17. Orion
CHAPTER 17
Orion
“O h, fuck,” Lycan murmured, grimacing as he stepped closer to Poe.
“Silence,” Kodiak said, taking a deep breath as he walked toward us. He immediately took up space, commanding the tiny Fiver with his massive body and his intense presence. There was a reason he was alpha. He was the strongest and the most intimidating, and when he set all that on me, I had to force myself not to squirm under his glare. “Imagine my surprise when I go into the shift with fifty-three pack members and come out with fifty-four.”
I probably should have felt guilty. I probably should have dropped to my knees and begged for his forgiveness. But aside from being my alpha, Kodiak was my oldest friend in the world. We were born only a few months apart. Our fathers had been friends before us. We had lived together, raised hell together, and God willing, we’d die together. He didn’t scare me, and that was the reason I was his second in command, his veep. I was the only one in the pack that could say that.
His penetrating crimson gaze flitted from me to Isolde to Lycan and Poe before coming back to the girl. “Isolde Vanderbilt, I presume.”
She cleared her throat and nodded, taking a step forward to hold out her hand. “I’m guessing you’re the alpha.”
Kodiak stared at it, pulling his lips into a ghost of a smile.
“Yes, it is quite a pleasure to meet a new member of my pack.” He shifted his hard eyes to me. “Especially when I haven’t even agreed to their admittance.”
“Kod—” I tried.
“I said shut the fuck up,” Kodiak snarled. I shifted my shoulders, my wolf bucking against the command. I wouldn’t challenge him, especially not in front of two other members of the MC. If it came to blows, that would happen alone—when it was just the two of us and we could be friends instead of alpha and second.
“Not that it matters anymore, but it wasn’t his fault,” Isolde said. “He didn’t know I was a shifter. I didn’t know I was a shifter. It all happened so fast.”
“Poe,” Kodiak said, and my pack mate stepped forward, coming to the alpha’s side. “Take Ms. Vanderbilt home. Her family has been looking for her.”
She hesitated and looked at me, as if waiting for me to argue with him for her. Or hell, maybe just to say goodbye. But after what happened, after what she’d revealed, it seemed too little too late.
She’s our mate, my wolf whined, Go to her.
But I didn’t. The inferno from our argument still burned in my gut, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it or what I would do next. So I stood there with my jaw squared and my eyes burning into her. My wolf bucked against my restraint, clawing my insides, making my conflict even more unimaginable.
When I didn’t move, she shook her head and let out a sad, sarcastic laugh.
“Just like a Bastard,” she said. “Fucking coward.”
Kodiak growled low in his chest as Lycan’s jaw dropped and Poe sucked in a gasp. No one in the pack dared talk like that, not in front of the alpha, but she wasn’t just anyone. She was the second’s mate, emboldened by my magic. Even if I’d had a tiny passing thought about trying to reject it, it took a special shifter to stand by me. If I wasn’t about to face down my best friend’s wrath in the face of her secrets, I might have been proud of her.
“Ms. Vanderbilt,” Kodiak said, turning to her with his arms crossed. “Our families have been at odds for nearly a decade. I understand you’ve mated my second and you’re potentially a new member of the pack, but listen closely. No one disrespects my kin and lives to see the next moon. You’ll do well to pick your next words wisely.”
“I’m not his mate. He doesn’t want me.” She raised her chin and took a step toward him, shooting daggers out her stare. “But do your worst, alpha. Tear my heart out. Eat it in front of your pack. What more could happen at this point?”
With one last heartbreaking look at me, she hugged herself tighter and walked out the front door. Poe gave me a sympathetic look before following her, but Lycan shot me an angry side-eye. Then he, too, walked outside.
Kodiak raised an eyebrow and nodded toward the porch. Ignoring the tight ache in my chest and the simmering fury echoing down the bonds from both him and Isolde, I gulped against a dry throat and followed him. He stomped down the steps to the muddy ground, the snow having melted to nearly nothing during the day.
The alpha waited until the truck disappeared down the driveway before setting his hard stare on me.
“What the fuck are you thinking?” he roared, the full brunt of his anger sizzling through the connection between us, igniting my own. “Mating a Vanderbilt?”
“Let me explain.” I held up a hand.
“You better start talking.”
“She went into her transition,” I started. “She was latent. Hell, probably all of the Vanderbilts are.”
“I told you to keep your fucking hands off her,” he growled, his eyes shifting to a bright crimson red, the same color as his wolf. He pulled his lips over his teeth, baring his fangs to me, bigger and longer than even mine.
My wolf recognized the threat at the same time that he recognized the alpha’s dominance. He wanted to fight Kodiak to prove how much Isolde meant to him, to me, to us. But at the same time, the pull of the alpha’s order speared through my chest, and I had to keep my feet firmly planted so I didn’t back up.
If I did, that would admit defeat. If I moved an inch, Kodiak would take a mile.
“She needed my help,” I said, holding his stare so he’d know I was serious. “What was I supposed to do? Let her die?”
“You should have told me the truth,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to disobey you,” I said. “I tried to hold off as long as I could.”
“Yes, you’re a knight in shining armor.” He took another step toward me, bringing his face threateningly close to mine. “Do you want a medal for managing to keep your dick in your pants for a whole week?”
Despite how upset I was with her for keeping her business with the Scorpions from me, my wolf’s pride wouldn’t stand for anyone talking about her like she was just a warm hole. I shoved his shoulders with a menacing snarl. He pushed me back hard enough to send me stumbling a few feet. But that set off my feral side, and I howled, racing toward him so I could shove a shoulder into his gut and take him down to the ground. Agony exploded through my face when he swung on me, hitting me square in the jaw. Ringing echoed through my ears and I tilted to the side, giving him enough leeway to roll me off him and slam an elbow into my gut. I wilted, but I’d always been quicker to rebound and I rammed my fist into his cheek, but it barely did anything.
He was the alpha, and he had the strength of the entire pack at his disposal. He could pull on any of them, all of them, even me if he wanted. Alpha could suck the strength right out of my bones. I’d given him that permission when I’d sworn my allegiance to him and sealed the bond between us.
He snapped his gaze back to me, eyes gone red to the wolf, canines fully dropped, claws shooting out of his fingers. He swiped at me, close enough to sting but not hard enough to draw blood, and I blocked, using my legs to wrestle his weight off me. We’d been sparring like this since we were kids, and he knew my weaknesses. That, of course, made me painfully aware of his. I went for the solar plexus, ramming my fist into his side, but he came back harder, nailing me in the cheek once…twice…a third time, hard enough to have me gasping and laying in the snow while I tried to see straight.
“Stay down,” he snarled. “It’s over. You did wrong. You know it.”
I nodded and admitted defeat, pushing myself up into a sitting position as I wiped blood off my chin. I’d bitten my tongue, and he’d split my lips open, but other than that, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done to me before. I deserved it, after all.
“Give me some credit,” I finally said when he sat down next to me. “I can’t withstand the mating call any more than anyone else.”
“She’s a fucking Vanderbilt, Orion.” His words were softer now, as if the fight had taken the edge off even as his features twisted with torment, the years of animosity against that family wearing him thin. “Her father killed yours…killed mine. They’re responsible for so much Bastard blood, I can’t even begin to put a number on the body count.”
“I know.” I hated that fact, but I couldn’t change it. I had to live with my regret that things weren’t different.
“Does she know?” He raised his eyebrows. “Does she know what her father has done?”
I nodded and explained what she’d told me about her engagement to the president of the Scorpions. “She’s in pretty fucking deep. ”
“Great.” He wiped at the blood trickling off his eyebrow and lowered his head with a solemn shake. “So not only have you escalated things with the Vanderbilts, but you’ve renewed a war with the Scorpions.”
“I fucked up.” I cleared my throat and wiped the blood off my chin. “With her. With the pack. My wolf has accepted her as my mate, but…she’s been here almost two weeks and she didn’t say anything about it. What am I supposed to do?”
Kodiak sighed and rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “Put yourself in her shoes. She’s alone on enemy territory with three Bastards who hate her because of her last name. You wouldn’t have said anything either.”
That made sense, but it still chafed. What made it worse was the thought that I’d done nothing but keep her safe. Why did she feel like she couldn’t tell me ? Perhaps that was what I was most upset about, not that she’d kept it a secret, but that in all the things we’d shared with each other, she hadn’t trusted me enough with this.
“The Scorpions will retaliate for this,” Kodiak said. “The war will begin again.”
“The war never went away,” I told him. “It was always going to pick back up once Uther Vanderbilt died. That thin truce with him was the only thing keeping us from tearing each other apart.”
“Well, now that you’ve absconded with Marx’s fiancée, I can’t imagine he’ll be happy to keep the stalemate.”
I glowered. “She’s not his fiancée. She never was, and she’s never going to be.” Not if I had anything to do with it.
“Yes, now she’s your mate and you’ve put me in a very tough position.” Kodiak crossed his arms, reminding me so much of his father when he and I would get in trouble as pups. “How do I tell the pack that we need to prepare for another war? How do I sacrifice more elders, more cubs, more brothers, for the sake of you and your mate?” He said the words like they tasted like shit.
“That’s what pack does,” I said. “I would gladly lay down my life for any of them, to protect any of them, to protect you. And I have, time and time again.”
He narrowed his gaze and let out a low rumbling sound that reminded me I walked a very tight rope. “You are not worth the pack. Not one shifter is worth all of us. You know this.”
I did. The lone wolf did not survive, but together, the pack thrived. The pack united. The pack lived.
“If I could break the mating bond, I would,” I mumbled, the words nearly choking me as I said them.
“Don’t lie to me,” Kodiak snarled. “If your wolf has accepted her, then you need to make your peace with it. The beast will go rabid without her. The damage is already done.”
“Do what you must,” I said, knowing the punishment was coming. I’d disobeyed him, and even though it was for my mate, that didn’t negate the fact that I didn’t tell him about it. I should have mentioned it the minute I suspected it, the minute Lycan thought she might be latent.
“I am not so cruel as to separate a shifter from his mate,” Kodiak said. “And I don’t think your wolf would listen even if I ordered you to never see her again.”
I sighed and felt a weight lift off my chest. I had suspected he might do that, and he would be well within his rights to command it. He could expel us both from the pack and forbid us from ever coming back again. Disobeying the alpha set a precedent, and it opened him up for attacks from other ambitious members, especially when it was his second who’d done the betrayal.
“You will tell the pack what you’ve done,” he said. “You will face their judgment, and afterward, you will find a way to make it right.”
“Fair enough.” I cleared my throat and nodded. “If I can make my peace with it, will you accept her into the pack? Will you allow us to mate?”
He snorted out a laugh, finally returning to the man I’d known for decades, my best friend rather than my alpha. “You do right by the pack, and I don’t think I’ll have much of a choice.”
“Thanks, Kodiak.” I clapped him on the shoulder.
He wiped at his face again and pushed to his feet. “Your right hook is getting rusty.” He held out a hand to help me up. “You need to spend more time in the sparring room.”
I laughed and took it, letting him yank me to my feet. “You, too. You used to be quicker. You’re getting old.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, nodding toward the Fiver. “C’mon. Let’s have a drink and talk about how to break this to the pack. Then, we’ll head home.”