Chapter 20 #2
These two motherfuckers.
Edward and Jeremy.
“You’re the one behind this. You set the fires,” I said flatly.
Jeremy shrugged.
“Strategic burns.”
The earth shifted beneath my boots.
“You burned habitat,” I said. “You endangered lives.”
“Collateral damage,” he replied evenly. “Necessary destabilization.”
Edward laughed.
“You think I’d challenge you without backing?” he said.
I turned slowly toward him.
“And what did they promise you?”
“Legitimacy,” Edward said. “Support. Coven recognition.”
“You were always insecure,” I snarled my disgust.
His eyes flashed.
“Fuck you! I’m the Alpha! These stupid traitors whisper about you,” he snarled. “About how you were stronger. How Father feared you. How you might be better than me!”
“I was only sixteen.”
“You were already bigger than him!” Edward roared. “Already more Alpha than I ever was!”
There it was.
Not ambition.
Fear.
He hadn’t burned forests to prove strength.
He’d burned them to silence doubt.
“And what’s in it for the Coven? After they help you, how do you keep your end of the bargain, Edward?” I asked.
“They want some trees, so fucking what,” he spat. “I destabilize the territory. They acquire the land. I prove I can command chaos and I rule the Clan unchallenged!”
“And you think that makes you worthy?” I asked.
His grin twisted.
“It makes me powerful.”
My Bear surged.
Power.
Dominance.
This challenge was bullshit.
Still, I forced myself to breathe.
If I let rage lead, I’d miss something.
Jeremy adjusted his cuffs like we were discussing zoning permits.
“This land was acquired years ago. It is ours,” he said calmly.
Justin stepped forward, voice colder than glacier melt.
“Your Coven sold their claim in 1875.”
Jeremy smiled.
“Prove it.”
“That’s easy Witch. See I can prove it because I was there,” Justin hissed, his Dragon leaking through his voice.
“Contracts can be amended.”
“You’d commit fraud?” Gia whispered.
The roots beneath us stirred.
“Oh, please, how do you think the Coven maintains its magical stores?”
“You fucking Witches. You would forge ancestral claims?” She asked, bewilderment in her tone. “You would manipulate me? Have me use my magic to heal this place, to test its strength, when all along you were the one harming this forest? But why?”
“Come on, you know why. Now stop and think. You have a future with the Coven—with me—but only if you chose correctly,” Jeremy said, and I wanted to kill him on the spot.
Only the matebond told me Gia needed to do this part on her own.
So I would allow it, but only because I loved her so damn much. And I wouldn’t deny her anything. Not really.
Not ever.
“You planned to strip this forest once it was unstable, down to every root. Don’t deny it,” she said.
And to his credit, Jeremy didn’t.
“But you don’t get to own this,” my mate snapped.
“You don’t get to decide that, Dryad,” Jeremy replied.
That’s when I noticed the vines at the edge of the clearing crept closer to his polished shoes.
“That’s enough talk from you,” he said. “Edward, you’re here to do something about your hybrid mutt of a brother, aren’t you? Why don’t you get on with it then, like a good boy?”
Edward stepped forward obediently.
“Let’s go, Wreck. Your mate can watch me end you, and when I finish, I’ll take her, your Clan, and your land!”
“Not in this lifetime,” I snarled.
He shifted without warning.
Bones cracked.
Fur tore through skin.
A full-blooded Grizzly exploded into the clearing.
Massive.
Brutal.
The kind Forest Ridge Clan worshipped.
He roared.
And I let go.
The shift tore through me like a breaking dam.
Spine snapping.
Fur erupting.
And for the first time in my life I embraced my beast, fully and completely.
Hybrid.
Monster.
True Alpha.
When I was finished, I stood enormous and furious on the mountain I hadn’t even realized I’d claimed as my own.
Then I faced the ones threatening it—threatening mine—and I roared so loudly I shook the entire fucking mountain.
After that, everything moved like lightning.
Edward and I collided like thunder hitting earth.
Mud and bark exploded around us.
Claws raked.
Teeth snapped.
Edward fought ugly.
Not disciplined.
Desperate.
He aimed for joints, for eyes, for humiliation.
He didn’t want dominance.
He wanted me broken.
I slammed him into a rain-slicked log hard enough to splinter wood.
“You always thought you were better,” he growled through our old Clan bonds right into my mind’s eye.
“I always knew I was stronger.”
He lunged again.
His Clan moved behind him.
“Help me!” he ordered.
Two Grizzlies charged.
I rose on hind legs and roared.
Not rage.
Command.
True Alpha dominance blasted outward like a shockwave.
Submit.
The air compressed.
The ground vibrated.
The attacking bears faltered mid-step.
Heads dipped.
Shoulders lowered.
Instinct overrode loyalty.
Edward felt it.
The power shift.
His eyes went wild.
Then magic flared.
Jeremy.
Witch magic crawled along Edward’s claws.
Cheating.
Fucking coward.
Edward came at me enhanced, faster, unnatural strength burning through his veins.
Magic-laced claws tore into my shoulder.
Pain flared white-hot.
The Bear welcomed it.
It only made me more focused.
Edward pivoted suddenly.
Past me.
Toward Gia.
Time fractured.
Mate.
Danger.
Everything went red.
NOOOOOOOO!
I moved before thought existed.
One bound.
Then two.
I hit him mid-air.
We crashed through saplings and mud.
He slashed wildly.
I bit down at the base of his throat.
Bone cracked.
Cartilage tore.
Blood flooded my mouth, hot and metallic and final.
Edward’s Bear thrashed beneath me, claws raking uselessly against my hide. Even choking, even drowning in his own blood, there was laughter in his eyes.
Madness. Spite.
A last desperate attempt to take something with him.
I didn’t give a single fuck.
He threatened my Omega.
My mate.
Mine.
Now, he would die.
I tightened my jaws.
Felt the life leaving him.
Felt the pulse stutter beneath my teeth.
Then I lifted my head.
And I saw her.
Gia stood a short distance away, breath coming fast, eyes wide—not with fear of me.
With understanding.
She watched the blood drip from my muzzle.
Watched the way my shoulders rose and fell.
Watched me become the Monster I’d always been told I was.
And instead of recoiling?
She dipped her chin once.
Permission.
Approval of this violence.
Recognition of the necessity of it all.
She wasn’t asking me to be gentle.
She wasn’t asking me to be better.
She was telling me that she knew exactly what I was doing.
Protecting her.
And that single movement anchored me harder than any chain ever could.
“You think killing me ends this?” Edward rasped through the ruined mess of his throat, voice a grotesque mix of man and dying beast. “The Coven owns this land… and he will have your mate.”
Jeremy’s smooth voice cut through the clearing like a blade.
“The paperwork is already in motion.”
The world narrowed.
Not red anymore.
Black.
Cold.
Still.
Something inside me settled.
Not rage.
Not chaos.
Finality.
I bit down harder.
The last vertebra shattered.
Edward’s body jerked once.
Then went limp beneath me.
Silence dropped across the clearing like heavy snow.
Forest Ridge stepped back instinctively, their Alpha dead in the mud.
I shifted partially human, rising slowly, Edward’s blood streaking my mouth and chest.
My teeth were still red when I turned toward the Witch.
“You burned forests to lower land value,” I growled.
Jeremy’s composure flickered.
“Well— yes, but I didn’t—”
“Risked lives.”
“Collateral damage,” he snapped, voice losing its polish.
“For profit.” I stepped closer. “For power.”
“Yes!” he shouted, mask gone now. “This land will belong to strength again! Not Shifter weaklings. Not hybrids. Not useless Dryads!”
I moved so fast, he barely saw it.
My hand wrapped around his throat and slammed him back against a tree.
The bark split behind his skull.
“Say that again,” I said softly.
The Bear was no longer roaring.
He was smiling.
Because this was clean.
This was controlled.
This was protection my way.
Jeremy’s shoes scraped at the soil as he clawed at my wrist.
Behind me, I felt Gia’s magic surge.
The forest answered her.
Vines burst from the undergrowth and coiled around Jeremy’s ankles. Roots tightened around his legs, pulling him downward.
“You used me,” Gia said.
Her voice didn’t shake.
It cut.
“We gave you and your worthless sister shelter,” Jeremy gasped.
“Worthless? No, we aren’t worthless, and you know that,” she replied softly. “You were using us! Both of us. Because you and your Coven covet our power. Why didn’t I see it before?”
My Bear snarled softly and my sweet mate shook her head.
Oh, she was finished with him.
And the way she looked right then? With her magic swirling around her in earthy tones and her hair floating gently around her shoulders?
Fuck. Me.
Gia was a sight.
Bewitching.
Gorgeous.
Sexy.
Powerful.
And she was mine. The realization made my heart thud faster inside my chest.
As for Jeremy?
I knew the second my sweet mate’s gaze narrowed that this would be the last of him.
I wasn’t wrong.
The earth shifted beneath him.
Not violently. Not yet.
It moved deliberately.
Like the forest itself was choosing sides.
And for the first time?
Jeremy Steeler looked afraid.
Behind me, Gia’s magic surged.
The forest answered her.
Vines wrapped Jeremy’s ankles.
They tightened around shins.
I released my hold just long enough for the roots to drag him to his knees.
I could have killed him.
Part of me wanted to.
Touch her and die.
It wasn’t a threat.
It was law.
But then I felt her hand at my back.
Warm.
Steady.
Anchoring.
She wasn’t asking me to stop.
She was telling me she trusted me to take care of her. The least I could do was trust her back.
“He will be punished by the very land he sought to drain,” she whispered.
I understood, and I turned.
I faced her.
My woman. My mate.
I pulled her into my arms without hesitation, blood and rain and mud staining her clothes.
Mine.
Safe.
Edward lay dead behind us.
The rest of the Forest Ridge Clan watched in stunned silence.
Their Alpha fallen.
Their dominance shattered.
And I felt it then.
The shift.
The forest recognizing strength not inherited—but fated, earned.
For twenty years, I’d been the banished hybrid beast.
The Monster.
My father’s shame.
Now?
I stood soaked in blood and power and truth.
Not as Forest Ridge’s heir.
Not as a usurper.
But as something they had never understood.
A True Alpha.
And the female in my arms?
She wasn’t afraid of the Bear.
She accepted him.
Chose him.
That right there sealed it.
I didn’t just belong to her.
She anchored me.
And anyone who ever thought of touching her again?
They would die slower and more painfully than Edward did.
That was just common sense.