Chapter 40
FORTY
BLAKE
“MAVE!” I screamed as the Alpha flew straight at her. She’d lost her focus for a few crucial seconds while she was clearly overcome with fear for Ben. She’d turned her back on her opponent, and now he was a millisecond from slamming into her at full force with his claws and teeth.
I threw another missile of blue air magic straight at him in a last-ditch attempt to knock him off course, but it wouldn’t get there in time. We’d all lost focus when Ben was injured, and now the Alpha was going to take Mave out.
I’d taken my eyes off of her so I could interfere in Ben’s fight and I let my girl, my mate, get hurt. Every horrible emotion under the sun bubbled up inside me—terror, nausea, rage, despair—in the instant I saw the Alpha pounce and I knew my magic blast would miss.
But before the Alpha could connect and tear a life-threatening hole in Mave’s neck, a booming roar sounded through the clearing, and a massive auburn wolf barreled into the Alpha’s side, knocking him clear across the ground and away from Mave.
They both rolled and snarled and snapped at each other, then they leapt to their feet and began to slowly circle one another, preparing to fight.
I ran for Mave, who’d shifted back into her human form, and I grabbed her into a fierce hug. “I love you, Wolf Girl. God, I almost let him hurt you.”
“Shhh,” she soothed as she clung to me, her naked, bleeding body pressed into me with every inch of her exposed skin. “It’s okay. I’m okay. We’re okay.”
More wolves ran into the clearing. A sandy blond wolf ran straight for Ben, who had shifted back to his human self and was sitting on the ground, breathing hard and holding his mangled leg.
The wolf shimmered and a nude Thad James appeared in its place, grasping Ben’s hand and looking absolutely stricken.
Hayes’ brown wolf and Knox’s white wolf had also arrived, followed closely by a smaller golden wolf that had to have been Mave’s mom, as well as….
“Ian!” I yelled, relief overwhelming me at seeing him unharmed. I released Mave long enough to shuck my shirt and hand it to her to wear, then I grabbed her hand and reached for Ian with my other as he jogged to my side.
“Blake! Thank God,” he gushed, gripping my shoulders with ferocity. “I was worried I was too late.”
“I guess they didn’t get you?” I asked.
He scoffed. “It would take more than a couple of low-level wolf enforcers knocking on my door and making threats to best me.” Then he looked at Mave’s blood spattered limbs and mangled shoulder, which was currently staining my white shirt with her blood. “Oh, sweetheart, you look awful.”
She didn’t have it in her to laugh, but she gave him a rueful smile. “I bet. I kinda got my ass kicked.”
“You fucking didn’t,” I growled. “You held your own out there. You’d have had him if Ben hadn’t gotten hurt.”
Mave’s mom and Harriet had reached us as well, but Mave sent them over to Ben after assuring them she was okay.
“My dad is going to kill the Alpha,” Mave said seriously as we turned to move closer to where Jack and the Alpha were still circling one another. “I know he’s more powerful, and the Alpha is tired.”
Knox and Mason had also shifted back into human form and were pacing around Jack and Alpha Monroe.
“DAD!” Knox shouted. “Stop this right now! What the fuck have you done?”
The Alpha just growled in his direction, then ran straight at Jack. Mave clutched my hand and sucked in a breath.
Jack easily dodged him, then he wasted no time in pouncing on his back, at the same time throwing out the most intense pulse of power I’d ever felt. It rocked the entire clearing, shaking the trees surrounding the clearing as well as all of us standing in the middle.
“Damn,” Ian whispered, and I had nothing to add to that.
The pulse knocked the Alpha to the ground, and Jack’s wolf stood over him, pinning him to the floor and grasping his neck in his enormous jaws. The Alpha lay frozen, unable to move at all.
Jack shifted back into a man, crouching and replacing his wolf’s jaws with his hand, gripping the Alpha’s throat so hard his knuckles were as white as the wolf’s fur.
Jack looked wild and terrifying—an unsettling contrast to his normal easy-going computer nerd persona.
He was overflowing with rage, and rightly so, since I know he didn’t miss Mave’s many bleeding wounds when he jumped into their fight.
“Shift,” he commanded, pushing another monster bolt of power outward.
“Holy fuck,” Mave whispered next to me, as the Alpha was compelled to shift back into his human form. I heard Knox and Mason gasp in surprise.
Alpha Monroe struggled against Mave’s dad’s hold on his throat, then he stilled when he found himself still held in place with Jack’s overwhelming Alpha power. His face had turned red with rage, and he glared at Jack.
“You going to take my pack from me, Jack?” he spat.
“I should. You don’t deserve to be an Alpha,” Jack responded with equal venom. “You drugged and kidnapped two kids, one of whom is a member of your own Pack and the other a human teenager. You were going to send a kid possibly to his death! What the hell kind of leader are you?”
“I do what I have to for my son and my Pack!” he shouted. He gave Jack a disgusted look. “You wouldn’t understand—you ran from your duties like a fucking coward.”
“Resign,” Jack demanded. “Leave quietly, make a new life somewhere else, and I won’t take this Pack from you by forcing your total submission. You can keep your dignity if you walk away.”
“Fuck you,” he seethed, and he struggled against Jack’s power again.
“Dad!” Knox barked. “Take the deal. End this with some honor!”
“Shut the fuck up, Knox! No son of mine would ever think voluntarily surrendering his pack was honorable!”
“ENOUGH!” Jack shouted, but then the loud crack of a gunshot rang through the clearing.
“Dad!” Mave screamed as Jack recoiled, losing his hold on the Alpha and staggering to the ground.
The Alpha wasted no time in shifting into his wolf and bolting from the clearing. Mave ran for her dad, while Ian and I ran in the direction of the shot.
“Motherfucker,” I cursed as we spotted the blood-soaked grass where I’d dropped Dunn.
I thought he’d bled out, but apparently he’d lived, and he’d come to enough to grab the gun from the belt of his shredded uniform pants and fire it at Jack.
He was now missing, probably having shifted and run out of here as soon as he got his shot off. The gun lay on the ground nearby.
Ian grabbed it in his fist and lit it up with white hot fire. The gun melted into an unusable mass of metal, then he tossed it back to the ground. “Just in case,” he murmured, then we ran back in the other direction to check on Jack.
As we approached the other side of the clearing, I took in the scene before me. Jack was, thankfully, alive and well and sitting upright on the ground holding someone’s shirt to his bloody shoulder. Mave and her mother were huddled around him, looking both anxious and relieved.
The rest of the group was with Ben. He was propped up on the ground, still holding his leg, though it looked considerably better than it had.
Blood was drying and skin was knitting together, but it still looked broken as fuck.
Harriet was supporting his weight on one side while his other hand was still clutched in Thad’s tight fist as he sat off to the side facing his buddies.
Thad, Mason, and Knox were huddled up on the ground next to Ben, all still stark naked and apparently engaged in an intense discussion. Knox had his head in his hands while Mason whispered fervently to the group.
“I’m going to go make sure the unconscious wolves stay that way,” Ian said as he jogged over to Angelo Parker and the other enforcer, probably to hit them with some kind of sleeping spell.
I joined Mave with her parents, kneeling next to them and wrapping my arm around her shoulders.
“Are you okay, Wolf Girl?” I asked, grabbing her hand. She winced, and I looked down and saw the raw, reddened skin of her hands and arms. “What the fuck is this? And why isn’t it healing?”
“Nikka and her bitch mom got me with wolfsbane rope,” she replied, waving her blistered hands around. “It’s how they kept me tied to a chair so I couldn’t bust out and save you.”
She recounted the events of her evening, from being grabbed at work to waking up at the Parkers to being sprung by Harriet and Ben. I did the same, though really all I did was sit in a magic-blocking cell and wait to be rescued by my badass girlfriend.
Ian had returned and was working some healing magic on Jack’s shoulder.
“I’m not a healer mage,” he was saying as he held his palm over Jack’s bullet wound, “but I know enough to get it started. You’ll still want to go to the hospital or have a shifter doctor do a house call, if you’d rather. I did the same for Ben, but he needs more attention as well.”
Jack sighed and squeezed Mave’s hand. I could see the pride shining in his eyes—she’d held her own against a powerful Alpha wolf—but also the concern for her safety.
He glanced at me. “You okay there, Blake? I hear you bested our pack’s lead enforcer with a… fire weapon?” He raised his eyebrows at me like he wasn’t sure Mave hadn’t been telling him tall tales.
“Ah… yes, sir,” I said, rubbing my hand across the back of my neck.
Why was I embarrassed all of a sudden? Oh, maybe because Jack Fortune took all of five seconds to destroy Alpha Monroe and I was now extremely intimidated by him?
“Fire comes pretty easily to me, especially if I keep in contact with it.”
“Did you really do that?” Ian asked, getting excited. “Let me see it.”
I tossed a hand up and shot fire from my palm, quickly molding it into my sword and gripping the flaming hilt. I waved it around theatrically for a second then released it back into the ether. All of the parental figures’ eyes widened.
“I’m sold,” Jack said. “Welcome to the family, Blake.” He grinned at me.