Three
Ihonestly wasn’t surprised when the front doors, the double ones I’d walked through earlier with Narah, were busted open. The one on the left nearly cracked in half with the force, and there stood… I wasn’t sure what.
There were eleven men, and they didn’t look like they were from anywhere close to Coille.
Not a single pair of jeans, a baseball cap, or any cotton on the bunch.
They were all in black suits with silk shirts, wearing huge diamond-encrusted watches, all sporting various styles of facial hair—beards, goatees, mustaches.
They were all big and muscular, a couple so bulked up that there were no necks I could see, and all of them except the one in front, standing alone, had gold eyes.
Easy to see that they were wolves ready to tussle, but I had no idea why.
Standing up slowly, I moved forward, walking toward the intruders but also shielding Narah. I wasn’t sure what I would need to do.
“What are you doing here, Tuss?” Abel asked, stalking across the room, passing me by with Justin and Cole flanking him, sounding both angry and surprised.
The guy in front, who was smiling all cocky, crossed his arms. “We’ve come for our tribute, just as we do every month.”
Tribute?
Abel shook his head. “No. We left New York and settled here. We owe no more tribute to the Haviland Pack, as we don’t reside in your territory.”
“When did my father tell you that?” Tuss asked, shaking his head like Abel was nuts. “You’re still indebted to us whether you live in our territory or not. We gave you protection for years without payment, and my father is still owed.”
“No,” Abel told him. “I went and saw him before we left, and he agreed that the Swann Pack offering tribute was done. We left no one behind, so all our ties are cut.”
“I’m sorry, Abel, but you’re wrong, and just like last time, I’ll make you the same offer I did then. If you don’t have the money, we’ll take a wolf in payment.”
Like last time? A wolf in payment? What the hell?
If I’d been the alpha, I would have roared at him, ordered him off my property, and told him that if he wanted to fight, he and I could step outside and settle the misunderstanding one-on-one.
I’d met enough alphas in my life to know that they always offered themselves first. It was how they were made.
They led and protected; it was in their blood.
Abel shook his head. “No, no. I spoke to your father, and he gave us permission to leave.”
Arguing, being rational, logical, was not what an alpha did. Abel sounded weak, and everyone, I thought, could hear that. But perhaps these wolves, his wolves, could not. If they weren’t used to a powerful alpha, this, the bargaining, was probably normal for them.
“My father told me last night, after I finished collecting tribute from all the other packs in our region, that I would need to fly out here to this piece-of-shit little town to collect yours.”
“No, he—”
“Listen.” Tuss held up a hand. “To show you our appreciation for years of loyalty, my father has decided to grant you his hand in kinship. No more tributes need be paid if only you part with either your son, Justin, or your nephew, Cole. My father will accept either, as both are of pure lupine blood. This way, we will have a blood pact between our two families.”
I understood immediately. This Haviland Pack from the city must be as spread out as Abel’s pack had been.
An infusion of pure blood was, I was guessing, desperately needed.
The wolves had probably been mixing their blood with humans’ for years.
That was great if you wanted a large pack, but wolves who weren’t pure lupine couldn’t shift.
I suspected that in the city, with no one monitoring the matings of anyone but the sons and daughters of the alphas, the larger packs had very few shifters.
There were still heightened senses, they were stronger and faster, but they could not transform into animals.
I’d been surprised when Justin, Reggie, and Fletcher had told me they would be hunting on their land.
It was unusual to have enough wolves in a pack to make that happen anymore.
If you were going to demand tribute from gods knew how many packs, you needed to be the strongest of all.
The Haviland Pack needed wolves, and both Justin and Cole could give them what they needed.
If they were smart, they would have just asked for Cole.
I had to wonder what Abel would have said in that case.
“Listen, Tuss, be reasonable. I could no more—”
“Joining the Haviland Pack is a privilege,” Tuss announced as the men behind him fanned out. “And either your son or your nephew will become my brother.”
Abel just stood there, stricken, staring at the man in horror.
I could see this going sideways so very quickly.
“You expect us to give you my son or my nephew?” Narah asked Tuss, her voice icy as she slipped around me to go to her mate’s side. “You demand the blood of my family even after the cowardly way you took three members of our pack?”
She nearly screamed the last part, and I had a moment to think that she made a much better alpha than Abel before I parsed her words.
Justin had lied to me. He’d told me that three deaths had led to his father thinking about moving the pack and eventually concluding that it was for the best to foster community and have many sets of watchful eyes on the children.
In reality, they’d been driven away from New York when they’d been attacked.
Knowing what I did now, I had to wonder if the Haviland Pack had poisoned the wolf who died of an overdose. Easy to exchange an expected drug and turn it into a hot shot that would kill.
I could imagine a young woman kidnapped and murdered by these men now standing menacingly in Abel and Narah’s home, and just thinking about a toddler run down in the street made my heart hurt.
They were monsters, and I understood why Abel had moved his pack to get everyone out of harm’s way.
But that had been a mistake. They’d run, so of course Tuss’s father had sent his son to demand what they’d always been given.
Abel should have challenged the alpha of the Haviland Pack.
That was what an alpha did. I had to wonder if the pack knew that the deaths hadn’t been accidents.
Worse was the fact that Narah clearly knew that her pack members had been murdered.
That meant that among the packs in New York, everyone knew that the Haviland Pack was more like the mob than a family.
They preyed on their neighbors, demanded payment from many, and had probably used the deaths to intimidate others.
They had targeted not the strongest in the pack, but the most vulnerable, and had probably flouted their crimes to drive fear into everyone they collected tribute from.
The Haviland Pack had done it for leverage, and that was an abomination that any true alpha would have made them pay for in blood.
“Be quiet, bitch,” Tuss snarled at Narah. “You owe the Haviland Pack your lives.”
“You took money from us, and you killed our children,” she rasped. “We owe you nothing.”
“You’ve always been a mouthy whore, Narah,” he growled, “but go ahead and run your mouth. We know you won’t do anything about it because you can’t.”
“You’re a coward, Tuss, and you’ll end up as all cowards do,” she spat at him.
“You can die here in front of your mate,” he roared, charging toward her.
Justin bravely stepped in front of his mother, but he was slapped to the floor with the back of Tuss’s open hand. He was about to stomp on Justin’s leg as he lay sprawled beneath him, but then Cole was there, plowing forward, throwing him off-balance and hurling the wolf halfway across the floor.
“Oh, look now,” Tuss crowed, rolling to his feet before starting to laugh. “The pup has claws after all!”
Cole stepped sideways, eyes on Tuss, and I saw them turn gold.
“This is what we need,” Tuss announced, cracking his neck, moving to face Cole again. “Another predator, no more mewling humans.”
No one moved.
“Grab all the kids and the women,” he ordered as he advanced on Cole. “We’ll find out who can shift when we get home and kill the rest.”
People screamed as the men turned on the families huddled in the room. Tuss and his men didn’t shift, instead pulling what looked like machetes from sheaths at their sides, easy to see when they opened their coats.
“Kids, come with me,” I yelled. A guy came toward me, and I picked him up by the throat and hurled him through the living room wall.
As expected, Tuss, his men, and everyone else froze and stared.
I wasn’t a large man, so the strength was a surprise.
But what was great about kids was that they moved on instinct, so they still ran to me.
When I went out the front door, all of them followed, urged on by their parents, who moved to block Tuss and his men from going after them.
The younger kids stayed right with me, not hesitating, but the teenagers, terrified for their parents and unsure what would be best, I was certain, were torn over running.
“You have to come with me, the little ones need you,” I said, appealing to their sense of duty. “They’ll be scared without you.”
Once they were outside with me, I pointed up the hill.
“I need you all to run up there as fast as you can. I have a buddy who’s gonna meet you, and you can’t miss him because he’s dressed like an elf, okay?
All in green, long black hair, big necklace, and he’ll have a huge-ass walking stick.
He’ll protect you, and you stay with him until I come get you. ”
“It’s dark,” a small girl said in an even smaller voice.
“No, it’s okay, look by the trees.” I pointed, and she saw, just like all the rest of the kids did, a sudden bright green glow. “There’s a light right there at the edge of the trees. Just follow it up and you’ll find him, easy-peasy.”