Chapter 17
Brick
The full moon peeks over the tips of the towering pine trees. The silver light limns the hardened top crust of the snow, making the white drifts glow.
I stand barefoot, ankle deep in the snow, with my pack at my back. Madi’s beside me, bundled in a winter coat.
“Which way is the Adalwulf land?” she asks. We’re on Blackthroat land, the plot of land Madi found for us, and we purchased. She’s seen it on a map, but this is her first time visiting it.
I don’t like having her out here, so exposed, but she insisted on coming to see us off, and I no longer argue with her instincts.
“That way.” I point into the thick forest. “Down the hill, through a ravine.”
“Okay.” It occurs to me that she might not like leaving me out here, exposed, facing danger without her.
My beautiful, courageous mate. Our luna.
I face her and cup her cold-reddened cheeks. “This won’t take long. I’ll be back before midnight.”
“All right.” Her breath puffs out, and I can’t resist dipping my head to claim her mouth.
The kiss warms me to my toes. Someone in the pack starts howling in appreciation. Probably Vance, the jokester.
She shivers, and I break the kiss. I can’t keep making out with her right in the snow.
She’s smiling as she steps back to let me shift into a wolf.
I unbutton my shirt with one hand and strip it off. The wolf crawls under my skin, seconds away from taking over. My voice is barely human when I call to the pack. “Tonight we claim this land as ours. Let’s mark our territory and let the Adalwulfs know we are stronger than ever.”
Wolves don’t howl before a hunt, but werewolves do. An eerie chorus rises.
Behind me, to the left, Billy lets his wolf tear out of him, shredding his clothes. Nickel is more fastidious, stripping and rolling up his clothes neatly to leave on a stump.
I keep my eyes locked with Madi as I undress. She takes in my every move, staring at my bare chest as if fascinated.
I brush her cheek. “I’ll be back by midnight.”
Her voice is husky as she replies, “I’ll be waiting.”
I grip a strand of her hair in my fist and growl for her ears alone. “Be naked.”
She licks her swollen lips. “We’ll see. Alpha.”
I don’t kiss her again. If I do, I’ll take her right here in the snow.
I step back and call my wolf. The change grips me. I land on all fours, shaking off the lingering tingles.
The first thing my wolf wants to do is rub against Madi. She runs her hands down my sides and strokes my face, laughing when I lick her.
“Have a good run,” she says. I accept a few last pets, and nudge her towards the waiting car. I wait until she is safely inside and on her way home before turning back and racing to catch up with the rest of the pack. I’ll do this run with the scent of my mate clinging to my fur.
The howls die away as the rest of the pack finishes shifting and starts to run. The cold has a razor edge, but it can’t penetrate our thick coats. The snow makes running a challenge, but there”s nothing like a hunt on a winter’s eve. I let my wolf play, finding the scent of a squirrel and ducking under hemlock boughs to follow it.
Nickel does the same, bending a branch back only to let it snap in Billy’s face. Billy’s big white and gray wolf snarls and pounces. The two land in a snowbank, sounding like they’re going to kill each other. A minute later, they right themselves and shake off the snow before trotting along together, best friends again.
At least until Billy pushes Nickel into another snowbank.
The wind picks up, carrying our enemies” scent. I snap the air, tasting the cold and the Adalwulf’s stench. I trot to a rock overlooking the expanse of land. Below, my pack mates are romping, running everywhere as they please. From time to time, each wolf finds a tree, cocks a leg, and marks the trunk. Spreading their scent around, marking our territory wolf-style. Marking this land as ours.
I sit back on my haunches and howl.
The sound echoes through the valley, bouncing off the mountains. My pack members join in, amplifying the call. Billy and Nickel burst from the forest, running neck and neck. I bound in front of them, and we all race flat out, straight up the side of the ravine.
I put on a burst of speed, and the world blurs around me. The snow and shadow of the hillside turns into a haze. I reach the top of the tallest hill with my inner circle just behind me. We’re on flat land now, in an old pine forest thick with darkness. The moonlight streams through a broken patch in the canopy, illuminating the figure waiting for us.
Aiden fucking Adalwulf. He’s right next to the white flag marking the end of our land and the beginning of Adalwulf territory.
He brought back-up, too. About a hundred and fifty wolves from his pack, standing in a precise military formation. They look like something out of a Nazi propaganda film. Odin’s a dictator who rules with an iron paw. It wouldn’t surprise me if he mined the Third Reich for leadership ideas.
But Odin isn’t here. And according to my mother, Aiden is eager for his father to die, so he can ascend as alpha.
“That’s their weakness,” Madi told us. “That’s the fracture in their pack we can exploit.” For a human, my mate is brilliant at wolf politics.
I pad on all four paws up to the line and drop to my haunches. Billy and Nickel are right at my back. Jake, Vance, and Sully on either side of them, in an arrow formation. Eagle crowds in front of Ruby to protect her, even though she could stand her own with any wolf, even Aiden.
My Adalwulf cousin stands with his hands in the pockets of his black tactical pants. “I”ll be met by moonlight, proud Titania,” he quotes A Midsummer’s Night Dream, like a fucking tool.
There’s nothing to stop me from leaping over the line and attacking Aiden. He’s shirtless and barefoot, but it’d take a second for his wolf to kick out of the torn pants. I could use those seconds to go for his throat.
He would be fun to fight. We might be evenly matched.
But that will come another day. Tonight, I follow the plan. The one concocted by my mother and my mate.
I suck in a breath and let the change sweep over me. I rise, naked, and face my cousin.
“So nice of you to visit, cousin. Do you like our land?” I spread my arms.
A muscle twitches in Aiden’s cheek. His eyes flash a brilliant silver, showing me the monster lurking under his civilized skin.
“We’ve enjoyed hunting on it,” I say. “Hopefully there’ll be some game left for you.”
Aiden shrugs. “My wolves enjoy hunting bigger game. Other predators.”
At Aiden’s right hand, a big bruiser of a brown and black wolf snarls softly at Billy. Billy ignores the wolf, which enrages it even more.
I smile, letting my canines flash. “Interesting.”
“You seemed to be on the hunt for a different quarry yourself. Last time I saw you in the boardroom, you were completely out of control.”
Great, we’re going to talk about this. “That hunt is over. I have claimed my mate.”
“A human,” Aiden sneers.
A growl rises in my chest. A warning. “My human. She has accepted my claim and claimed me in return. She is our pack’s luna. And we are here to demand satisfaction from those who tried to kill her.”
Behind me, the ranks part and two of Sully’s enforcers drag a wolf forward. Scar-face, the one leading the Adalwulf pack to ‘hunt the human’ in Sweden. They force him to stand beside me, and push him to his knees.
“Here is one of your wolves. He provoked an attack on our luna. My mate.” I snarl, stalking to Scar-face and burying my hand in his hair to force his head up. “You tried to kill our luna. You failed. You tried to weaken our pack. You failed. But this attack on our own cannot stand. Do you, Aiden Adalwulf, acknowledge that your pack made a murder attempt on my mate? Because if that’s true, then let it be known the Blackthroats are stronger than ever, and in retaliation for dishonoring our luna, we are prepared to go to war.”
Aiden’s turned to stone. I can see his mind working, as Catherine and Madi guessed it would. He can acknowledge the attack as sanctioned by his pack and fight us now. But his forces are weakened by Odin’s recklessness.
“We’ll let you have your wolf back,” I say. “We killed the rest, and if we do battle this night, you’ll need all the strength you can get.” I release Scar-face, and Sully’s enforcers toss him forward. He rises and marches to Aiden’s side.
The wind shifts, blowing towards the Adalwulfs. More and more of my wolves pour out of the forest, lining up at my back. There are a few British wolves from Nickels’ origin pack, too. More than enough to face these Adalwulfs. If I give the word, the Blackthroats will tear through these dumbass Stormtrooper-wannabes like a wolf tears into an elk’s belly.
I see the moment our numbers reach and exceed the wolves Aiden brought. My cousin’s eyes flare with the knowledge.
He’s brought a lot of wolves, but many of his pack’s enforcers died in the attack on the island and in Sweden. Odin was reckless, and Aiden knows it. He’s done the math, and he doesn’t like it.
“As you can see, the Blackthroat pack stands united. You hunted our luna and tried to kill her, and now we are ready to wipe you from the face of the earth. So I ask you now… Will you atone? Or will you face war?”
At my sides, Billy and the others tense, ready to leap. My own eyes light with my wolf, focusing on Aiden. His chest is bare, only a thin layer of skin and muscle protecting his beating heart. One leap, and I could tear it out with my teeth.
The wind dies, as if the whole world is holding its breath.
Aiden bares his teeth. A growl escapes his chest but he grits out, “The attack on your mate was not sanctioned.”
“Lies,” the scarred wolf at his side snarls. “Our Alpha Odin gave orders—” his words die as he convulses and chokes. His eyes widen, and he stares at Aiden. Then he falls, his throat slit, gurling on his life blood.
Aiden examines his red tipped claws, ignoring the body at his feet. None of the other wolves in his pack move or blink an eye. He probably brought the wolves most loyal to him versus Odin.
“As I said, the attack was not sanctioned. A few wolves went rogue. They will be punished for their disobedience.”
I wait a few moments, letting his proclamation land. Then I nod. No one makes a sound, but I sense the seismic shift in the Adalwulf pack. The balance of power has tipped from Odin to Aiden. The power-hungry son threw his leader, his father, to the wolves.
Exactly as Madi guessed he would.
“Then the debt of honor has been repaid. There will not be war,” I say. Unspoken, hanging on the air, is the “yet.”
Aiden flicks a finger and two wolves break ranks to drag the dead one away. I give the signal that will allow my pack to disperse, but none move. None of them trust Aiden. If he was going to do something underhanded, now would be the time.
He looks like he’s swallowed something rotten as he faces me again. “So you’ve made your mate your luna?”
I can’t stop my lips from turning up, thinking of Madi. “She stands at the head of our pack. We are equal, two halves of a whole.”
“A human,” he mutters as if he can’t believe it. “Is the Blackthroat pack so eager to dilute its bloodline?”
Fuck this shifter supremacy shit. “The Blackthroat pack will mate with whomever we want. Human or shifter, we’ll still be stronger and faster and better than you and your pack.”
The polite veneer disappears from Aiden’s face. “One day, cousin, I will kill you.” His eyes are bright. I’ve seen that unhinged look before. On his father.
“So eloquent,” I drawl. “What, no more Shakespeare?” I meet his gaze for a hard moment. “You will try.” And I turn, giving him my exposed back. There’s a second when the hair on my nape lifts, every cell in my body waiting for Aiden to snap and attack. But he doesn’t.
He can’t.
It’s just as Madi and my mother predicted.“Without the wolves Odin wasted on the attack on the island and in Sweden, Aiden doesn’t have the numbers to face us. He will have to back down.”
It was a calculated guess. And it was right.
Without shedding another drop of shifter blood, we won.
My pack turns as one and kicks clumps of snow and leaves with their back feet. Like dogs do when they’re covering their shit. I can hear Aiden’s teeth cracking in his clenched jaw.
I trot away, my paws light on the black earth and patches of snow. When I break from the trees, I stretch my nose forward.
Somehow, there’s an orange spice scent on the air, even though I know Madi is safe in the Blackthroat mansion. In my bed. Knowing her, she’ll be wearing a windows dress begging for me to punish her for disobeying orders.
I can’t wait.