Chapter 43 Mo
Mo
Iwalk toward Stuart, who kneels in the dirt with his hands tied behind his back.
His lip is split, and a purple bruise spreads across his jaw.
Next to him, the head alpha and his followers kneel too.
But Mark’s posture stays stiff and defiant, chin up as if he still has something to claim in this world.
The guys fall in around me; Darius on my left, Silas on my right, Archer and Elias a step behind.
Stuart hears my footsteps and lifts his head. His eyes widen when he sees me, and I catch a flicker of calculation behind them.
I stop three feet in front of him, close enough to smell the fear leaking from his pores.
“Mo,” he starts, voice cracking. “Listen, I can explain—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
His mouth snaps closed.
I look at him. Really look at him. The boy who told me I was beautiful.
The boy who held my hand and kissed me under the stars and made me believe, for one stupid month, that I was special.
The first person outside of Sophie I ever trusted.
The boy who bragged about it afterward and collected his winnings, while I was dragged into a cell.
“Mo,” he tries again. “Listen, I was just trying to help you find your sister. That’s all this was. I—”
“Shut up.” I step closer. “You don’t get to talk. Not anymore.”
I crouch down so I’m at his eye level. His scent hits me. Fear and desperation wrapped in something oily and rotten.
“You were just a stupid boy,” I say, my voice steady. “A stupid, cruel, pathetic boy who needed his friends to think he was big. And you know what? You’re still that boy. You just got taller.”
Stuart’s eyes dart to Darius behind me, then back. Searching for an exit, a way out, someone to save him.
“The bet,” I say. “Tell them about the bet.”
“Mo, that was years ago. I was a kid. I didn’t know what would happen to you—”
“Tell them.”
His jaw works. He looks at the ground.
“He bet his friends he could get the feral omega to sleep with him,” I say, loud enough for the guys to hear.
“And then he collected his winnings and laughed about it. And when his father, the head alpha, found out his omega had been touched,” I continue, “he didn’t punish the boy who did it.
He punished me. He put me in a cell and sewed wolfsbane wire into my skin when I was just sixteen. ”
I stand up, looking down at Stuart, and I feel something I didn’t expect.
Nothingness.
He’s nothing. A coward on his knees in the dirt, and the power he had over me is just gone.
“You’re pathetic,” I say. “You were pathetic then, and you’re pathetic now. And I’m done letting you live in my head.”
I turn away from him and stop in front of the alpha. Stuart, I can dismiss. The head alpha is something else entirely.
He looks up at me with those cold eyes. No fear. No calculation. He looks at me the way he’s always looked at me. Like I’m something small and inconvenient.
“You cost me a great deal,” he says calmly.
Something white-hot ignites inside me. “You destroyed her,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow. “She was always fragile.”
“She wasn’t fragile. She was kind.” My hands clench into fists. “She was the kindest person I’ve ever known, and you took that, and you broke it. Because breaking things is the only thing you know how to do.”
I step closer, looking down at him. “You crushed her throat. You let her think I was dead. You kept her in a room the size of a closet for three years. You starved her. You restrained her until her wrists scarred over. You took everything from her. Her voice. Her mind. Her will to live. And you’re looking at me like I’m the one who owes you something. ”
His expression doesn’t change. That’s the worst part. No guilt. No flicker of humanity behind those cold eyes. He’s not even sorry.
“She was mine to do with as I pleased,” he says. “As were you. As is every omega and every subject in this pack. That’s the natural order.”
I smile down at him. “And now it’s time for you to know exactly what that feels like.”
This male cannot be allowed to walk away. Not given a second chance to slither back into the world and find another pack to devour.
I turn to Darius. “He’s the one who sewed me with wolfsbane.”
Darius steps forward, and his scent shifts. Sharpens. The air around him thickens with something powerful, something that makes every wolf in the clearing lower their head.
Every wolf except the one on his knees.
“You know who I am,” Darius says. “Who they are.” He points to the guys standing behind me.
“Ten years ago, I let you live. Because I thought if I showed you mercy, you would learn to do better. I sent you into exile, and I thought that was enough.” He pauses. “It wasn’t.”
And then it hits me.
These males. The ones who showed up at my pack when I was eleven. The ones who challenged our alpha, won, and turned everything rotten. They came from the north. From a pack they claimed had driven them out.
From Darius’s pack.
These are the males who staged the coup and killed my mates’ families.
“You took that mercy and used it to destroy yet another pack,” Darius continues.
“You killed, you enslaved, you tortured. You did to others exactly what you did to your own pack. You took my mercy and used it to defile another pack, to raise yourself up from the mud. And I bet you would have kept doing it until someone stopped you.”
He takes a breath. The clearing is silent. Every wolf in the compound is watching.
“This time,” Darius says, “I’m stopping you.”
The alpha’s eyes narrow. For the first time, a hint of fear crosses his face. His realization that his story ends here. In the dirt. On his knees. With nothing left to control.
Darius looks at me.
I nod.
The head alpha laughs.
Low at first. Then louder. His shoulders shake with it, his bound hands curling into fists behind his back.
“You think this changes anything?” He looks up at Darius, and the fear is gone, replaced by something uglier—contempt. “Coming from the boy who couldn’t protect his own father.”
Darius doesn’t move.
“You want to kill me?” The alpha leans forward on his knees. “Do it. Put me down. Mercy is a weakness, boy.”
Darius doesn’t take the bait. He stands perfectly still, jaw tight, fists at his sides.
The alpha turns his head towards me. “And you.” His lip curls. “The feral little omega slut. You should have chosen the rotation. On all fours, like the omega bitch you are. At least then you might have borne some pups and been of some value in this world.” He spits at my feet.
I bare my teeth. “Keep talking. It’s making what comes next easier.”
He straightens on his knees. Pulls his shoulders back. Lifts his chin as if he’s still sitting on a throne instead of kneeling in the dirt.
Then he opens his mouth, and his voice drops to that register I know. The one that sinks into bone. The one that crawls beneath your skin and wraps around your spine and squeezes until your body stops belonging to you.
An alpha command.
“Kneel.”
The word rolls across the clearing. I feel it hit me like a wall of pressure, and my wolf flinches. My knees buckle for half a second before I catch myself. Around me, some of the wolves stagger; the loyal ones drop.
Darius doesn’t move. Not even a twitch.
Archer stands like a wall behind me. Elias doesn’t blink. Silas shifts his weight, absorbing the command, but it just rolls off him.
Nothing happens.
The alpha’s face changes. The contempt flickers. His lips part, and for one beat, I see the moment he understands that his bark doesn’t work anymore. That is the thing he’s relied on his entire life, the power that bought obedience, means nothing in this clearing.
He tries again. Louder this time. Desperate. “I said KNEEL!”
The command crashes over us all, and this time, nobody moves.
I smile.
His composure cracks. Then his jaw loosens. His shoulders drop an inch. The mask he’s worn for decades, the cold authority, the certainty that the world will bend because he tells it to, slides off his face, and what’s left underneath is small.
Just a pathetic male on his knees in the dirt.
Darius crouches down in front of him. Slow. Deliberate. Eye to eye. The way he crouched for Sophie in the hallway, except nothing about this is gentle.
“My father wasn’t weak,” Darius says. “He was merciful. There’s a difference. He believed people could change.” His voice drops. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
He stands.
“Shift,” Darius says. Not a command. An invitation.
The alpha’s eyes widen. He understands. If he shifts, it’s a fight. Wolf to wolf. And Darius is giving him that. A chance to die on four legs instead of two. More dignity than he ever offered anyone in this compound.
“Untie him,” Darius says.
Archer cuts the ropes. The alpha staggers to his feet, rubbing his wrists. His eyes dart to the tree line, calculating, measuring the distance and wondering if he can run.
He can’t. Silas stands between him and the forest. He won’t make it far, anyway.
The alpha shifts. It’s fast, and a large grey wolf with yellow eyes. He’s older than Darius, built for damage, but Darius is bigger.
Darius shifts a second later. The black wolf is enormous. Taller, broader, darker than anything in the clearing. His hackles rise, and a sound comes out of him that isn’t a growl. Lower than that. A vibration that rolls through the ground and up through the soles of my boots and into my ribs.
The grey wolf lunges first, and the crowd backs away around the alpha fight.
Teeth snap at Darius’s throat. He twists, catches the grey wolf’s shoulder, and drives him sideways into the dirt. The grey recovers fast, circling, snarling, snapping at Darius’s flanks. He gets a bite in. Blood sprays from Darius’s side, dark against the black fur.
My heart seizes. Archer’s hand lands on my shoulder, holding me in place.
Darius doesn’t flinch. He takes the wound and keeps moving, pushing forward, methodical and relentless.
The grey wolf snaps again. Darius catches his jaw between his teeth and wrenches sideways. A crack splits the air. The grey wolf yelps, a sharp, pitiful sound, and stumbles, his jaw hanging at a wrong angle.
Darius releases him. Steps back. Waits.
He’s giving him a chance to yield. To bare his throat and accept what’s coming.
The grey wolf sways on its feet. Blood drips from his broken jaw. His yellow eyes are wild, rolling, searching for a way out that doesn’t exist. His eyes lock onto me.
He lunges for me, determined to inflict one more act of cruelty before he is killed, but Silas wrenches me out of the way, and Darius meets him head-on.
His jaws close around the grey wolf’s throat, and he drives him into the ground.
The impact shakes the earth beneath my feet.
The grey wolf thrashes. His paws scrabble at the dirt, claws dragging furrows in the soil.
Darius holds, his teeth sinking deeper. A wet, grinding sound I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
The thrashing slows.
Slows. Then stops.
Darius opens his jaws and steps back. Blood dripping from his maw.
The grey wolf lies in the dirt. Dead. The clearing is silent.
Darius shifts back to human form. Naked, blood-streaked, chest heaving. He stands over the body and stares down at it for a long time.
When he looks up, his eyes find mine.
I don’t look away.
Ten years ago, a sixteen-year-old boy showed mercy to the men who murdered his family. He let them live because he believed that was the right thing to do. Those men took that mercy and used it to build a new empire of cruelty.
I cross the clearing, stepping over the body without looking down and stand directly in front of Darius.
“Thank you,” I say, looking up at him.
He closes his eyes. His whole body shudders, one long exhale that seems to empty him of something he’s been holding onto for ten years.
“I’m sorry. I should never have let him live. He—.”
I cut him off. “It’s not your fault, Darius.
You’re a good leader. This is not on you.
” I grab the back of his neck and pull his face down to mine, standing on my toes to crush my lips to his.
This big, burly alpha streaked in the blood of my abuser is finally mine.
His arms engulf me as we press closer, and I wonder how I ever could have thought he was my enemy.
When we break the kiss, Elias drapes a jacket over Darius’s shoulders. Archer stands at his back. Silas moves to my side, his hand finding the small of my back.
We stand there in the clearing, the five of us. It’s over, and now I know what true freedom feels like.