My Alphas: The Complete Series (27 page)

*

Without Edon, Rey was out every night leading the hunt for game, meager as it was.

Between hunting at night, handling pack business in the day and scouting missions to locate Edon, Rey found himself sorely in need of sleep. Not since he and Edon had been fighting to expand their territory years ago had he been so tired.

It was the early afternoon, Cass was off at the spring and Rey had told Vara to handle any pack business. Not acknowledging the werewolves around him, Rey gulped down hot meat, feeling it burn his tongue, before walking off to his room to rest.

Although he and Cass slept together most of the time, Rey still had his own private space. There was no bed. Just a stone floor and some furs piled in the corner for the rare times Cass did enter. There was a window, little more than a slit and above a crack that let in a thin beam of light in the day. It would climb and move across the wall as the day and seasons passed and Rey could glance at the wall and know not only the time but also the date.

He shifted as he entered, feeling the pressure on his bones and joints release. He was frequently in human form these days and although it was getting easier, he felt that form was weaker than being a wolf. To shift was always a relief. Without ceremony he collapsed in a pile on the floor. As he drifted toward sleep, he opened and shut his jaw, feeling an ache deep in his bones. Dealing with pack business meant a lot of talking, giving instructions and listening to scouts give their reports. Rey would rather run a hundred miles across their territory than hear another report. It was far less exhausting.

Worse than that was the written report a scout had brought back from Kita. Rey had tried his best to focus on it but it was masses of paper covered in small print. He’d skimmed the headlines - Werewolf Safe World, Human Allies, Human Enemies, Militia Members, Known Facts, Guesses, Conclusions - but then had to put it down as tiredness made his head swim.

Rey could read, his father inexplicably demanding the entire pack be literate but what was reading compared to hunting down a wild pig? To stalking your mate and pinning her down?

He felt himself relax as he thought of Cass. Since they’d returned she’d been different. Less anxious for certain but also less present. He knew Edon’s disappearance was weighing on her and if he were honest, there was a spark of annoyance she wasn’t satisfied with him alone.

Rey groaned and rolled over, trying to find a more comfortable position and to quiet the voices in his mind. The more he spoke the more his mind seemed to chatter. In the past there had been only certainty. An invading werewolf is in your territory? Kill them without mercy. You want to mate? Take a pack-member when you wish. Now he was living in a world of shades. A werewolf is in your territory? Talk to them and let them go because they might be useful to you later. You want to mate? Mate
only
with your Pack Mate and ignore all others.

Rey slipped into sleep but his mind kept chattering, now throwing up fragments of the past.

His mother, Elise, stroking his fur. When he was in human form she’d lightly trace her fingers on his face, drawing invisible patterns. When he was a wolf, she’d stroke his ears or pick him up and blow raspberries against his stomach. He’d ask her why she couldn’t turn into a wolf and come running with him and not understand the reason she couldn’t.

Elise pulling him close, enveloping him in her arms, her scent relaxing him.

The dream slipped away as easily at it had come and Rey awoke, the beam of sunlight on the wall having hardly moved. He’d maybe slept a minute and now his treacherous mind had pulled out a faint ache from the past. His mother.

Rey knew from others she’d become pregnant not long after birthing him but the next baby had been stillborn. He’d no memory of this at all, just a vague recollection sometimes she’d been sad. He did remember her becoming pregnant once more. As he approached his fifth birthday her belly swelled and she told him he would soon have a baby brother or sister. He remembered pressing his human ear against her stomach and hearing nothing so he shifted and tried again, hearing the heavy thudding of Elise’s heart accompanied by the flutter of the baby’s.

The next memory was of a night, werewolves rushing about in excitement, Rey being pushed from place to place being told to go away and all he wanted was to see. Finally, after his father had kicked him hard, Rey had hidden in a back cave of their den, intending to sneak out once they stopped looking for him. He’d gone to sleep though and when he awoke it was day and Elise wasn’t there.

The pack members would only repeat she was gone but they wouldn’t tell him where no matter how many times he asked. Eventually one of them had snapped she’d died and Rey didn’t know what that meant, only she was gone and she wasn’t coming back. Within a week his father disappeared for three days and returned with Julia who became his step-mother and who he knew until he was run off at the age of thirteen.

Rey moved again, getting annoyed his stupid brain wouldn’t let him sleep but it seemed fixated on an idea, like a werewolf cub with a bone.

Love.

Cass had said she loved him. He’d not said anything in return because it was obvious, wasn’t it? She was his mate. He was her Alpha. There was no need for anything else, although Vara’s reminder about humans being different from wolves came to mind.

Perhaps the next time he saw his mate he’d tell her he loved her. Yes, he would.

The decision made to play by some foolish human rule, Rey managed to go to sleep. He only awoke some hours later as Cass pulled some furs up next to him and then laid down, resting her head on his side, stroking his ears. It was pure bliss and soon he was asleep again under her touch.

*

Edon stalked the werewolf pack, knowing they soon would be dead and not caring one bit.

Good, he thought. Soon he could return to his pack. Return to his mate.

Two weeks ago, Edon had come out of a pure black rage to find a crippled werewolf on the ground in front of him, all four legs broken, his chest crushed, his ear missing, pouring out blood on to the dirt. He could taste the blood in his mouth and then he turned, seeing Rey there and the urge to kill him nearly overtook his mind. Then he’d heard Cass, a quiet gasp and found her pale and shaking, her hands over her face and it had knocked all the rage out of him in an instant. Rey was in wolf form, panting, soaked with blood and injured and Edon could see from his eyes he just wasn’t there.

So he’d put Cass on his back and commanded him to return to the den. Rey in his mindless state had obeyed.

As soon as they were gone, Edon turned back to the prone werewolf. He was still trying to drag himself away, despite his broken limbs. As he watched him scrape through the bloody dirt, Edon felt the rage welling up inside him once more. He could torture him, keep him alive for a day, break more bones…

With a struggle, Edon pushed the darkness down and before it could come back, shifted and quickly killed the werewolf, putting it out of its misery. The act of killing nearly brought the mindless fury back and for a long time Edon stood there, looking down at the dead body until he saw a flicker in the forest. He looked away to see two butterflies chasing each other, flittering on the breeze.

The spell was broken then and this time when he looked at the dead werewolf it was with pity rather than fury. Edon knew, although he didn’t remember, he’d been the one to break his legs and to snap off his ear. He knew he’d intended to make the werewolf suffer for hours and then to perhaps string him up somewhere alive as a warning or to kill him and then to put his head on a spike.

Edon knew in that moment he couldn’t return to the den until he defeated the blackness inside him. If it defeated him, well, then he wouldn’t be there to know it. He could not be Alpha. He could not raise cubs. If he returned to the den prematurely, he and Rey would fight and one would die. He couldn’t let that happen.

And so he’d left the bodies and moved off into the territory, heading away from the den. He soon discovered Turo pack werewolves moving about in small packs, seeming to be searching for something. After three days of tracking them in the night and sleeping in hidden caves during the day, he’d been discovered by two of them and had fought them off without killing. This act of mercy only made things worse and he was soon attacked by a pack of four. Groggy from a day of poor sleep and little food, the fight had been against him, the four werewolves clawing him and drawing blood. Edon managed to put one down on the ground, breaking his back leg but he was still sorely overmatched. As Edon prepared himself for a fight to his probable death, a giant black werewolf had come running from the trees at full sprint. He tore the head off one of the attacking werewolves before he realized what was happening. Then it was two on two, a much fairer fight and Edon found himself fighting alongside the stranger.

It wasn’t like fighting with Rey. There was no deep connection forged through long years of friendship mixed with rivalry. But they worked together and soon it was down to two against one and then the fight was over, the final werewolf going down as the stranger unleashed a furious growl and tore off one of his front legs with a brutal twist of his jaws.

Edon had moved back then, soaked with blood, feeling the madness wanting to overwhelm him. The werewolf with the missing front leg was still alive, bleeding in shocking bursts as his heart pumped and Edon felt how close he was to slipping away into fury. He wanted to torture that werewolf, to make him hurt and then die. The stranger had his back to him, snarling down at a dead werewolf and Edon felt the urge to leap upon him, to destroy him.

Edon saw the stranger turn to the dying werewolf and snap his other leg off, almost carelessly. It was too much for the werewolf. Blood spurted one final time and then stopped. As Edon moved back, gulping air, trying to get control of himself, he saw the stranger start to methodically tear the dead werewolf apart and throw his limbs in a pile. Edon left the stranger to his macabre task and vanished into the forest, finding a stream to wash himself in.

Once he was confident he had himself somewhat under control, he’d crept back around to a peak that afforded a view of the battle scene.

The stranger had been joined by two more werewolves and together they had torn each dead werewolf into pieces, stacking them in a wet pile. Edon crouched down as he watched them complete their grim work. Soon they were finished and walked off single file, heading for the same stream he washed himself in.

Edon followed, tracking them as they moved through his territory, sleeping when they slept in the day and doing his best to remain invisible.

They had come across two Turo werewolves the next day and had torn them apart after a brief battle. They stacked the body parts in a gruesome pile and moved on. The stranger, the largest one, seemed to be the Alpha. As Edon tracked them he saw both males and females come to relieve his two companions. The replacements always came from a different direction, no doubt to confuse anyone who was tracking them but Edon was sure they must have a den somewhere nearby. He also saw some of the same werewolves appear again and so knew their pack was small.

Now it had been a week and Edon had seen the stranger and his companions kill at least ten Turo pack werewolves, stacking their bodies in piles before moving on.

He looked down at the three Turo werewolves who were sitting by a stream. They were all pure black in wolf form. One, the idiot, Edon mentally called him, had shifted to human and was standing by the water, talking to his two pack members. He was waving his hands around and speaking so loudly the stranger didn’t have to worry about moving silently to attack them.

Edon watched as the stranger came out of nowhere and snapped the idiot’s head right off his shoulders. The second werewolf went down a moment later and the third made it two steps before the stranger landed on top of him, stomping down somewhere on his back. Edon heard the crack of bone from his vantage point.

He didn’t stay to watch the stranger start his dismemberment. Instead, Edon thought of Cass and Rey and feeling no anger rise up at all, left his hiding place and began the long run home.

*

Cass awoke alone in her room in her bed. She rubbed her eyes groggily and realized Rey must have carried her there during the night. She sighed, disappointed he wasn’t there by her side. A warm slow morning would be the ideal time to talk with him, to learn more about him and the chance of slipping into fun naked time was lower (say fifty percent). Cass got up, her thoughts drifting to Edon and away again. It was near sunrise and she was suddenly filled with the desire to see it. To experience some beauty in a world that had shifted to mostly gray tones. Before she could fall back into bed, Cass walked out and up into the higher reaches of the den, running her fingers along the stone wall.

She soon came to the room they’d hustled her into when they’d been attacked. The wooden door was ajar. Cass pushed it opened and entered but stopped in the doorway, her post-sleep relaxation disappearing.

Guns.

Rifles to be exact, in a messy pile against the far wall. Boxes of mismatched ammunition were strewn around them.

Cass knelt down and picked up a box of shotgun shells. The box had been splattered with mud at some point and soaked in water - the sides warped and peeling.

“What the hell…” Cass whispered. She started moving rifles, ensuring no barrels were pointing at her. In the deep past she’d shot a gun once on a trip her father insisted she come on. It was meant to be overnight but he’d gotten drunk, insisted she shoot a bottle (she missed) and then shot at a tree before declaring she’d “ruined the whole thing”. They went home, Cass refusing to speak the entire way back.