a harsher, crueler Gabel. Maybe one better suited to being King-Alpha. I yanked my brain to something less terrifying. “The IronMoon won’t accept you and I.”

  Never in all of this had I considered that the IronMoon would not accept me as Gabel’s Luna. Gabel’s hold over IronMoon was not as absolute and unquestioning as it seemed. For every wolf that was like Hix or Flint, there were half a dozen mongrels. Every pack had them, but IronMoon was made of them.

  “I am the Alpha. You wear my Mark. That is all they need concern themselves with.”

  “You might have killed Romero, but you haven’t defeated any of the problems this Mark has caused. You wanted a plaything, well playtime is over.”

  Gabel’s grip on me tightened to a soft, enjoyable pinch. The edge of his voice lay against my skin like a cool blade. “I don’t need to concern myself with every wolf’s individual complaints. Do not confuse me respecting my challengers with me being afraid of them.”

  “Even the ones not worthy of respect?”

  “What you cannot plan for, you must be prepared for. You are an Oracle. You never truly know what you will see out on the Tides, but you are trained to manage. You and I are very alike.”

  He released me and looked down at the blood on his shoulder. “Should I shower?”

  I realized he had been holding me against him as filthy and bloody and smelly as he was. I hadn’t even noticed, now I was grateful for the stench. “This is even a question? Yes, yes you should. Are you sure you don’t want stitches in that?”

  “You can bandage it for me. It is not so bad it will not close on its own, and if we send for the doctor, they will think Romero did real damage to me.”

  Blood smeared my shirt. Damage indeed.. I sighed and pulled it off. Perhaps if I soaked it in the sink I could salvage it.

  “Buttercup, are you coming with me?” Gabel eyed me, a gleam sparkling in his eye, and a pulse of hot interest.

  “I—I—no,” I stammered as heat flushed my body, especially between my thighs, warmth washing down the Bond between us, and it suddenly constricted. “Just... I—Gabel, we can’t...”

  “Why not?” Half of Gabel’s mouth curled in a taunting smile, cruel and predatory. I gulped as the Bond dilated and warmed, and it was impossible for my eyes not to be drawn to his swelling body. My resolve weakened more.

  “You know why,” I whispered, weak and faint. “Did you knock your head on a rock?”

  “Come, buttercup. I’d like a real challenge.” He held out a hand to me.

  “What sort of challenge?”

  “You, of course.”

  My knees turned to water. “It’s not a challenge if you give in.”

  “I won’t give in. You will. Romero’s tongue was the last one on you. That will not do.”

  “I washed myself raw.”

  “That is not the same.”

  The Bond quivered, but there was a feral cruelty sliding between it as well. And pride, and possession, and jealousy, and ferocity, which all made my instincts sing with anticipation. Had Gabel devised a new way to play with the Bond that had bested him at every turn? I risked another glance at his swollen cock and licked my lips.

  I reached up and slowly unhooked my bra, my eyes never leaving his. I threw it away, then pushed my skirt over my hips. The Bond snapped alert, and he took a step toward me.

  I backed up. “No, you said you wouldn’t give in.”

  The Bond smoldered and paced like a chained animal.

  My fingers hooked over the edge of my panties. I gave a final thought to what I was doing, then pushed them down my hips and stepped out of them.

  Gabel’s lust and hunger howled, surging against the shackles of his will. But he took my wrist, his grip a little too rough, and
pulled my after him into the bathroom.

  He shoved me into the shower stall and turned on the water. Ice smashed into us. It didn’t make a difference. He bit my shoulder hard enough to leave a mark, and I gasped. The water was so cold it hurt. Gabel’s hands slid down my slick sides as he knelt in front of me, heedless of his torn shoulder. He kissed a trail along my ribs and belly as he slid onto the marble. I laughed at the heat of his lips, chasing the ice water away.

  He kissed the inside of each thigh, the softest, most tender part.

  “Gabel,” I breathed his name.

  “Patience.”

  I arched against the marble wall as his tongue slid over me, a single bright, hot spot in the water. My fingers tore at his hair. The Bond didn’t have us in its clutches, but I didn’t trust it wouldn’t spring like a crazed beast. “You’ll be in pain later.”

  “No, you’ll just watch, buttercup. Now be silent, or I will figure out something to silence you with...”

  Not So Simple Gestures

  Romero didn’t take long to die, and Flint supervised the cleaning up of the corpse and grooming of the sand ring.

  Dinner that night started as a subdued affair.

  My guilty conscious prodded me. Romero had brought up the petitioner wolf, and Gabel not being privy to those meetings or questions. IronMoon had every reason to give that—and me—a hard look. It was also a question that was never going to go away until I made it go away.

  Platinum picked at her dinner. Had Romero known that Oracles had vows of silence, or had Gardenia warned him that Gabel and I had argued in the hallway? She might have swung her allegiance to a different wolf once Gabel had stopped toying with her. She’d faded into the background. Tonight she seemed exceptionally wilted.

  I felt wilted, too. No one was coming to save me. There was no escape. I couldn’t seem to muster the willpower to repudiate Gabel, and IronMoon didn’t want or trust me to be their Luna.

  My expression must have telegraphed some of my thoughts, because Gabel’s dinner fork tines hit his plate. I looked up at him, startled. His eyes shifted to Platinum, beyond my shoulder. His expression warned me, that does not bear thinking about.

  “Have you given thought to a Second Beta?” Hix intruded on our silent exchange.

  Gabel’s tines hit the plate again. “I always have thoughts on such things. This is IronMoon.”

  Every wolf in the room chewed a little more quietly, and conversation dimmed to better enable eavesdropping.

  Second Betas were pure warriors. The warrior’s warrior. First Betas straddled the line between pack and warrior, able to step in for the Alpha. Second Betas concerned themselves with defense and combat. The First needed to be able to do the Second’s job, but the reverse was not true.

  “Do you have some suggestions?” Gabel asked Hix.

  “A few.”

  “There is no stand-out in my mind for the job, and no one seemed to leap at the bone the second Romero dropped dead.” Gabel glanced at the room with mild disappointment. “Perhaps trial by combat.”

  Hix grinned. “A good suggestion.”

  “Would trial by combat suit you, Gianna?” Gabel asked.

  Hix sipped his drink as if asking me was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

  Gianna. Not buttercup.

  Color crept onto my cheeks. Gabel involving me with the selection of the next Second Beta shocked more than just me. In a fashion, he had had to defend me that afternoon, when Romero had complained so bitterly about me, but he’d spun it as Romero violating pack law. Which was true. But if he’d wanted to really distance himself personally, he’d have asked Hix or Flint to be my champion.

  I had no business being involved in the selection of a Beta. I might have his Mark, and the title of Lady, and I slept in his bed, but I’d been disrespected and insulted many times. I wasn’t his BondMate. I was temporary. A dalliance. A toy. An amusement. Romero’s biggest crime had been touching something that didn’t belong to him.

  Dammit, Gabel.

  The press of sharp eyes into my back. Romero’s allies would think I was presumptuous. I didn’t want to give Gabel the direct answer he wanted. And I didn’t want to act like I’d been scared into acting “proper.” Romero was rotting in the woods, along with his stupidity, where it belonged.

  I grasped for an answer that wouldn’t suit Gabel. “As Master Flint says, Alpha, warriors always need to be prepared to prove themselves whenever and however is required.”

  Flint pounded both his fists into the table. “That is right, wolves!” He raised his drink. “A toast to being ready at any moment!”

  A howl went up. Gabel gave me a sideways grin. I had dodged that one.

  The atmosphere seemed much improved, and when the walls stopped quivering under the howls, conversation increased to the normal buzz.

  Not that Flint supported the secret Gabel and I kept. But who wanted to get rumors started at dinner?

  “Don’t be angry, buttercup,” he told me afterward, in the safety of our room.

  “Don’t be angry? Gabel, you just had Romero challenge you because of how you treat me. You could have delegated enforcing pack law to Flint or Hix, but you did it yourself! Tongues are going to be wagging enough as it is, and you ask me about the Second Beta?”

  “I asked my Oracle.”

  “You called me by my name. You didn’t even bother with that awful nickname.”

  “You are my buttercup.”

  “Where the hell did you get that pet name?” I scowled. “I don’t want a pet name, and I don’t want to be some damn flower.”

  He chortled. “I did it all to show the pack I don’t care about Romero. He thought he could beat me and drum up support for a coup. He just wanted a legitimate excuse to growl at me because he was too much of a coward to do it plainly. That is how it is for males.”

  “I know how challenges work,” I growled.

  “Buttercup, it’s not my first challenge. It won’t be my last.”

  “Fine. But don’t involve me in this any further,” I told him.

  “Of course you’re involved. You’ll be there for the trial.”

  “Take Platinum.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Maybe I do. You’ve done it before. You take her to the easy things, and I have to be there for blood and suffering. You want to call me buttercup, well her real name is a flower!”

  Gabel dropped the book he was reading onto his chest. “Yes, that wasn’t one of my better life choices.”

  That caught me off-guard, and I scrambled. “Presenting her to Anders instead of me? Suited me fine.”

  “Lies.”

  I glared at him, and almost spat something about since when had he cared about what I felt so long as I squirmed like a slug (or panted his name), but either he’d give me some answer that translated to never have, or he’d lay on a shocker that suddenly he did care. He didn’t sound smug, either, just matter-of-fact. I considered saying I had been humiliated, but then he’d either apologize or not apologize, and either one was not what I wanted to hear.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to hear.

  It made my stomach knot.

  “Fine,” I consented. “But remember. I’m not your BondMate. I’m your Oracle.”

  “You are both.”

  “Not outside this room, doofus.”

  He grinned at me. “‘Doofus’? Buttercup. The mouth on you. Tsk, tsk. Such language.”

  Hix and Gabel created a list of six wolves to compete for the Second Beta slot. Gabel insisted I be present for this conversation, which was absolutely not necessary for anyone but a Luna I growled my disapproval, but he refused to let it go. So I sat on the couch and ignored the conversation.

  The challenge was set for that evening, in the training ring where Romero had met his end a day before.

  “They’re not given time to prepare?” I asked Gabel as we walked outside in the frigid late autumn evening. Lanterns danced in the trees. I had to give Garde
nia credit: she had been charged with setting up the area appropriately, and she had done an amazing job on short notice. Paper lanterns in blue and pale moon-yellow danced in lines on the trees, there was a raised platform for the ranked wolves to observe from, and everything seemed to be like something out of a history book.

  “You said they always needed to be ready. They were put on notice last night once we decided to do the trial.”

  “You decided,” I hissed.

  “I consulted my Oracle. She had the final vote.”

  “Then call me by my title, not my name,” I reminded him in an angry whisper.

  Most of the pack was already there, and all eyes were on us as we ascended to the platform to take our seats. I could practically hear their thoughts as eyes examined us to see how close Gabel kept me at his side, if we moved together like lovers, if they could catch any scents that might give clues to the state of things between us.

  “Alpha Gabel, Lady Gianna,” Flint greeted us.

  “Master of Arms, you are joining us this evening?” Gabel steadied my hand as I knelt on the cushion that served as a chair. I was freezing, and my pale skin seemed even more pale in the blue light of the lanterns.

  “They are on their own before themselves and the Moon, Lady. I am observing the result of my training. I am on trial here, too.”

  Hix knelt down on my right side, and Flint took the place on Gabel’s left. Gabel placed his hands on his knees, then raised one hand to signal the start. “Let the challenge for he who would be Second Beta, the warrior who speaks for all warriors, begin!”

  Howls and stomps from the assembled crowds. A huge number of eyes gleamed in the dark. All the IronMoon from the surrounding area had made the trip for this.

  Gabel had before him a small bowl with six stones. Each stone was a different color, and he drew two at random. The two warriors who had armbands of the corresponding colors stepped into the sand ring.