A line of fire etched down my back. I grunted and stumbled away. Somewhere off to my right, Joe roared in anger, either at the Omega that had come up from behind me or at something else, I didn’t know.
I turned on the Omega behind me. She had blood on her face. She sneered at me and reminded me of Marie.
She said, “Your mother will start to rot soon. Decompose and fill with gas. How she’ll bloat.”
And I knew what she was doing. Thomas had taught me that. Rage and anger caused surges in power and strength at the cost of precision. It was easy to sink into the red sheen because it was all-encompassing. But it made you sloppy.
She was baiting me.
And it was close.
Because she was talking about my mother.
Maggie Callaway had never hurt anyone. She’d been given shit all her life, and all she wanted was to be happy. She never asked for much. She didn’t need much. She had me. Eventually, she had the pack too.
And she was taken from us.
From me.
It was close, though, because the Omega was right. I could feel it pulling me under. Blood trickled down my back, and the pain was bright and awesome and it was so close. But then there was a ping through the bonds of the pack. A pulse. It hit me and I took it in and it said home and trust and sorrow and love.
And part of it was missing. Because she was gone.
It was acid on my skin.
Ice in my veins.
I said, “You shouldn’t have come here.”
And I was clear. I was precise. I took a step forward and her claws came toward my face, coated with my blood. She was fast. I sidestepped her, feinting left but going right. I brought the crowbar around in a flat arc behind her, the curved point slamming into the back of her head.
She grunted, low and guttural. Took a breath. Let out a choked sound.
I crouched and slid my right shoulder under the crowbar. It held tight in her head as I grabbed it with both hands. I gritted my teeth together and pulled myself to my full height. The Omega fell against my back as I jerked the crowbar forward. The momentum caused her to flip up and over my back, feet going skyward, landing flat on her face in front of me. She twitched along the ground as I tore the crowbar loose. I raised it above my head to bring it down again and again and again.
I was hit from the right side. The force of it knocked me off my feet and into a tree, shoulder first, my head rapping against wood. There were stars and lights flashing. I fell to the ground and thought, get up get up get up, but nothing happened. It was easier to stay down.
There were snarls and angry roars around me.
My vision wouldn’t clear.
I closed my eyes again.
I thought of many things.
Like Joe.
And my mother.
How dark it was.
How much my back hurt.
How much my head hurt.
How much my heart hurt.
“Ox!” a voice cried out above me.
I meant to tell whoever it was that I was okay.
Instead, I said, “G’way.”
The voice said, “I need you.”
And it was Joe. It was Joe who knelt beside me. Joe whose claws stretched against my skin. Joe who said my name again and again telling me to move, to open my eyes, to be okay, just be okay.
Part of me had been taken away. Crushed and destroyed when blood hit the floor.
Part of me burned up and became nothing but smoke and ash and charred remains.
But part of me still held together.
The part that belonged to him. To Gordo. To my pack.
I opened my eyes. My vision blurred. I blinked once. Twice. A third time.
He was there above me. With his orange eyes. His sharpened fangs. Half-shifted and worried.
I reached up and touched his face.
He closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.
I said, “We have to finish this.”
He opened his eyes and said, “It’s almost over.”
He pulled me up, and it was almost over.
But not in the way I’d hoped.
We were too spread out. I couldn’t see Carter or Kelly, but I could hear them snarling somewhere in the trees, their anger evident. The bond between us was stretched tight and thin, pulsing in dull rage.
I thought I saw a flash of Elizabeth, full wolf and graceful, eyes bright and teeth bared, but then she was gone, Omegas crawling after her.
Mark was crumpled on the ground, breathing shallowly. Gordo stood in front of him, tattoos glowing, blood dribbling down from a gash on his forehead. A group of Omegas surrounded them. Gordo grinned. His teeth were bloody. He said, “Yeah. Come on. Come on.”
And then there was Thomas. The Alpha.
I said, “No,” because he was bleeding from every inch of exposed skin, half-shifted, eyes red and claws dripping. Dead Omegas were strewn about his feet, gore spilling into the grass of the clearing.
He was breathing heavily, chest rising and falling. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, a knob of bone poking through on his forearm, his healing not yet kicked in. His shoulders were hunched and fangs extended, and still more Omegas came. They poured out from the trees and I didn’t know how there could be so many. How so many Omegas could be in Green Creek without us knowing. Without Thomas knowing, because this was his land. This was his home and I didn’t understand.
They swarmed on him and he roared.
The trees shook in the forest.
The stars were bright overhead.
And then we were betrayed.
Joe growled deep and low in his throat, muscles twitching, ready to launch himself toward his father. To help him. To save him.
Osmond said, “Hey,” and as we turned, startled, he backhanded Joe across the face.
The force of the hit knocked us both off our feet. Joe flew into a tree, crying out as his back snapped viciously, falling and writhing on the ground.
I lay on the ground, stunned, watching the stars in the sky above. I thought of my mother and, for a moment, forgot that she lay covered in a blanket in our house, her blood cooling underneath.
I said, “My head hurts, Mom,” but the stars didn’t say anything back.
Then the stars were blocked out.
Osmond looked down at me, head cocked.
I said, “You did this.”
He said, “There really wasn’t any other choice.”
He raised his foot above my face. I wondered if it hurt to have your skull smashed in.
Richard Collins said, “Leave the human alone, Osmond. I’m not finished with him yet.”
Osmond drew his foot away but didn’t move from my side.
I turned my head. The grass felt cool on my cheek. Joe was lying feet away on the ground. His skin was sweat-slick, face twisted in a grimace of pain. His hands were fisted at his sides.
I said, “Joe,” or tried to at least. It came out broken and weak. He didn’t hear me. Or, if he did, he was in too much pain to do anything about it.
I couldn’t see Gordo anymore, and I wondered if he was alive.
I turned my head the other way. It took more effort than I thought it would.
The Omegas had overtaken Thomas and had forced him down. He knelt before Richard Collins, and just the sight of it, just the mere thought of Thomas on his knees for anyone was enough to cause my blood to boil.
“You know,” Richard said, “I expected more from the great Thomas Bennett. I’m a little… disappointed.”
Blood poured from Thomas’s mouth as he shrugged. “Expectations can be a bitch,” he croaked. “Trust me when I say that I’m just as disappointed in you.”
Richard nodded. “I’d forgotten what it sounded like when Joe’s bones broke. The wet snap of it. His back, I think.”
Thomas growled deep in his throat, but even I could see his strength was ebbing. Too many wounds, not enough time to heal. He was an Alpha, but he wasn’t immortal. He struggled aga
inst the Omegas, but they held him tightly.
Richard said, “Before you die, I want you to know. I blame you. For everything. My family. My father. All of it. Every last part of it. Your parents. Your pack. Witches and wolves. I lay all of their deaths at your feet, and I am going to take your life because of it. I will become the Alpha, and I will rape your territory into submission. This old magic will be mine, Thomas. As will your wife. And sons. You are a false god, unworthy of what you’ve been given.”
I was not a wolf. I was a human who was part of a wolf pack. I couldn’t move like they could, not really. I couldn’t heal like they could. I couldn’t fight like they could. I did not have claws or fangs or eyes that glowed. I was Ox, that was all.
But they were mine.
These people had come into my home and had taken from me. They’d given me shit, just like my father had said they would. People were going to give me shit because I was Oxnard Matheson, because I was a stupid fucker who couldn’t even protect his own family.
But no more.
No more.
I pulled on the pack bonds. I pulled on them as hard as I could.
Osmond was distracted by Richard’s words. My fingers found the crowbar in the grass.
I remembered what Thomas had taught me. My father had said I was going to get shit all my life, but he wasn’t my real father. Not anymore. My father had helped to make me, but it was Thomas who’d shaped me into what I was.
I thought we were going to die. All of us. But I was going to take as many of them with us as I could.
Osmond wasn’t expecting me to rise up. He wasn’t expecting me to sweep my leg out into the back of his knees, knocking his feet out from under him.
I was moving before he even hit the ground.
Somewhere in the trees, a wolf sang, and I felt the song burn within me, the bonds saying OxMateBrotherSonFriend, and I moved quicker than I ever had in my life.
I was not a wolf.
But my god, did I give the impression of one.
Richard started to turn as I came up behind him. His Omegas barely had a chance to react.
The crowbar stabbed through his back much more easily than I thought it would. Flesh parted and the crowbar scraped against bone. Blood spurted out over my hands and face and I pushed.
Richard screamed as he shifted, claws coming up and over his shoulders, reaching for the crowbar, reaching for me, trying to slice and cut and mark.
I pushed the crowbar in farther, hoping I’d manage to skewer the bastard’s heart. Hoping that it was enough, because Thomas was gushing blood now, and I didn’t know how much longer he’d last and—
Richard’s claws fell onto my shoulder and squeezed. They punctured my skin and he pulled me around, my blood-slick hands slipping from the crowbar.
He brought me around in front of him, and even though I must have outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, he grabbed me by the neck and lifted me off my feet.
His orange eyes were bright, his breath hot on my face.
He said through a mouthful of lengthening teeth, “Little human. How I admire you.”
A pulse off to my right, lighting up the forest around us.
It was Gordo, and the ground was shifting underneath us, a dull rumble that turned into something much louder. Green light shot along the ground, the earth groaning as Gordo called its magic to him. I saw symbols flash beneath my feet, arcane lines that formed stars and crescent moons, ravens that flew underneath me trailing green sparks in their wake. The earth burst apart underneath us and Richard snarled in my ear, teeth snapping, biting, and—
He was knocked off his feet as the ground broke beneath him, cracking and rolling. Everything was green, flashes of lights that boiled my blood and sang to something deep within me.
Richard grunted as he fell away from me, and in the chaos and confusion, I heard the screams of the wolves. I didn’t know if they were mine or the others. I fell to my knees, the pain glassy and bright, stomach twisting in vertigo.
A wet hand grabbed my arm and pulled.
I followed blindly.
We were deep in the trees before I could focus.
Thomas led me away, away, away.
“We have to go back,” I croaked out, but I didn’t try to get away.
He said, “Trust me.”
And how could I not?
I ached everywhere. My back was torn to shreds.
He said, “You must listen to me.” His breath rattled in his chest, a wet sound.
The stars were bright above.
The trees swayed.
He said, “You will be needed now. More than ever. The weight of the Alpha can be a dreadful burden, and whoever carries the weight of it on their shoulders must be able to stand strong and true.”
“No,” I said. “No, no. You—”
“Ox.”
The wind rippled through the leaves.
There was an ache in my head and heart.
“They will need you,” Thomas said. And then he stumbled, going down to one knee, grip tightening on my arm. He groaned quietly, head hanging down as blood dripped from his mouth. I pulled my arm from his grasp. I reached down under his arms, latching my hands in front of his chest. He was substantial and coughed harshly as I lifted him up, my back screaming with the strain.
The sounds of the earth splitting apart continued from behind us, but they were distant.
We continued on.
He said, “All of them.”
“What?”
“The pack. They will need—”
“Why?” I asked.
Thomas took a deep breath and turned his face toward the sky. I wondered if he could feel the moon, even though it was hidden. “I knew you were different,” he said. “When I first saw you. Even if it hadn’t been for Joe, I would have known.” His eyes flashed red again and again. It called to something in me, and I thought my blood was boiling underneath my skin.
“If I’m anything,” I said, “it’s because of you.”
He said, “Oh, Ox. I only showed you what you already had inside.”
I pushed on the pack bonds, but they were lost in a haze of pain and Gordo’s magic.
He said, “You must listen to me.”
I grunted as he stumbled again. Somehow I was able to hold him upright.
“You will—” He coughed, body shaking. Then, “The tether will be the most important thing. Those ties that bind you to each other. It’ll have to be you. For all of them. It’s a terrible thing I must ask of you, especially in light of all you’ve lost. But it can only be you.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he said fiercely. “You are more than you think. Ox. The power of the Alpha passes to the one who takes it. If it can’t be me and it can’t be Joe, then it needs to be you. He’s not here and I am asking this of you.”
“What?”
“Richard can’t have this,” Thomas said, lips shiny with blood. “He can’t. The things he would do with it… no. And I can’t hold on. Not like this. Not for very much longer. I can’t heal, not from this. I’m slipping.”
“No,” I said. “No. You can’t—”
“I need you to become a wolf,” Thomas said. “I need you to do this for me.”
It was too much. This… everything he was asking of me. I still hadn’t yet made a decision if I was going to take the bite before all this happened. And now? Now he was saying—
“You want me to be the Alpha.” My voice sounded small.
“Yes.”
I couldn’t find the words.
Thomas said, “I believe in you, Ox. I always have. You are my son just as much as the others are. I will always be—”
“There you are,” Richard Collins said from behind us.
Thomas snarled, forcing me behind him with strength I didn’t think he’d be capable of. I tripped over my own feet, falling to my knees. Thomas towered over me, but he only had eyes for the other wolf.
Richard didn’t look much
better. Someone had removed my crowbar from his back. His skin was soaked with blood. His rotting eyes shone darkly, claws extended, teeth sharp and flashing in the starlight.
He said, “You had to know it would always come to this, Thomas. There was no other way that this could end.”
“Only because this is what you chose,” Thomas said quietly. “We were friends once. Brothers.”
“If you were my brother,” Richard snapped, “you wouldn’t have let them die. And even if they still had, you would have done everything you could have to make sure the ones responsible suffered. The humans should have suffered for what they brought upon our pack. And instead, you embraced them.”
“They were a few,” Thomas said. “A select few. What possible outcome do you think this will have?”
Richard’s claws extended farther. “I will become the Alpha,” he said. “And then I will make them pay. For everything. The humans will bow to me and I will end them.”
He launched himself at Thomas, shifting in midair, clothes shredding into tatters, hair sprouting. Before I could even shout a warning, there was a snap of bone and muscle and wolf met wolf amongst the trees, fangs snapping, paws scrabbling for purchase.
Thomas was the bigger of the two, but even shifted, the blood still flowed, matting his fur. Richard was vicious in his assault, and I was knocked back as they rolled toward me, teeth buried in each other, broken growls falling from their mouths.
I looked around for something, anything, any kind of weapon I could use to stop this. To stop Richard before he could make things worse. I came upon a rock just smaller than my hand. I grabbed it without a second thought because this was my Alpha. This was Thomas and I couldn’t let him go.
He’d taught me about myself. Who I could be.
Alpha meant father.
(You are my son.)
It meant safety.
It meant home.
I didn’t make a noise as I rose to my feet. I didn’t hesitate as I moved toward the white wolf fighting against the brown one. I didn’t think twice as I tracked their movements, waiting, waiting for that right moment.