The Alpha's Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  I tried not to stagger over to the safety he offered and hide my shaking. Aaron knew about Anita. He knew about SableFur. We might be in a hall full of traitors.

  And I couldn’t tell anyone.

  I attempted to make some small talk and pretend everything was normal. “Not even going to pretend, Flint? Or are you playing Cyrano for some hapless bachelor?”

  “No to both questions, Lady Gianna.” Flint glanced at me. “I would complain about my tuxedo, but I believe your dress is more constricting.”

  “I am firmly supported at all angles,” I said with a trembling sigh.

  Flint’s green eyes slid toward Aaron. “Hmm.”

  “He thought I’d be unattached,” I commented worriedly.

  “That is not the look of a male who finds your Mark a barrier. Be wary of him.”

  Oh, I was more than wary. I was scared to death. “He said he can smell my scent.”

  “That’s impossible. You are Marked. He must have been lying. Regardless, that is a wolf who is after you.”

  “To what end?” I glanced around the party again, trying to stop the trembling in my hands. I scanned the crowd for Gabel again, saw Aaron talking with someone—

  I froze.

  Moving through the crowd was another wolf I recognized: the MeatTaker.

  There he was, wearing a tuxedo, shaking hands with some other male from some other pack I didn’t recognize. But it was the MeatTaker. Somehow in his human form I recognized him. I stepped backward until I pressed against Flint’s bulk, because otherwise I would have crumbled into flakes and sequins.

  “Lady Gianna?”

  “Who—who is that?” I asked, then tore away so I wouldn’t be staring at him.

  “Alpha Marcus of MarchMoon.”

  Sweat patched between my shoulders, and a trickle traced my spine. MarchMoon was a traitor. They belonged to Aaron of IceMaw.

  And I couldn’t tell Gabel.

  Flint cocked his head to the side and didn’t say anything, but those green eyes saw right through me. Instead, he said, “Back to your Alpha, Gianna. You’ve scolded an old man for being a curmudgeon long enough.”

  “Yes.” I nodded dumbly, mind blank. I somehow managed to find Gabel in the press of wolves.

  Gabel glanced Flint’s way. “No luck drawing him out?”

  “You know what he told us. Doesn’t do parties.” Aaron’s gaze burned into my back, and I felt the weight of Marcus on my soul.

  Gabel lifted his eyes past my shoulder, noted Aaron, then returned his attention back to me. Very deliberately, he picked up my right hand and placed it on his forearm. He said nothing, but our Bond bristled and growled, rattling like a snake’s tail.

  I enjoyed the steel and iron under his tuxedo jacket and shirt, the familiar lines of his body. I held tightly to him and whispered, “Don’t trust him.”

  “The way he is looking at you, buttercup?” Gabel growled, the snarl sliding between his clenched jaw. “No risk of that. Did he say something to you? You seem very upset after speaking to him.”

  “Not here.” I shook my head. “I can’t tell you...”

  Aaron smiled at me, daring me to tell Gabel and break my vows.

  Gabel reached up with his other hand and slipped his fingers under my chin, compelling me to look up at him. The Bond rattled and trembled.

  He moved, his fingers holding my chin, and kissed me gently.

  A Dirty Pitchfork

  His tongue grazed my lips, very gently. I melted. Where had this sweetness come from? Where had this tenderness? My lips parted for him, just enough for our tongues to meet. Just a brief glance of heat, but it was enough to spark more. I wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss him hard and feel his hands rip the confining dress off me and wrap my thighs around his hips.

  For a moment, the past just didn’t exist. Just him and the sweet, delicate kiss.

  Clap.

  Clap.

  Clap.

  The crowds melted back for Aaron, conversation stopped, music once again dribbled into the background. The IceMaw Alpha straightened the ring on his right pinky finger. “Lovely performance. Lovely.”

  Gabel dropped his hands and turned his full attention to Aaron.

  “I’m not impressed, Gabel,” Aaron said. “You think a sweet kiss and your Mark on her shoulder proves anything to me? That Mark didn’t mean anything to you when you had another woman on your arm. What was her name... Gardenia. When you had Gardenia on your arm.”

  That name struck my insides.

  Aaron went on, smug. “To be honest, Gabel, no one was surprised when you were spotted with her. She seems like your type. Pretty, stupid, and very, very easy to handle. An Oracle is more than you can manage.”

  “Gianna has always been the one I chose,” Gabel said. “Gardenia was a decoy. It worked well.”

  Aaron didn’t buy it for a second. “A decoy? For what? To draw me out? I’m not going to hide my interest. That kiss just now? That kiss was for me, for this room. Because Gabel wanted to prove to everyone who Gianna belongs to. Oh, and remind her who she belongs to.”

  Gabel’s shoulders bunched under his jacket.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man who rules you, to whom you have knelt.” Aaron gestured to Gabel and laughed. “You must be pleased to know he takes his obligations so seriously that he uses females as pawns. The Moon knows what else happens back home, considering what he’s willing to parade in front of us.”

  I gripped Gabel’s forearm as hard as I could.

  Aaron gestured to the marble floor, “Perhaps you will take her in front of us, Gabel. Prove to me, beyond a doubt, who owns her. So far, you haven’t convinced me I can’t win her from you. Maybe if I hear her pant your name?”

  Gabel’s anger spiked, splashed my insides like acid, roiled within him, building. “She carries my Mark, Aaron. You have already lost.”

  Aaron didn’t look away, and his eyes seemed more gold than brown. “I only bothered to come to this little party to meet her. I intend to have my chance with her. Step aside and let the woman choose!”

  “She has already chosen,” Gabel growled.

  I hadn’t really chosen any of this.

  Aaron growled at him. “Impressive that you found your balls and chose the Oracle, but not impressive enough, Gabel. Go back to your dogs and rejects. I and mine will never bow to you!”

  Gabel pounced, grabbed Aaron’s shoulder, and yanked himself against the other wolf. His other fist smashed into Aaron’s belly, lifting the man off his feet. Aaron shoved back, snatched free of Gabel’s grasp, and slammed his fist into Gabel’s jaw with a crack that startled me.

  Aaron shot forward, Gabel met him, they crashed into each other, Aaron punched Gabel in the floating ribs, Gabel ate it, threw an elbow, Aaron dodged it, ducked inside and as fast as Flint, snapped a kick into Gabel’s thigh. It actually staggered Gabel for a breath.

  Gabel’s enjoyment slid over my spine like hands stroking a cat. He grinned at Aaron, fury and the thrill of combat building. The two of them crashed together again, I flinched at the sound of a bare fist hitting flesh, growls and snarls. Gabel managed to snake around Aaron and get the IceMaw Alpha’s head in a crank, but Aaron somehow got a hold of Gabel and ankle-tripped him.

  Flint snorted, unimpressed.

  The crowd scrambled backwards to make room.

  Aaron slid out of range of Gabel’s grasp, moving like a fluid dancer.

  Gabel dropped back, reassessed, a cruel grin smearing his face, along with a trickle of blood from a cut just under his eye.

  Aaron had first blood. He grinned himself and continued his smooth half-circle pace around Gabel. “ You’ve gotten arrogant feasting on small wolves. I cut myself into an Alpha on the bones of my own family. You’re a blunt object.”

  Gabel laughed. “Come feast on me then, IceMaw.”

  Aaron didn’t decline the invitation. His shin snapped into Gabel’s knee with a crack! And Gabel’s leg buckled for an instant. Gabe
l grabbed Aaron behind the back of the head, yanked the IceMaw’s face to his own, and then cracked Aaron’s nose with his forehead.

  Aaron punched him in the jaw and shoved, sending Gabel backward.

  Flint rubbed his chin.

  Gabel burst upward and plowed into Aaron. The force drove Aaron back, and Gabel’s leg snaked around Aaron’s ankle in a glorious trip, sending both Alphas crashing to the marble. Gabel snarled as he delivered a punch square to Aaron’s jaw. Blood splattered. Aaron bucked, shrimped, exploded upward, Gabel snatched a handful of Aaron’s hair and held him down. Aaron fought to stand, managed to get one knee off the ground despite Gabel’s pressure.

  Aaron spit out a tooth, blood pouring from the cut over his eye.

  Gabel’s hand clutched the back of his neck, bearing down on Aaron’s spine. “You will kneel, Aaron. Both knees.”

  Aaron spat out another mouthful of blood. “Never.”

  “When it suits me, I will come for your pack, and you will bow or watch me rip everything you love into small. Little. Pieces.” Gabel shoved Aaron forward, but Aaron’s defiant knee did not bend. With a growl of disgust, Gabel snapped his knee into Aaron’s ribs and flung Arron onto his back, then jumped on him. Gabel pinned him with a knee in the belly, leaned over him, pinned Aaron’s neck to the marble floor with one hand. The other hand elongated, extended, fingernails shaping and sharpening into yellow claws.

  Aaron’s whole body moved with the effort of breathing around Gabel’s weight and the fingers clenching down on his neck just enough to weaken him. Gabel grinned at him. He didn’t crush Aaron’s throat. He wanted the IceMaw Alpha to be aware of how powerless he was, and how he, Gabel, could have killed him.

  Gabel’s darkness choked me, squeezing upward from my belly and shoving my lungs out of the way. It flowed from him like lava. It was so much worse than anything I had felt with his fight with Romero.

  Aaron’s off hand twitched as he wheezed, and through blood, grinned. Laughed. His fingertips sharpened, and with a final, huge effort, stabbed three of his claws deep into Gabel’s thigh.

  “Gabel!” I gasped as blood pooled up around Aaron’s claws. The IceMaw Alpha pushed deeper and rotated his wrist a few degrees.

  Gabel grinned at Aaron, his face darkening, and for a brief instant Aaron’s face flashed with shock and horror as he saw the Alpha of IronMoon. Then it was replaced with an iron mask. The IceMaw wheezed, “Bleed, you Moon-damned monster!”

  “Pain.” Gabel’s tone was low and guttural as his rage melted his humanity away. “Amusing. More.”

  He savored it, drinking in the challenge it was, gathering it around himself like he owned it. Aaron snarled at him, fear shaken off, and Gabel slid a claw down Aaron’s cheek. A wafer-thin slice of skin separated and folded down. Gabel repeated the process over and over as if Aaron’s face was a holiday ham.

  Aaron didn’t make a sound, and he struggled to twist his claws as deep and tight into Gabel’s thigh as he could manage. He wheezed, disgusted and defiant, and twisted.

  Gabel’s body jerked in pain as Aaron tore chunks out of his flank, but it didn’t stop Gabel from carving another wafer of flesh off the IceMaw’s face. He shifted his shoulders and neck in a fluid, inhuman way. There was something about it that caused many of the onlookers to back up, pale and horrified.

  His claw finished the final slice, then traced a thin red line of blood from the final slice, down the line of Aaron’s jaw, over the soft spot under the chin and down the throat until it rested on Aaron’s Adam’s apple. He grinned at Aaron and pushed down.

  Aaron jerked his chin up and hissed. “Do it, or be a coward.”

  Gabel pressed harder, snarled, and when Aaron didn’t yield, contemplated death. Aaron was not broken. If he would not break, he must die. Aaron tore another hunk out of Gabel’s thigh. Blood pooled under both of them.

  Gabel’s body began to shift under the human clothes, the dark magma rage increasing, melting, burning away his human awareness.

  “Gabel!” My voice cracked in the hot silence. “Gabel!”

  Gabel turned his head to look at me, a growl in his throat. The Bond pulled and twisted under his rage, stretched taut, as if he were very, very far away. He growled a warning at me.

  “Gabel.” I tried again. “He’s beaten. It is done!”

  “Minnneeeee.” Gabel growled at me. “Minnnnnnnnnneee.”

  “He’s beaten.” I repeated, trying to sound firm and not sure if I succeeded.

  Something flickered in him. He snarled at Aaron in frustration, but clicked his teeth together. He removed his hand from Aaron’s neck, swatted Aaron’s hand away from his thigh, and got to his feet. The tide of rage receded back from whence it came.

  Aaron got to his feet, chunks of Gabel’s thigh hanging off his fingertips. Flaps of skin dangled from his face. I shuddered but didn’t look away.

  “You should have killed me, Gabel.” Aaron said.

  Gabel snarled something inhuman at him and bared his teeth.

  “You are a brute,” Aaron grinned through his broken mouth, “and nothing more. You will never defeat me again.”

  He turned and walked back into the crowd. Gabel pulled against Hix’s restraining hand.

  Flint leaned over to me, “I think it’s time to go.”

  Gabel would want to stay and prove to everyone he wasn’t fleeing (nor injured), but he was also on the borderline of feral rage to the point he had lost the ability to speak, even if he held his human form. I didn’t trust him to keep hold of his temper, or maintain human form, or be containable if he shifted.

  Gabel growled over his shoulder, still looking for Aaron.

  Aaron hadn’t gone far: just to the bar for a drink. He saluted Gabel with the crystal tumbler, then sauntered off, presumably towards a restroom to mop the blood off his face The humans present tried to step around the blood, and the musicians picked up an uncertain tune. The wolves were less frazzled by the sudden violence.

  “We can’t leave,” I whispered to Flint. “Aaron will still be here spinning things his way.”

  “Aaron might have lost, but we have an angry lupine with chunks missing from his thigh,” Flint whispered back.

  We left the opera hall. Gabel still wasn’t limping, but he was pouring blood out of the puncture wounds on his thigh. His soaked sock squished each time his foot moved within his shoe. leaving bloody footprints, although I heard a wet squishing sound as his soaked sock moved in his shoe. In the back of the car, I took the seat across from Gabel, and as soon as the door was shut, Flint ripped the torn pant leg even further and examined the injury. “We have to get this looked at.”

  Gabel grunted something negative.

  “It is deep puncture wounds.” Flint stated. “Donovan. You scouted. What are our options?”

  Hix, however, agreed with Gabel. “We can’t linger here.”

  “He is still bleeding.” Flint told the Beta as blood pumped out of the three puncture wounds on Gabel’s outer thigh. It had soaked his pant leg and sock. Gabel poked at the wound curiously, Flint shoved his hand away.

  Donovan scrolled through his phone, and his thumb moved as he texted. “There’s a sketchy veterinarian somewhere around here.”

  “He is the Lord of this territory, and we’re taking him to a sketchy veterinarian?” Hix asked Donovan.

  “I’m thinking discretion,” Donovan retorted.

  “Hix, take Gianna and go ahead.” Gabel’s rage had melted enough that he had regained his human speech. “I will—”

  “We are staying together,” I told him.

  “No, we—”

  “We’re staying together, and we’re going to the veterinarian,” Flint cut him off. “Donovan?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Donovan leaned over the backseat and passed the driver his phone.

  Flint took off his jacket and ripped off both arms. He tied one of them around Gabel’s thigh above the holes, then the other one around the holes themselves.

  The
vet’s office was part of a run-down strip-mall half an hour from the opera hall. The parking lot was empty this time of night, there were no parking lot lights to speak of, and the strip mall itself seemed largely vacant. There was a cheap shoe store, a discount clothing store, and a few other random places. It wasn’t dangerous looking, but it was seedy, and nowhere I’d want to hang out. Especially wearing an evening gown.

  Hix oozed so much disgust he practically left a slime trail behind him. Going to a hospital would have been inconvenient, though, and appealing to the sketchy Anders for help wasn’t worth it. Aaron of IceMaw was the MeatMan, and my money said that his hand was the one on Anders’ collars. He was the wolf the SpringHide had been expecting, and he had advised the SaltPaw to run.

  It was genius when I thought about it. Instead of challenging Gabel directly, Aaron slid tentacles into the IronMoon extremities. Small deals. Small movements. Like a parasite sipping from the intestinal wall. Gabel could sense it, feel it, knew it was there. The vague sense of disruption and the battles that didn’t go well, or weren’t satisfying. The victories that were too small to feed those bellies. The intrigue and maneuvering the likes of Romero had no patience for.

  Gabel growled at Hix outside the car, his eyes darting to me.

  “She’s fine. Try not to bite the vet.” Flint grabbed Gabel’s arm as Gabel’s torn up leg threatened to buckle. Hix pulled Gabel’s arm over his shoulder and pulled him toward the vet’s office.

  The vet lived in an apartment behind the main building, caring for the hospitalized animals instead of leaving them unattended at night. It also saved on rent and made her available for late-night patchwork. Cash only, no names, no questions.

  She had on jeans, flip flops, and a tee-shirt despite the cold night. She looked at the bloody footprints Gabel into the office and asked, “Rough night at the ballet?”

  Donovan actually chuckled. “Petrushka got out of hand.”

  The backdoor led to a long rectangular room lined with glass-front cabinets, two metal exam tables, and an assortment of other devices, none of which looked especially welcoming.

  “Just the leg?” The vet sized up Gabel’s battered face.