Chapter 4
Rex
I find myself standing in the moonlight, charged with intense mating energy.
I’ve been horny before, but not like this.
This arousal feels like an order being handed down from the dawn of time.
It’s a primal need that verges on essential.
If I do not breathe, I cannot survive. And I cannot survive if I do not claim my mate.
I know precisely where she is, of course. As if I would ever let her out of my oversight again. As if a day of her life will go past in which I do not know where she is and what she is doing, in which my eyes, or the eyes of those who act as mine are not on her.
I walked away in the middle of the day, left when the sun still shone, allowed her to have a small sense of victory, perhaps.
But I suspect that sense of winning will not have lasted long.
A mate bond is more powerful than either of the people involved.
We are being drawn together inexorably across space and time and the matter of our joining is an inevitability.
The sun has set. The moon has risen. Darkness has covered us, and now I will do what must be done.
The Runaway wolves have taken refuge in a loft apartment. Amusingly enough, the building also belongs to me, albeit through a shell company. They ran from one place I own to another. An easy mistake to make, I suppose. Most of this city belongs to me, one way or another.
If they were actually capable of mounting a real challenge to the Regent pack, they would be sophisticated enough to know these things, but they keep making these amateurish mistakes.
I enter the building and take the elevator to the penultimate floor.
From there, I go up to the roof. The building has fallen into silence as the night turns long.
On top of the roof, I remove the sweater that Fescue would mourn as if it were one of his own children, and I take my wolf form.
I lift my face to the moon, letting her energy flow through me as my body takes on another form, a truer one.
My teeth lengthen, my mouth becomes a fierce maw.
My muscles grow, my bones bend and extend.
I grow a thick, dark pelt and I see through eyes designed to hunt and hold.
It is rare for me to do this in the city, but there are advantages to being in wolf form when you are dealing with shifters in any state.
I walked into the Runaway warehouse building as a man, and though they may have felt my energy, they did not understand what it meant to be in the presence of an alpha.
These whelps have not been handled well.
From observations, I know that many of them have been so outcast from their packs that even the males don’t know how to shift.
The females who are still unmated have never shifted, but that is normal.
When I was around the rest of them, even for that brief time, I got the sense that most of the males are not properly conditioned and would be maimed if they tried.
Being a shifter is one thing. Many are born with the capacity.
Being able to take the full wolf form is something different.
Historical documents that show a werewolf, a figure upright with a snout like a wolf, claws and feet like a wolf, and a furred body, are showing a partial and incomplete transformation.
An embarrassment by modern standards. To shift well and properly, a wolf needs to be taught.
Usually this happens naturally when young males are taken out with the pack, and again, after a female shifter’s first mating, she will likewise be transformed. It is supposed to be a guided process.
At some point, we are going to have to take the lot of them under our wing, as it were. They’re going to have to be taught how to behave. But I’m going to start with my mate.
I pad down the fire escape. They’ve left the windows open, and the scent of revelry is floating in the still night air. I pad down through the window and stand among them.
I was prepared to encounter them in their wakeful states, but there is almost no motion on this room at all. The whole pack of Runaway wolves are asleep after what must have been a raucous evening. They are all wearing matching footsie pajamas, a fact I note with some amusement and fondness.
They have made a mess of everything, including themselves. The place smells of sweet liquor and vape smoke. Empty glasses litter every surface, and passed-out whelps do the same.
It is a mess. Fescue would be traumatized with despair if he were to set eyes on this scene. No order to speak of, litter left to lie where it was dropped, pajamas soaked in spilled liqueurs. It feels as though I am padding through a frat house.
I want to think they should know better, but should they?
I can smell the negligence on them. I doubt even one of them has known the shelter of a true pack.
They have obviously not experienced the discipline or the education.
These shifters act like humans, but they are not humans.
It will end badly for all of them if they do not submit to our pack and assimilate into it.
They think they’re doing something new. They think they can break away from pack dynamics and establish themselves as individuals in a world full of humans who are fundamentally different creatures from them.
I already know that Nicky doesn’t consider herself an alpha.
Instead, she acts like a kind of older sister at best, and bad example at worst. She thinks the others don’t need strong leadership, but I know that sooner or later, these cute little alcohol-addled whelps are going to turn into full blown monsters.
They don’t understand that yet. They think that the limited success they’ve had means they’ll be able to keep expanding. They won’t. Not without the discipline and structure of the pack to keep them in check. Relying on Nicky is their first mistake.
I find her asleep in a tangle of limbs with the secretary, Laura, and several male members of the pack. My jealousy might be triggered, but for the fact they are all wearing those silly pajamas and it is quite obvious nothing intimate has happened.
As I pick my way toward them, I pad through the rest of the lost souls, my large paws finding the places between their slumbering bodies.
They sleep well, deeper in the presence of an alpha wolf.
I am not here to harm them, and they instinctively know that they are more protected in my orbit.
Several of them make mewling noises in their sleep, little pup sounds that only serve to reinforce my understanding that they are still lost and are yet to be found.
When I reach Nicky, I shift into my human form and pick her up in my arms. She stirs in her sleep, but she does not wake.
The deep pack somnolence affects her as much as it affects any of the rest of them.
Judging by the smell coming from her, she’s drunk as much as the rest of the pack combined.
Silly move considering she knew I’d be looking for her.
I look down at her sleeping form. She shifts and whines, sensing me close. Her hips gyrate a fraction before settling into sleep again. She is truly beautiful and very responsive, and she is absolutely ripe for breeding.
I wish she was as in tune with her feelings when she’s awake as she is asleep. But her waking hours are filled with responsibilities she should not have. She is trying to be everything to everyone while almost nobody is anything to her.
She has been doing her best, poor thing. Trying to take care of all these souls who have, for one reason or another, found themselves with nowhere to be.
“You are many things, little wolf, but you are no alpha,” I murmur.
I carry her out of the room as calmly and easily as I entered. The pack remains sleeping as I step out onto the fire escape and carry her down to the car.