27. What Kind of Pack?
27
What Kind of Pack?
FLOR
S ergeant had been the one behind the rigged ranking system at Northern? I couldn’t believe it.
And it wasn’t true. At least, not entirely.
“He was the one who followed orders,” Alpha Hillier corrected sternly. “Sergeant came to Northern near the end of the war, and is the only reason we didn’t lose more of our members. Why we kept the packlands intact. He enforced the ranking scheme.”
Scheme. I tasted bile.
When Glen let out a soft curse, the Alpha hurried to add, “He had no choice at the time. My father was still leading the pack then, and he placed the Alpha command on him, too. He could not have disobeyed.”
“There are ways around Alpha commands,” I said, thinking of Sergeant’s strength, and the ways I’d subverted some of the commands at Southern. “If he had wanted to?—”
“Don’t blame him for my mistake. I should have rescinded the command, changed the policy. It was always intended to be a temporary measure. It’s just… I understood why my father did it.”
“Oh, this should be good,” I muttered. Brand lowered his ears.
The Alpha ignored us both. “When the war broke out, I wasn’t Alpha. I was young, but I had two friends, younger than me. One was Darwick. He wasn’t physically strong, but he was the heart of our cohort, and made us all laugh. He and his little sister Sera had both tested for rank a month before the Council’s decision was made.”He paused, taking a drink of water, but no one else in the room even moved.
Brand was still gazing at me, and I tried to push a little reassurance down the bond. I wasn’t sure if it worked, but he didn’t herd me out of the room. I wanted to hear this story.I needed to. What had gone so wrong in this pack?
“They were some of our first casualties. After they died, my father explained to me and the senior Enforcers why we needed the more fixed ranking structure to keep our vulnerable members safe. Then after the war, the Council’s law was rescinded. But by then so many had died, and our birth rates had dropped so rapidly, it seemed prudent to continue what we’d started as an emergency measure. We were protecting the pack. You have to understand.”
I wasn’t sure I was the one he was talking to. His pleading gaze was fixed on his Heir.
I glanced over at Margarette. Her shoulders were hunched. “I was just as much to blame,” she whispered. “Maybe more so. I just wanted to protect the young ones. The girls.” Her red-rimmed eyes found my face, and I shook my head. I was so disappointed, so angry, I almost couldn’t keep from shouting.
“I don’t understand. You told me Northern was a place where women could be Enforcers. You were so proud of your sister.”
“She died, Flor. She died, and I couldn’t protect her. When I learned about the ranking… process, I didn’t change it, because it was the only way we could protect the ones who might have died like she did. Our Enforcers live dangerous lives.”
“Vanessa,” I murmured. “She was ranked. The women in this pack who hold rank—they didn’t fight for it, did they? They train alongside the men, but the ones who have rank were born with it, right? None of your unranked women were ever going to move up.” It was all I could do not to spit on the floor. “At least at Southern, they didn’t lie to the girls about it. We all knew we’d have to fuck some ranked asshole if we wanted to eat.”
Margarette opened her mouth to protest, but she was cut off by a loud snarl. I glanced at Glen, who had fur bristling on his neck, and looked seconds from tearing out his own mother’s throat. I stood and moved to his side, placing a hand on his arm. His deep blue eyes, lit from within by his wolf side, met mine. I squeezed his arm, letting the magnetic spiraling sensation that always came from touching him move between us for a moment before letting go.
Alpha Hillier addressed me now. “Flor, it was for the good of our young.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen someone perpetrate a crime on someone else ‘for their own good,’ I’d have enough money to buy a ticket to Hawaii,” I said, not even trying to keep the disappointment from my tone. “Why do you think having less power in a pack as large as this would be safe for anyone—especially a female?”
I met his gaze and did not look down, though a slight headache started at the base of my neck after a few seconds. “I’m not certain you’ve had a chance to hear about this, but the day I arrived here, Vanessa set your young males on me. They hunted me—a stranger, an unranked female—through the woods around the Lodge. And I’m certain it wasn’t the first time they’d done something like that.”
I walked back over to the sofa, laying a hand on Brand’s neck to stop him from growling. “You took away the most vulnerable pack members’ power and gave them lies about ever moving up. The ones who figured it out put on leather collars to show they were your dogs. To gain a little bit of protection, by making sure everyone knew they weren’t going to try for more. Not that their dog collars granted them much.”
At the word dogs , everyone had flinched. I just tapped my ear tag, to drive home the point.
Alpha Hillier went pale, but didn’t look away, so I went on, not dropping my stare. “And the ones who stayed in the housing you gave them? You think living even farther from the Lodge did anything but make their screams harder for anyone who gave a shit to hear? Did you know an Enforcer ‘choked’ to death not even a week ago? Choked while he was inside the unranked compound, helping himself to the young women there.”
He let out a shocked breath. “How did this happen?”
Patrick broke in and gave a quick recitation of the facts. To my shock, it was the Alpha who eventually dropped his eyes.
Inside, my wolf snarled. That should not have happened. An Alpha cannot show such weakness. This one should not be leading. My gaze moved to Margarette. She would be a better Alpha.
I forced the thoughts aside. My wolf was a stone-cold bitch. But not wrong.
Everyone was looking at me again, and I decided to really let my inner fury out. “Good job protecting your females, Alpha. What kind of Alpha wouldn’t know what was happening to his own most vulnerable members?” I swept the room with my gaze. “What kind of pack?”
“Not mine,” Glen whispered. “This is no longer my pack.”
No longer his pack? I sat down slowly, moving like I would if I’d been handed a cottonmouth. Beside me, Finnick stopped breathing. Brand lifted his head, assessing Glen.
Alpha Hillier lost his balance, sitting back down abruptly. “You can’t—” he began, but Glen’s scathing look cut him off.
“We’ll talk about it later, Dad. We need to go over what happened yesterday. How Flor was taken, and who was really behind it. Obviously, the unranked shifters here weren’t the problem. It was our own damned family working with the rogues. Flor was right. We’re as bad as Southern.”
Ugh. I wished I hadn’t said that now; it wasn’t really true.
“We have a bigger problem,” Finnick broke in, surprising me with a gentle hand on my shoulder. “There was an accomplice. Someone else inside the Lodge.”
“It was that wizard,” Margarette declared. “He was in the Lodge.”
Grigor? Oh hell no. “He saved me. He’s not the bad guy here.”
“We’ll look into every possible suspect. Patrick and Glen?” Alpha Hillier seemed to shake off the emotions that had filled the room only seconds before, an invisible mantle of Alpha power forcing our silence and attention. “We have things that must be discussed, and quickly. Finnick? I phoned your father this morning to tell him I’d recovered. He’s recalled you to Eastern, effective immediately. I’ll have a car ready for you in an hour.”
“My phone,” Finnick murmured, his hand dropping. I missed the sensation immediately, but tried not to let it show.
Patrick crossed the room and handed a phone to him. “We found it with your clothing, where you shifted.”
“Thanks,” Finnick muttered, then cursed as he glanced down at his messages. His expression grew darker as he read, and his green eyes were haunted when he finally met my gaze. “I have to go. I have no choice.”
I frowned at the ache in my chest. No choice? What was going on at Eastern?
“It’s probably for the best,” Alpha Hillier muttered. “I know I’d want my Heir well away from a pack as exposed as ours is now. Your father just wants to keep you safe.”
Finnick’s jaw hardened. “As you say.”
My wolf was growling and snapping inside as Glen moved over to Finnick’s side, grasping his shoulder with a hand in support. “You’ll be all right,” he whispered. “We’ll get you back as soon as we can.” I really didn’t want to know what Eastern was like, I decided.
The Alpha sighed deeply. “Before you go, Finnick, I’d like for you to tell your version of last night’s events, please. Don’t leave anything out. Every detail could be vital.” There was more than a hint of Alpha command in Bradley’s voice now, and I could tell Finnick felt it from how he stiffened at the order.
“I was up in the library researching mate bonds,” he began. His mouth closed, as if he were trying to omit some detail, and the next words exploded out of him on a breath. “I haven’t been able to control my feelings for Flor, even after she and Brand claimed one another, so I was looking for a way to understand, to see if there was any way I could— damnit, Bradley!” He shot to his feet.
I blinked. Finnick covered his red face with one hand. Brand whuffed once, the wolf equivalent of shock. Or laughter, maybe?
Patrick whispered, “Fuck.” Margarette’s reddened eyes narrowed. For some reason, Glen winked at me. I just sneered back.
The Alpha cleared his throat. “Ah, sorry. I mean, don’t omit any pertinent detail, please.”
His eyes on the carpet, Finnick described what had happened. How he had scented my blood in the hallway, and chemicals.
“Not Vanessa, though? No other shifters?”
“That hallway sees enough traffic that the scents were layered,” he explained, and Alpha Hillier waved a hand.
“Understood. Go on.”
“When I reached the area where Vanessa stopped the car, she was meeting with a group of rogues. At least a dozen, but possibly more were still in the trees. Some spoke Russian, some did not. The leader was Alpha Ivan.”
“Who is that guy anyway?” I wondered aloud.
Margarette’s answer was instant, and agonized. “He was the shifter who killed my sister Linn.”
Patrick shook his head. “I can’t believe Vanessa betrayed our pack to her own mother’s murderer.”
Finnick was already shaking his head, too. “She’d planned to run away, but it was clear she didn’t know about Ivan. I’m not sure she understood the Russians were a part of the group. But I don’t think Flor’s abduction was a part of her original plan. She said she was taking out the trash for another member of our pack.”
“Fucking Clara,” I muttered. Every head turned to me, but I waved at Finnick. “Continue.”
He was still listing the details of who had been gathered around the Russian meeting site, when his voice changed. It sounded strained, like he was trying not to say something. “He asked… I needed a reason for them to keep her alive… Fuck. ” His face turned toward me.
Snakeshit! He was about to tell this whole group about my father.
He slapped a hand over his own mouth to stop the words, but the Alpha’s gaze narrowed. “What are you hiding, Finnick? I may not be your pack’s Alpha, but I am the Alpha of the North American Council, or I will be when I retake my seat. Speak. ”
Finnick’s hand flew away from his face, and he drew a breath, his green eyes landing on me with apology. “They were planning to kill Flor, thinking she was unimportant. But I knew that wasn’t the case. So I told them that she was—” He clenched his teeth.
“Brand’s mate?” the Alpha urged.
“No. Not that. I didn’t want him to know she was all of ours—” His jaw twitched, and a tiny trickle of blood began to roll down from his nostril as he fought the Alpha’s command. “So I told him Flor’s father?—”
All I wanted to do was shut him up, but I didn’t have anything to stuff in his mouth. So I leaped up before he could finish spilling my secret. He was too tall for me to reach, so I climbed up his long frame, wrapped my legs around his waist, grabbed his shoulders, and pressed one hand over his mouth.
But he kept talking, audibly. “Her father was ac?—”
Shit. I grabbed his head in both hands and smashed my mouth over his, humming loudly as I did so, so the syllables were drowned out. No one could hear them, since he was speaking them into my mouth.
Dang, I was smart.
Wait. No. I was an idiot. What was I doing?
I stopped humming, and realized Finnick was… growling? His growl was every bit as addictive as his touch, and as warm, sending waves of sounds through my lips, down my throat.His arms landed around my waist a half-second later, his growl cut off, and suddenly he was kissing me. It was a kiss like I’d never imagined I would receive.
His lips moved on mine like a poem, like a petal smoothing lightly across the sensitive skin there.Like I was precious, and fragile, and perfect.
I was his secret treasure. His sparkling stars and shimmering moon, kept hidden deep within his heart. Kept safe.
Finnick’s lips were softer than I’d imagined, and his mouth tasted slightly of ginger and mint. I felt one of his hands thread through my short hair, and heard a muffled groan from somewhere else in the room as he devoured my mouth. My eyes were closed, and yet a strange brightness began to grow behind my lids. A sun was coming up inside my mind, an unexpected dawn.
It felt like I was waking up to a new world, a new possibility. My heart, which had ached for so long, which had burned and stung when he’d told me I would never be his mate, became a flower opening under a soft pink sky. The kiss kept us connected, as we opened together.
To one another.
And then my wolf woke up as well, stronger than I’d ever felt her before. Claim, she insisted.
I opened my eyes and saw Finnick’s green gaze fixed on me. But it wasn’t him—it was his wolf, the green a darker shade, with golden flecks that glowed with power.
Claim , my wolf repeated in my mind. It began as a whisper, then grew to a steady drumbeat, a command. Claim claim claim.
She took control of my lips, and I breathed the word into Finnick’s mouth as he kissed me. “Claim.”
The instant that Finnick’s head bobbed up and down, nodding at my wolf’s muffled request, I was thrust to the back of my own mind. My gums itched and burned as my teeth lengthened, and my nails did the same. Before another second had passed, I had somehow taken Finnick’s tongue into my mouth and bit down, hard.
Warm, rich blood filled my mouth, and the kiss became something else. Something more.
“Flor,” Finnick growled, pulling back. His lips were smeared with blood, but the look in his eyes was by far the most savage thing about him. “What have you done?”
Mine, my wolf purred into his mind, along with a new connection. Claim, mate.
His green eyes glowed even brighter for a second, before his bloodied lips turned up in a glorious, sharp-toothed smile. It wasn’t Finnick who answered. It was his wolf. “Mine,” he snarled, and lunged so that his mouth was on the side of my neck, just below my right ear.
I heard someone shouting, a woman cursing. A barked command to stop that rolled over me, and Finnick as well.
“Mine,” he repeated, then bit down on my neck, claiming me.
The bond shimmered into place, brightening everything inside me. That is, until my wolf hopped out of the driver’s seat, and left me to explain whatever the fuck had just happened.
As if I had any idea.