34. Aleks #2
My brother didn’t seem terribly impressed by that, and I realized he wasn’t hearing it at all.
He had gone into full protection mode, and he was going to rip Fyse’s throat out.
So I leaned my weight on him, trying to hold him back and remind him I needed him there.
I couldn’t have the other Crescent wolves hurt Viktor in defense of Fyse.
“The trees,” I told Fyse. He didn’t listen and tried to take another step toward me, dragging Viktor’s attention back to him, so I glared at him and tried to point at the woods. “Watch the—”
And that was when Grant made my point for me, crashing into Fyse from the side.
There were shouts from the Crescent wolves, but at least they were worried about Grant now, not Viktor.
I breathed hard, burying my face in Viktor’s furry side and trying to breathe. It was hard to focus on anything, even the fight going on right in front of me. When Viktor started growling again, for a moment I worried Dave had come back to finish me off.
I looked up, and instead found Dakota approaching me slowly, his hands up and eyes on my growling brother.
“Viktor,” I muttered, and almost choked on blood.
Distantly, it occurred to me that blood coming out of my mouth was probably a bad sign, when I had a belly wound. “The city wolves do not mean us harm.”
He calmed somewhat, stopping the low, continual growl, but continuing to stare at Dakota.
Dakota, who . . . kept looking at an empty spot next to himself, before taking a deep breath and turning back to me. A blast of ozone filled the air, more potent than any spell he’d cast in my presence previously, and as he approached, the ozone filled my lungs.
That was when I realized I had barely been breathing, and suddenly, I could draw a complete, clear, chest full of oxygen. I snapped up to my knees from where I’d been sagging against Viktor, and breathed deep.
Viktor gave a little growl at the movement, but then leaned in and started sniffing me. Surprise wasn’t hard to make out, even on his canine face.
I pushed up to my feet, and felt . . . hell, I felt better than I’d ever felt in my life.
I felt fucking invincible. I spun to find where Grant and Fyse were still fighting, which was fucking ridiculous, because Grant couldn’t have beaten him in a fight if Fyse had both damn hands tied behind his back. He should have been dead minutes ago.
But no, this was better.
Grant was mine to beat now.
I pushed between the two of them, both on all fours and snarling, before the fight could go any farther.
“Our fight isn’t over, old man,” I snarled at Grant.
“You’ve dishonored our pack by even coming here and committing us to this ridiculous challenge against a pack that’s done us no harm.
They broke away twenty years ago. We have no hold over them.
And now you have an intra-pack challenge to address before you look to him again. ”
Grant backed away, looking shocked. Shocked I was alive, maybe. Shocked I was finally doing what I should have done years earlier. But then he sniffed the air, and still scenting my blood, likely thought he still had the advantage over me.
He leapt at me instead of Fyse.
It wasn’t his first mistake, but I was going to make it his last. I took everything Viktor had taught me, and threw it against my uncle. He hurled himself at me, and I didn’t even shift.
Yes, the wolf form was a more natural fighting form for most wolves, but Viktor had taught me to fight as a man, because he’d been taught how to fight as a man. And he’d been taught how to fight wolves.
I grabbed Grant around the throat and threw him against the ground with all the force in my arms, which was . . . well, it was a lot. It felt like more than usual. I heard something snap, maybe his back leg.
Then I felt a snap inside myself.
I could hear Viktor barking his approval, and I realized it hadn’t been a physical snap.
Not a wound. No broken bones. It was the bond I’d had with Grant; the one that had made him my alpha.
The reason I’d been bleeding out into the ground instead of healing.
I had still felt some loyalty to the bastard, beyond all reason.
But no more.
When he leapt up and rushed me again, I kicked him in the head with all the follow-through I had in my whole body, and he almost flipped all the way over onto his back.
In a blink, he had shifted back to human, trying to push up off the dirt, but I jumped on him, slamming his head into the ground and pushing it to one side, till his whole throat was bared to me.
For a fraction of a second, I considered tearing it out.
I felt it when Grant conceded, though. As though he shrank beneath me, losing anything he’d gained from being the alpha of a pack of wolves. I heard a single, lone howl in the woods that I recognized as Dave. I didn’t take time to consider where the others were, didn’t give a single damn.
No, I just rubbed Grant’s face in the dirt once more, and pushed up and away from him, going back to where Fyse was standing in the dirt, still in wolf form. He shifted back and nodded to me. “Congratulations, Aleks.” He held a hand out to me. “Good fight.”
I scoffed and rolled my shoulders, then grinned at him. “I couldn’t watch two old men fighting and not get in on the fun.”
I turned to look at Viktor, who was almost dancing around, he was so damned excited. Then he froze, so I turned to look where he was looking, and saw—Grant had gotten up, and was throwing himself toward Fyse’s back.
As he hadn’t before but I’d known he could, Fyse reacted faster than the eye could follow properly. He turned, growing his claws, and simply ripped Grant’s throat out. Grant fell to the dirt, just as Marcus had earlier, trying and failing to breathe.
It was less horrible somehow, and I didn’t think it was because I’d been the one to kill Marcus. It was so much faster, when added to Grant’s relative size and the injuries he’d already had.
“Pathetic bastard,” I muttered, kicking Grant’s body away from us. We’d have to get rid of it more permanently, but for now, I just wanted it away from me. Wanted him away from me. I turned back to Fyse, who . . . fuck me, he looked like he’d been the one gutted, not me or Grant.
He looked like having to kill Grant was the worst thing he could imagine, when he’d literally just set my pack free, however accidentally. I should have torn his throat out myself, damn him.
“Hey,” I said to Fyse, sticking my own hand out for a shake.
“We will need to work together, yes? To make these shit American pack laws better. Make those assholes out there see us as we are, not like—” I motioned toward my uncle’s body.
“Your pack, and mine, together. We will change things, step by step.”
Fyse gave me a strange, confused smile, but I figured it was enough. Then he reached out and grabbed my hand, shaking it firmly. “I’d like that.”
“Yes, what will we do with all my intelligence and all . . . ” I stopped and considered him, cocking my head. “Your millions of dollars? It will be so hard to change the world with our many impressive assets.”
Somewhere nearby, the huge Crescent pack enforcer snorted and corrected me, saying, “Billions.”
I turned back to Fyse in shock. “Billions? You have billions?” He nodded, and I shook my head in confusion.
I could barely conceive of such a number, and blurted out exactly what I was thinking.
“What the fuck does a werewolf need with billions?” He didn’t answer me, so I finally shook my head and went back to the point.
“Well, we will have plenty to work with. Clearly, you do not know what to do with it. I will tell you.”
Next to him, Dakota laughed. “We can discuss it, sure, but it’ll be our decision what our pack does.”
It was cute that he was trying to defend his alpha’s honor.
I felt like regardless of who was alpha, Dakota was the man in charge of the Crescent pack, so I nodded to him.
“Yes, but you know good ideas when you hear them. I have plenty. You will see. We will show them, yes? Remind them what wolves do.”
Next to me, Viktor howled into the night.
Victory.