Alpha Ascendant: A Fantastical Werewolf Adventure (Wolf Rampant Book 3)

by Aimee Easterling

  Chase turned his head to include me as he spoke, acknowledging the fact that I'd started filling the beta's previous role in Wolfie's life. The two would always be best friends, but Wolfie had largely grown out of his need for a non-bloodling to translate between him and the rest of the world. And in the rare instances when my mate still needed a human-minded partner...well, I was there.

  "Of course the pack can get along without you," I said quickly, not waiting for Wolfie to reply. Because I knew Chase was also asking whether I could get along without the previously necessary third-wheel who had greased the gears of my early relationship with Wolfie.

  Luckily for everyone concerned, I hadn't needed the beta to clue me in to what Wolfie really meant in months, so I added force to my words by taking Chase's hands in mine, imparting what strength I could to the shaken shifter. Yes, Wolfie and I would get by just fine with Chase gone. I just hoped he'd fare as well out in the world alone.

  My mate, apparently, was thinking along a similar track. But Wolfie's willingness to sacrifice for his milk brother exceeded my own. "And the pack can do without me as well," the alpha said, surprising me and Chase both with his readiness to dive in with both feet to help his friend.

  Is that really true? I thought, considering Wolfie's words. I'd managed the Haven clan so badly before my mate moved in that I had to wonder. Just last winter, I'd trusted Sarah and I'd trusted my uncles, most of whom had ended up stabbing me in the back. Who said I would do any better on my own this time around?

  Plus, a sad little voice that I tried my best to ignore added: Is my mate leaving us because Chase needs him...or because he's fed up with me for being too scared to embrace a claiming moon?

  But my co-alpha erased both fears as he took my hand in his and cocked his head to one side. His lupine half was speaking to my own without words, simply broadcasting the boundless affection that the two beasts shared. I suspected that if our human minds didn't persist on getting in the way, then Wolfie and I would never have any dissension in our relationship at all.

  "I know you can do this, Terra," Wolfie said when our respective wolves had settled back down into slumber. "I'll call and email whenever I can, but I trust you and I trust our pack." He paused, then glanced quickly over at Chase, whose mind seemed to have returned to the past rather than paying attention to the remainder of our conversation. "And I have to do this for Chase. He's stood by me through thick and thin, so it's high time I had his back as well. We're brothers."

  I could barely speak through the sob caught in my throat, so I merely nodded my head.

  Wolfie was right. Chase deserved all the help that we both could give. So I'd find a way to be a better alpha than I'd been before. Somehow, my wolf and I would protect our pack.

  ***

  Of course, cell-phone reception and internet cafes near Sienna's home turned out to be nonexistent. So I was entirely out of touch with my mate when the letter arrived the next morning.

  Well, I was physically out of touch, but Wolfie was still very much on my mind. So, rather than diving into the pack problems awaiting my attention, I was instead sitting in my office in the Barn doing my best to emulate Wolfie's more human approach to educating Ember when my stepmother tapped gently on the already open door.

  "Are you busy?" Cricket asked, a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand and her bird-like shoulders tense. I wasn't able to ask the source of her worry, though, because Ember's excitement at the entrance of a new playmate spurred the wolfling to hop down off my desk and to dance around the woman's feet like an extra large cat.

  We were all used to the bloodling's enthusiasm. But apparently Cricket wasn't as on top of her game as usual, so she neglected to notice the joyful attack until too late. "Oh!" my stepmother exclaimed, nearly falling over the living trip hazard before crouching down to scoop up the bloodling in her free hand.

  "Now that you've got Ember, I'm not busy at all," I answered, dubiously eying the document Cricket held out toward me. My stepmother had retained her duties as pack secretary even after her husband stepped down as leader, so it was no surprise to see that the opened envelope had been addressed to Wolfie. What was more surprising was the source—the Southeast Inter-Pack Tribunal. As I made out the words, I immediately felt a pang in my stomach that matched the expression on my stepmother's face perfectly.

  "Bad news," Cricket said simply, passing the letter over before returning her attention to the bloodling. "It requires an immediate reply, so why don't I take Ember for a while so you can focus?" Then, aiming her next words at the pup in question, my stepmother asked, "How would you like to help me mop some floors?"

  Even though the task sounded more like a chore than a game, Ember visibly vibrated with anticipation. Cricket had embraced the role of grandmother early on, but since the bloodling lacked human hands, the former had been unable to share the typical grandmother activities of joint cookie baking and craft making. Instead, the duo had learned to love cleaning together just as much.

  I'd initially been bamboozled by Ember's enthusiasm for what I considered grunt work. Until, that is, I walked in on the pair one day and found rags tied to the pads of the bloodling's feet. Cricket was calling encouragement as the pup slid gaily across the soapy floor in their version of "mopping up." Yes, it wasn't a typical grandmother-granddaughter activity...but both participants clearly loved the project. So who was I to say they'd be better off baking cookies?

  The reminiscent smile quickly faded from my lips, though, as I picked my way through the legalese in the document Cricket had delivered before taking Ember off my hands. Our Tribunal was a lot like a human court in both purpose and preferred language, so it took me longer than necessary to get the gist of the article in question. Only when I saw Justin's name did the worry at the back of my mind coalesce into a more serious ache. Then I picked out the word "daughter" and my vision went dark for a split second.

  They want to take Ember away from us. Instantly, my wolf became so angry that I nearly fell onto the floor on four paws rather than finishing reading.

  Good thing Cricket took the daughter in question off my hands, I thought grimly. In fact, I was already on my feet and striding outside before I realized I'd chosen a course of action in an instant.

  Like Cricket, I knocked on a door and invited myself in without waiting for a reply. Dale was pasting a bandaid over a young cousin's skinned knee when I entered. But with one look at my face, the boy skedaddled out of the doctor's office and slammed the door behind him.

  I would have felt bad about the youngster's hasty retreat, but I knew the pack's kids had been won over by the doctor's colorful bandages and now tended to show up on his doorstep when they had hardly so much as a scratch. My rampant wolf couldn't smell any blood and there hadn't been any scent of worry about the room until the inhabitants got a look at the anger behind my eyes. So I maintained my attention on the issue at hand.

  "You said you might be able to transform Ember after more trials," I said, cutting right to the chase with my brother-in-law. My human brain was vaguely aware that I should have started with small talk and worked up to my request. But my human half wasn't entirely in control at the moment. And my wolf was uninterested in two-legger time-wasting.

  Truth to tell, my human half felt about the same way after reading the letter that we still clutched in one hand.

  "How long do you need?" I finished, boring into Dale's eyes with my own.

  The poor guy wasn't used to the intensity of an angry werewolf's gaze, so it took him a few seconds to get his act together enough to speak. In the meantime, I paced jerkily from one end of the small examining room to the other, doing my best to maintain my human form so I'd be able to speak to my brother-in-law and pepper him with further questions.

  "Is everything okay, Terra?" Dale asked, and I could tell he was itching to pull out his stethoscope and look me over. I simply continued to stare, though, and his eyes slid to the side in an almost lupine show of submission.

 
"Well, it might be days before I feel comfortable trying out the drug on Ember or it might be weeks," the doctor said once it became clear that I wasn't planning on imparting any additional information. I didn't particularly want to keep my brother-in-law in the dark, but I also wasn't sure how much longer my wolf would let me maintain human form when both of us craved the feel of splintering bone between our sharp teeth. So I kept my lips closed to cover the fangs that wanted to expand and sharpen against my tongue. No need to terrify Dale when he seemed quite willing to help us get what we needed without any additional inducement.

  "I haven't started working on it yet," the doctor continued. "Because I wasn't sure how you and Wolfie felt about the idea."

  "Then start," I said—or rather, my wolf said as the two of us turned back toward the door. We'd answer the letter by choosing the peacekeeper route, we decided. That would give Dale more time to work on the only solution I could come up with to keep Ember out of her father's hands—to accelerate her majority by forcing a shift.

  Because that was the crack I was hoping to slip through. In werewolf law, any shifter old enough to change forms was also old enough to choose his or her own future. Presumably, Ember would be willing to tell the court that she wanted to stay with us, and the current disaster would be averted.

  It was a brash move, but a necessary one since the Tribunal's request would otherwise end in tragedy. The governing body had ordered me to either relinquish our bloodling back into Justin's dubious care or to submit to a peacekeeping exercise in hopes the two of us could come to some sort of compromise.

  As if there could be a compromise between my current urge to tear out Wolfie's brother's throat and Justin wanting to do the same to my mate.

  Too bad the other alpha had realized that metaphorical sallies would be just as satisfying as sinking his fangs into our actual flesh. I hadn't thought Justin was that smart and patient.

  Yes, Wolfie's brother just continued to disappoint.

  "I'll start on it now," Dale called after me, and I squashed my wolf long enough to turn back around and grace my brother-in-law with a vaguely human smile.

  "Hurry," my wolf and I said simply. "But make sure it's entirely safe."

  Chapter 7

  I had more sympathy for Wolfie's recent outburst after I calmed my own wolf down and came back to my human senses. If the out-of-control rage I'd felt after reading the Tribunal's letter was a side effect of fully embracing my alpha abilities, then I wasn't entirely surprised that my mate had barked me into line. The strange part was that he hadn't done so more often.

  Which made me wonder if I really wanted to share my mate's job. And made me yet more dubious about fully submitting to Wolfie's will with a claiming moon.

  But soul searching quickly took a backseat to pack life. The shifters around me seemed to be accepting Ethan better now that Fen had stood up for him a time or two, but Cricket was less happy about her son's integration into our pack. "He's been acting...erratically," the aforementioned shifter informed me three days later during her usual state-of-the-pack morning report.

  Spy master—yet another essential duty that my stepmother had carried over from the Chief's regime to my own. Cricket blended into the background so seamlessly that werewolves of all sexes and ages tended to talk freely in front of her...and then she passed along any relevant tidbits to her alpha when next we spoke.

  I had to admit that I'd initially been dubious about allowing Cricket to continue this particular duty after my father turned wolf and left the pack in Wolfie's and my hands. But I was soon forced to admit that my stepmother's insights were usually right on the money and that they always came in handy.

  Now, though, I hoped the observant shifter was just reacting like a typical overprotective mother when her son came out from under her protective thumb for the first time. Ethan probably had been staying up late out in the Barn with the other teenagers, maybe overdosing on video games and junk food. But I'd seen my brother interacting with Ember just the day before and the teenager had proven himself to be a kind-hearted and loyal member of our family beneath all those tattoos. Personally, I was more worried about the pack harming my brother than about my brother harming the pack.

  Still, Cricket would probably have an easier time releasing her worries if we talked them over. So I drew her out. "Erratically how?" I asked as patiently as I could.

  Empathizing with my stepmother wasn't as easy as it should have been that morning. After all, there were a dozen more important issues waiting for my attention, first on the list being a stop by Dale's clinic to see how the live trials of the so-called Fur-to-Feet drug were going—F2F for short. As the name suggested, the yahoos had gotten involved in the non-technical aspects of the pharmaceutical project. And my long-suffering brother-in-law had willingly allowed them to christen his medical cocktail, accepting their offer of performing guinea-pig duty during the testing phase as well.

  Unfortunately, although I appreciated the young shifters' unwavering support for Ember, I had to admit to a little concern that one of them might accidentally jinx the whole operation with their well-intentioned but immature antics. Which is why I'd hoped to drop by Dale's office first thing this morning, rather than spending my time calming the nerves of a jittery stepmother.

  "It's hard to explain," Cricket said, pulling me out of my own thoughts and returning to the topic of my little brother. She was obviously having a tough time pinning down a more solid piece of data than her own gut reaction. And, in any other scenario, her gut reaction would have been enough evidence for me. In this case though, I had a feeling that Cricket's intuition was being clouded by maternal urges, so I had a hard time taking her words seriously.

  "Yesterday, he seemed unsteady on his feet," she ventured at last. "And when I dropped by the Barn, I caught him squeezing ketchup straight out of the container and into his mouth."

  Yuck. Doesn't Ethan know that ketchup only looks like blood? my wolf asked.

  "You know the kids like to challenge each other to eat strange foods, right?" I said, doing my best to soothe my stepmother while also attempting not to laugh at my lupine half's comment. Of all of the bits and pieces of pack culture bubbling to the surface in the Barn's melting-pot environment, this was one of the more disgusting but less dangerous youthful indiscretions. After all, while the yahoos were busy eating anchovies on ice cream, they weren't setting anything on fire. So I made a point to keep their larder well stocked.

  "I know," Cricket agreed, her submissive wolf preventing her from naysaying my explanation. She'd probably noticed additional strange behaviors that made her feel the issue was worthy of bringing to my attention. But I trusted Ethan, and I was worried sick about Ember. So I cut our conversation short.

  "I appreciate you telling me," I said instead of poo-pooing my stepmother's intuition further. "But don't worry—I'll look into it."

  Then I took my leave in hopes I'd catch Dale before the yahoos fully invaded his testing lab.

  ***

  I was too late, of course. The Barn rats—now including several of my young-adult relatives in addition to Wolfie's core yahoos—were fully ensconced in the largest room of the clinic by the time I arrived. There were wolves on the floor, two-legged shifters sitting on benches, and, inexplicably, helium balloons floating through the air. The last appeared to be simply toys, although I was pretty sure I'd noticed a few of the human-form shifters tying ribbons together in preparation for hoisting Ember aloft.

  The bloodling would have to take care of herself, though, because my attention immediately went to the F2F trial taking place at the other end of the room. Dale was injecting the drug into a wolf's upper leg as I walked in, and the change back to a human Fen was nearly as rapid as my mate's shift had been in the other direction. The young woman's eyes met mine as I strode toward her, and I was relieved to see that she was just as alert as ever.

  "How does it feel?" I asked. F2F was an obvious success, but I was still terrified of unwanted side e
ffects harming the bloodling who now floated around the room beneath a bevy of balloons. Despite my worries about her future though, I had to hide a smile at seeing my favorite pup swimming through the air as if she were riding in a spaceship in zero G.

  But I still had business to attend to. So I returned my attention to Fen and added, "Any side effects?"

  "Just a headache," she responded. "Actually, it feels a lot like a forced shift from an alpha's command."

  I raised my eyebrows at her answer, wondering how Fen would know what a forced shift felt like. She'd been too young to transform when Wolfie spirited her away with several other members of his hidebound pack in order to start a clan of his own. No way would Wolfie have forced a shift on an unwilling werewolf.

  But the female yahoo had spent a couple of years roaming the countryside alone as a teen, I now recalled. And perhaps her experiences out in the wide world hadn't been entirely positive ones. Still, Fen didn't mention any traumas and I respected her privacy, so I just nodded and aimed my next question at Dale. "Has the drug affected anyone's ability to shift back without help?"

  This was one of the issues I was most concerned about. Would injecting F2F into a wolfing too young to change forms on her own make it impossible for Ember to shift without the drug in the future? If so, I wasn't entirely sure the effort would be worthwhile, which would mean I needed to start hunting down another solution to counter Justin's challenge.

  Too bad no viable alternatives came to mind.

  But Dale didn't seem concerned about that potential issue. "No problems at all on that front," the doctor reassured me. "Of course, we don't know what would happen if F2F forced a shift in someone who hasn't yet come of age. Which is why, if you think it's acceptable, I'd like to try the drug next on someone just a little younger than Keith. That way we could test forced shifts on a teenager who can't change forms at will, but who would have the potential in the near future. Side effects should be more mild than we might see injecting the drug into Ember, but they would still warn us about possible future hazards."