Chapter 15 #2
I reach over to grab her wrist. I’m not gentle. “Deirdre,” I say, with great deliberateness, “you have never been kind to me.”
Her eyes widen, but I push on.
“I don’t need to sink to your level, however.
So hear me when I tell you this, because it is a kindness whether you want to believe it or not.
” I angle myself closer to her to make sure no one around us can hear me.
“If I were you, I would pick a replacement. I would make sure that he’s biddable.
And I would encourage him, strongly, to make himself indispensable as one of Ty’s resources.
He’ll need one in every pack. If you play your cards right, your role won’t change at all. ”
For a moment, when she stiffens and looks down her nose at me as if I’ve lost my mind, I think I’ve misjudged her. Or this moment. One fight ends and another begins in the center of the ring, and she clears her throat. Then looks around.
“Point taken,” she says quietly. She glances at me swiftly, then says, even more quietly, “Take care of my girl.”
Then she sweeps away, looking regal and untouchable, as if she came over here to give me a talking-to. And delivered it.
I turn my attention back to the fight. McCaffrey’s men, with help from a couple of the Canadian packs who seem to be internally divided, keep throwing themselves in and getting smacked back. Ty simply stands there, his arms crossed, looking forward.
Straight at the old man who’s the only one still standing against him.
Until, finally, McCaffrey throws back his head and roars into the night.
“Finally,” Ty growls.
He leaps up, shifting in midair, before landing once again—this time with his teeth bared and hackles raised.
Then the real fight begins at last.
It’s vicious and fast. It’s loud. It’s high octane, two alpha wolves clashing together and tearing out chunks of each other as best they can.
McCaffrey gets a good swipe in, raking his claws down Ty’s side. Ty howls, but he doesn’t retreat.
If anything, taking a hit makes him go harder.
And in the end, there’s no real contest.
It becomes clear almost immediately—to me, anyway—that Ty let McCaffrey swipe at him. That what he’s doing is toying with McCaffrey and exhausting him.
Stalking him. Luring him in and tearing him down.
Until, in the end, Ty has McCaffrey on his back, by the throat.
Ty shakes the old man like he’s nothing more than a fractious cub.
“Give me your fealty,” Ty growls. “Or I’ll rip your throat out here and now.”
McCaffrey growls back at him. “Go fuck yourself.”
There’s shuffling all over the hills. Low rumbles, but it’s hard to tell if it’s unease or excitement.
Maybe it’s both.
Ty shakes McCaffrey again. Harder. “Don’t be a fool, man. This is how you want to die? Going out like a bitch?”
“Fuck you,” McCaffrey barks at him. “And your ego.”
The fighting ring is smaller now. Too many wolves are pressing in, watching. Growling.
“One pack,” a familiar voice cries out. I glance back and see Rafael, nursing the wounds he sustained fighting one of Janus’s men. “One king.”
All around us, wolves take up the chant. “One pack, one king. One pack, one king.”
“Last chance,” Ty tells McCaffrey, pitilessly.
“You will never be my king,” McCaffrey growls at him. “Never. I would rather die.”
“Then die, asshole,” Ty replies, and then—in one harsh, smooth motion—ends it.
A flash of teeth, then McCaffrey’s throat is gone.
Ty moves back, but leaves the old man to bleed out there in the circle.
It only takes moments. We all know when he’s dead.
For a moment, the hills all around us are silent. Hundreds of wolves hushed, quiet, in this moment that’s changed everything.
Then, all around, the howling begins.
It goes on and on. It’s a song, a very old song we all know well, but it’s not usually sung in unison like this. Not by so many wolves from all over North America. Not on the night of the solstice with the packs drawn near.
“The king is dead, long live the king.”
Then slowly, even that shifts and becomes the same chant as before.
“One pack, one king.”
By the time Ty climbs back up to his rock, everyone is cheering.
My heart is beating so hard I think it would knock people off this hilltop if they could hear it.
I don’t lie to myself. I don’t pretend that everything is magically solved or that old tensions aren’t still bubbling along.
There will be those who never forgive Ty for this, but from the sounds of things, they’ll be outnumbered. That’s what matters.
Anyway, that’s what diplomacy is for. And failing that, the fact that Ty’s just proved that he really can fight anyone without much effort.
The critical part—the amazing part—is that Ty has changed the world.
Right here, right now.
Everything that wolves have taken for granted for as long as anyone can remember is different now, and when that sun comes up in the morning, it truly will be a new day.
There’s a wild, sobbing thing inside of me that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before.
It takes me a lot longer than it should to realize that I’m happy.
I’m just happy, full stop. So happy and so filled with hope that I can see, with a kind of upsetting clarity, how very much not happy I’ve been. For a long, long time.
The contrast makes my head feel like it’s spinning, so I keep my gaze trained on Ty until I feel solid again. Until I feel like me.
He shifts into his human form and stretches so we can all see that the gashes McCaffrey left behind are already mostly healed.
No need to announce that he’s better than the old guard he literally just trounced. We can all see it. We all have the same rapid healing powers, mostly available in the magic that lets us change forms.
But the moon favors Ty. That much is clear.
It’s always been clear to me.
“I am honored,” Ty belts out, and everyone cheers. There are a few more verses of the song, in both its old and new versions. “On this longest night of the year, we get to celebrate the dawn of a new age. The age of wolves.”
Everyone goes wild. Even I find myself howling like a bitten girl. That’s how this feels. Like the moon is mine.
Better still, the king is.
Ty quiets us, then continues. “We are wolves, and wolves do not hide. Wolves do not cower in the face of old fears. Wolves do not let our history dictate our future.”
The howling seems to echo back from the dark sky, it’s so loud, but Ty is looking down at me. His mouth curves, and he beckons for me to come to him.
I don’t think twice. I leap up and go to stand with him.
He takes my hand, lacing my fingers with his, making it clear that I belong beside him. A subtlety I know will not be lost on anyone. Especially the females.
“My pledge to you is that I’m yours,” he tells the crowd, and I can hear the cheering from the farthest hills. “I belong to the pack, and as long as I draw breath, I will fight for all of us. There will be no success in one quarter unless it is shared in all.”
There is even more wild, jubilant cheering at that.
“None of what I’m going to do is possible without my fated mate,” he tells them when the cheering subsides a little.
He looks down at me, and there’s nothing but pride on his face. In his dark eyes. And he’s not showing this only to me. He’s letting every wolf here see it—here and now, while his new throne is brand-new.
My throat hurts so much I think I might actually cry. I don’t know how I hold it back, but I do, because the queen to a king like this has to be as strong as he is. She has to complement him. This is what I always said I wanted.
I refuse to let him down now that he’s giving it to me.
“While I was busy building what I have every intention of making our werewolf empire, shared among us equally, Maddox was studying the things we need to know to move nimbly through anything this world throws at us. She’s the one who planted the seed.
We should live like wolves, she told me once. But we should dream like humans.”
This time when they roar, they’re roaring for me.
Ty doesn’t let go of my hand as he waits for that clamor to die down. “That means we treat obstacles as opportunities. We think big and worry about it later. We do not molder away in our caves, dreaming of full moons. We rise. We fight. We build.”
He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to our linked fingers. “We dream, my brothers and sisters. And we dream best together.”
There are so many kings who have always made their women crawl and scrape, stand behind them, present themselves as little more than available possessions at all times.
This is an odd, courtly sort of gesture as a counterpoint, and I know Ty is aware of it.
That this is one more strike against the old ways.
To me, it feels like healing.
“We could have officially mated at any point,” he tells the crowd. “Instead we created a partnership and, together, we will usher this pack—this one, glorious pack—into its bright new future. By the end of this year, she will accept my claim. But the new age of wolves has already begun.”
He lifts his other hand high in the air. “It’s the solstice. Tomorrow isn’t just a new day, it’s our day. I invite you to celebrate with me.”
Then he shifts in such a rush that I shift with him, helpless to resist in the blast of all that energy. When he throws his head back to howl out the glory of this, of us, of pack into the night, I join in.
So does everyone else.
I do spare a thought for Winter and the other humans no doubt shuddering in their homes at all this howling, but all I can think about is this bright new kingdom we’ve made here tonight.
And better yet, what we’ll do with it.