Chapter Fifteen
When you’re in the heat of battle, time has no meaning. But I knew Sam, Zach, and Remy would have arrived. I knew my mother was fighting. And finally, I felt my alpha.
Jared was there, and his rage was so huge it would have stomped my own into the bloody ground and left only the desire to watch him sort out his business.
But I was Alpha, and I did not hide.
I held my own rage tight, and it rose up to meet Jared’s. I wanted to bathe in the blood of the Iron Fang alpha. I wanted him to suffer. I would decimate him.
It was Jared’s right to take the fight from me, but he would not. Not then. He understood my need. He knew I had to take on another alpha and prove to myself that I could.
And his pack needed to see that I would fight to the death for them. It was what an alpha did, even though I wasn’t technically their alpha. I was their alpha’s mate, and just because I didn’t live with them didn’t mean I wouldn’t defend them with everything I had.
I needed the fight.
Voss gathered his feet beneath him and leapt, intending to knock me to the ground with his huge wolf’s body and control me.
Force me to yield to him. He didn’t see me as a worthy foe.
All he saw was a bloody woman standing before him with a knife.
I hadn’t even shifted, though he would have believed my wolf stronger.
He didn’t plan to kill me. He didn’t even plan to badly hurt me, at least not at first. He must have figured he’d leap at me, rough me up a little, then maybe, when he’d controlled the Gray Shadow pack, he’d take me back to wherever he’d been staying in the city.
Maybe he’d take me all the way to Colorado.
He was almost playful with a glint in his eyes and his lolling tongue, not for one second believing I could beat him in a fight.
His first clue that maybe I would be a challenge came when I sliced through his thick fur and found the flesh below, sending dark demon magic through the wound. Blood gushed, thick and hot, trying to expel something that should never have been inside a wolf. Or anyone else, for that matter.
I darted to the side, dancing around him as he automatically hesitated, and dragged my blade across his back. I was fast. Wolf fast. But so was he.
I had the blade ready to go in through his back to find his heart when he roared, whirled, and rammed his huge body against me. He knocked me off balance, but I didn’t fall. I didn’t lose the blade, either.
And Gavin Voss was angry.
He’d misjudged me, and now that he’d seen—and felt—what my blade could do, he would attempt to take it.
I knew it as surely as if he’d shifted to his human form and told me.
Gavin Voss was greedy, and given the chance, he wouldn’t hesitate to steal someone’s weapon when it was the most powerful one he’d probably ever felt.
I wouldn’t give him that chance.
I couldn’t afford to be distracted, but somewhere behind me, I heard Remy yell, and his voice was hoarse and tinged with pain. I knew he’d be clenching his teeth and giving the fight every last bit of strength that the first battle hadn’t bled out of him.
Zach would be fighting as well, and maybe even Rick. I’d known they would be there the second Joe said he’d called them. And even though each one of them had something a little extra, something that made them a little more than human, they’d always be in danger fighting the nonhumans.
And like it or not, that did distract me.
Apparently, Sam was close enough to see my hesitation, to see something in my face that shouldn’t have been there when I was in a fight to the death with an alpha, because his voice lifted into the eerie, unnatural near silence.
“I’ve got them, shapeshifter.”
Of course he did. Sam was stronger even than the wolves. He would have their backs. I understood something else, as well. He’d been ready to interfere with my fight until he figured out the only thing I needed him to do was protect our pack.
He would do that.
And I could focus.
But that slight hesitation gave Voss, in an awful way, the upper hand. He was no longer playing, and right at the end of Sam’s promise, the wolf went for the very thing I’d known he’d go after.
The blade.
He tried to slice my hand off with his razor claws to get it, and he very nearly succeeded. He raked his claws over my face, and as I was blinded by my own blood, he used his other claws to try to get to my blade. And he didn’t care if he had to take my hand with it.
I dropped the blade, but even half-blind and with fire eating the wound of my forearm, I shifted.
I shifted to my wolf, because scrambling around looking for my blade or even calling it to me was something I simply had no time to do. I should fight another shifted alpha as my wolf, anyway.
My wolf, she was ecstatic.
One of my people would retrieve my blade. They knew what it meant to me.
As I had no time to look for the blade, neither did Voss.
And wolf against wolf, we began to fight in earnest.
The Iron Fang alpha was a huge, meaty man with messy, thick hair, looking like someone who might have lived in another world, in another time. His wolf looked like him. Three times my size, meaner than a rabid dog, and not for one second believing a small silver wolf could take him on.
His wolf was bigger than mine, but my rage…
It was bigger than anything.
We collided in the air, and yeah, it hurt me. It hurt me a lot. But it hurt him as well. I saw the flash of surprise and pain in his eyes.
I snarled, going for his throat and his belly, the two most vulnerable parts, while trying at the same time to protect mine from him. We fought for what felt like hours, a savage, brutal battle, and I wasn’t really sure how I was still fighting.
Maybe it was sheer hatred that kept me going.
I could not lose this fight. I could not.
Not with my magic gone, when I—and everyone else—thought I might be weaker, might be less. No. I couldn’t lose.
I wouldn’t back down, either. I’d win the battle, or I’d die.
Simple as that.
No one else was fighting now. They stood on separate sides, Voss’s wolves on one and Jared’s wolves on the other, watching the alphas battle it out, none of them really sure what would happen after.
I knew.
Whether I died or not, Voss was finished. A lot of his wolves were already dead. He’d brought what looked like half his pack with him, but it didn’t matter.
I was no longer feeling anything. No pain, no fear, no tormented thoughts or worry over those I loved.
And in the end, when I found his throat, finally, and forced my claws through his thick fur to the flesh below, he was the one who ended the awful fight. He was the one who surrendered.
As he admitted defeat, there before his people and mine, I still would have killed him if I’d had the strength. But I would let him believe I was showing him mercy.
I saw something in his eyes, but the raging black brain of my wolf wasn’t sure what it was. Not then.
He backed up, limping and growling, then wheeled away, slinging blood as he went. The number of his wolves had diminished to barely more than a dozen, and when they followed him, no one stopped them.
He could go back to Colorado and tend his own pack, if Jared would allow it.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the buzzing thickness, strings of blood decorating the air as I tried to come back to myself. I saw my mother, unshifted, and Remy, Zach, Rick, and Sam, and the Gray Shadow wolves.
They all stood watching me, silent, unmoving.
Waiting.
Jared would come to me first.
My alpha.
He stood on a hill of dead enemy wolves, and I felt his rage. I’d felt it all along, powering me on even when I thought I might have faltered.
And I felt his love. Jared’s faith in me was…immense. He had enough belief in me to let me fight my fight.
Oh, his terror was there, too, in his stormy blue eyes.
I started toward him, but my legs collapsed beneath me, and I fell. I heard my mother cry out. She wouldn’t come to me, though. Not yet.
Jared would.
Even as my wolf, I was having trouble healing. As my woman, I would have died. No one could have brought me back from the damage Voss had caused. I couldn’t lose my shift and let Jared wrap me in his arms and comfort me with his familiar warmth, as much as I wanted to.
So he shifted to his wolf and lay beside me, right there in the street, and curled his big body around me. But there was death in his eyes, and he didn’t have to tell me that he’d be going after the Iron Fang alpha. It was his right.
Voss had attacked his pack, his village, and his mate.
He hadn’t killed him instead of letting him go because Voss had already been nearly beaten to death by me.
We both believed he’d go back home, his tail between his legs.
And Jared wouldn’t leave me to go after the wolf, because I needed him more than he needed to take out Voss.
He could have sent some of his wolves after the alpha, but he wouldn’t do that.
Not only did they need to tend those who’d fallen, but they’d been through enough of a fight.
And if Voss stayed, he was mine or Jared’s to kill.
I pressed my devastated body against my alpha’s, a long, thin whine escaping my poor wolf’s mouth as he licked my face, cleaning it of blood and gore and pain.
Then my mother and my pack came, and I was surrounded by everything I’d ever needed. And slowly, I began to heal.
But I caught sight of Nicole. Watching, waiting.
Someday, I wouldn’t come back from the damage, and she’d be there to take me to the angels, where I would fight again.
Apparently, that was what I was made for.
And now I had no doubt—and neither would anyone else—that I could do it fine, even without my magic.