Filed to story: Owned by the Alphas Novel
“Dunno. Just telling you. I don’t really care,” he said, then went to leave. I snarled and shot up, slamming my palm down on the table, but he didn’t get a fright. He just turned with a lazy raise of his brow.
“Scary,” he taunted.
I glared at him. “And fixing the pack is just my job, right? All on me? There are three alphas, not just one,” I growled, my blood tingling. Heat shot up my spine in warning, my wolf ready for the fight, but Brax just shook his head, not rising to the bait.
“No, there were three. Then four. Now there’s two,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re giving up?”
He shrugged again. “You said it yourself. How are we meant to help? We’re here.
They’re there. We can’t go after them. We can’t run a fucked pack. Everything’s broken, D, and maybe it’s time to accept that. I have.”
“You could’ve just said yes,” I snarled, fury making me shake. He could give up? It had been days–I had no idea how many. Maybe three, maybe four. Maybe a week.
They blurred together now.
“Yes,” he said.
I moved into him, shoving him against the door. “You don’t get to give up. Not when our mate is out there being tortured with our brother, and we aren’t. We cannot let this pack go; it’s our fucking job.”
“No, it’s your job. Mine is to make sure this poison in our pack doesn’t reach Zale and Enzi.”
“You are an alpha, Braxton! You will damn well act like it!” I growled, shoving him again. He just gave me a dry smirk.
“Like you are? You knocked the beast out with herbs to keep him from descending and taking out Adrenna. You keep her locked up down there with magic we could use to get our mate back. And you told the pack to stay in their homes and only come out when necessary to stop anything happening. That’s not dealing with it, that’s running, hiding. Those were your decisions, and you had no problem pulling the ‘leading alpha’ card then, so you can take that responsibility, D, you can have it all. Because you’re on your own, just like you wanted when you ignored what I wanted to do,” Brax snapped back, shoving me.
I let him, needing him to fight back because that’s what I wanted. I wanted to fight, I wanted him to go at me so I could go back. So I could be punished.
I deserved it.
I should never have let her go out there, leave the city without me. I could’ve protected her, or tried. I could’ve been with her now, but instead, she was with the vampires, probably dying, and there was nothing I could do.
“This isn’t your fault. I knew something was wrong the second the twins started fussing; they told me something was wrong when she left the city, and I wasn’t listening. This is on me, D. That responsibility is mine,” he said, the darkness in his eyes one full of pain and regret.
It was a toxic combination that I shared.
“We’ve got to get our shit together. For them,” I swallowed, running a hand through my hair, trying to see through the toxicity.
“Are you willing to listen then?” Brax asked, and I nodded, looking up to him so he could see exactly what I had inside me–feelings that mirrored his.
“We structure the pack. Do what we did every winter before Lorelai. We take the aggressors to the pits, let them fight out their aggression in a controlled environment. Open the brothel again, let them fuck it out; the unmated ones are losing their shit without that. Start more training, give them something to do, to work through the savagery. Put them on projects–we were restructuring the school, renovating the classrooms, and the homes were plans we’ve had for ages, put the more in control ones onto that. Send the ones from the water pack to the lake for swims–in small numbers to avoid fights.
“Then have runners. Do groups in rotations, doing running. Have them run around the wall, patrolling together. They may be savage, but if there are vamps out there, they’ll be sorry they took away our control because a winter wolf is more dangerous than they realize, but that is our strength because they have never attacked in winter.”
I listened to Brax’s plans, and it made sense. It was all things we had done for years for the wolves, and I had been too stubborn, too lost to put it in place.
But grief still clawed at my heart because I had lost some of our pack, our luna, our alpha, and I was the face the pack saw when it came to decision-making–that made it my fault. I didn’t want to see the anger, the blame in their eyes when they looked at me.
I was a coward.
“No, D. You’re in pain; we all are,” Brax reassured, and I nodded. “I’ll take this one.
I’ve been skating by, letting you and Kai do the leading for most of this. But I can handle this. Let me run this winter,” Brax offered, and I sighed before nodding.
“Yeah, you do it,” I said before going back to my desk, leaning over it, and clenching my eyes shut.
“How are you going to press the winter wolf advantage?” I asked.
He smirked, walking over and leaning on the chair in front of the desk.
“I am going to start picking off stragglers. Vampires need blood, and I am going to give them some. How will they resist? We’ll go out in groups, and I’ll spill some blood, set the trap, and start going for their numbers. Because if our mate is going to get out of there with our brother, then they are going to need help from our side.
We need to be constantly distracting them so they are not paying as much attention to their prisoners,” Brax grinned, his eyes hungry and malicious, but it was exactly what we needed.
I should’ve listened.
“You’re good at this,” I admitted, and he shrugged.
“The crazy winter stuff? Yeah, I was born for it.” He grinned, and I let out a laugh that sounded weird to my own ears since I hadn’t made the sound in a long time.
Galen knocked and came in then; his arms had blood up them, and his eyes were dark. I shot up as Brax did.
“Ryleigh is birthing. I’m going to need help. The pack link wasn’t strong enough to call you down,” Galen said quickly, then strode out. I followed, as did Brax. The humans were stuck down in the lower levels of the mansion, hiding from the wolves who couldn’t handle their human scent.
When we got down there, it looked…terrifying. Ryleigh was screaming; there was blood everywhere; Vaughn had tears streaking down his cheeks; and Pearl was mixing herbs like crazy, handing Ryleigh mix after mix, trying to help, her dress covered in blood.
“How can we help?” I asked past the lump in my throat.
“She is losing too much blood; the baby is stuck, and I am going to need you to heal her as I go, or I will lose them both,” Galen ordered, and I frowned.
“Give her toxin? She could turn.”
“She could die,” Galen countered smoothly, and I knew it was worse, but turning her in winter? Not an easy transition.
“Braxton, I need you keeping the wolves busy. They will sense all this, and I need you to keep that from happening as long as possible,” I said.
Brax nodded and took off up the stairs, two at a time, as I walked forward. I grabbed Ryleigh’s hand, and she squeezed it, screaming out, her legs shaking as her red face and damp forehead got worse.
The bed was soaked in blood and sweat, and I met Pearl’s eyes. She nodded, then turned away. Ryleigh was dying. It was obvious in the amount of blood everywhere.
Galen sat at the end of the bed and tried to help her birth, but she screamed louder as soon as he did.
“Ryleigh,” I spoke, using an alpha voice to draw her attention. She whimpered and cried as she turned to me. I smoothed my thumb over her hand. “If I bite you, it will heal you. But there is a chance it will turn you. It depends on how much toxin you need.”
“She’ll be a werewolf?” Vaughn gasped, and I nodded.
“She could be. If she needs a lot to heal her, then yes,” I explained, and she cried more.
“But she will live?”
“If the toxin takes, yes.”
Vaughn leaned over Ryleigh, pressing his head to hers.
“You’ve gotta survive this, sweetheart. My sanity depends on it.”
“I need you to say whether I can or not, Ryleigh. I need permission.”
“The baby?” She shuddered, more tears falling over her freckled face. I looked to Galen, who confirmed my suspicions.
“I’ll get the baby out,” he said in the link that worked better being in the same room and because Galen was an elder.
“Galen is going to get your baby out, but it is going to hurt. It will survive, and I can make sure you do too. But if you don’t want this, then you will have to decide which one of you makes it out of this.”
“She won’t survive without it?” Vaughn sobbed, his bloodied hand going to his mouth.
“Maybe. But she will need more blood and will probably have a broken pelvis.
Possibly paralyzed,” I explained sadly, quietly. This was the last thing I wanted to be doing, but I had to.
The humans had become a part of us. We had accepted them, and when they were in pain, hurting, it affected me, affected the pack.
Ryleigh screamed again then, her body tensing as she did. I let her crush my hand as Vaughn tried to soothe her.
“You need to decide, Ryleigh. A moment longer and it will be too late for the choice,” Galen said softly. She cried hard before meeting my eyes.
“Save us both,” she breathed, and I nodded, stepping closer. My fangs dropped, and I leaned closer before turning to Galen.
“Get the baby out, I’m ready,” I said, gripping the side of the bed.
“Keep breathing, Ryleigh, this is going to hurt,” he warned a second before there was a sickening crunch, and he was breaking the human girl to save the baby inside her.
Ryleigh went wide-eyed before the screaming started. It wasn’t soft or quiet; it was pain–pure and excruciating. Vaughn and Pearl both had tears streaking down their faces.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?