Filed to story: The Wolf Prince’s Fated Love
The Alpha command made me flinch back, my knees wobbling at the forcefulness of it, his wolf’s eyes glowing green, even in the strong light of his office.
As the words sank in, hurt flooded me.
“So you’re saying I’ll lose? You don’t have any faith in me at all, do you?” I snapped, trying not to cry at what felt like a knife jutting from my chest.
“Brielle, I have nothing but faith in you, but your health… You weren’t able to maintain your last shift, let alone fight in your wolf form! It’s suicide, and I can’t stand by and watch you die. You have to reject the challenge.”
“No. I’m not doing it, and you can’t make me. I’m the only one who can withdraw it. Those are the rules of a challenge.”
“I’m high alpha. I’ll change the rules!”
“Put yourself in my shoes, Kane. If Reed challenged you for the right to mate with me, would you just stand by and watch, or would you accept the challenge?” I saw Reed stiffen out of the corner of my eye, the four others with us primarily standing to the side and letting us scream it out.
I wished one of them would talk some sense into Kane, but apparently, they’d decided I could fend for myself. That had to break some sort of best-friend code, but that was a problem for another time, when my fated-mate bond wasn’t on the line.
“I’d tear out his throat and bathe in his blood.” His fangs lengthened, and I took a pointed step to the side, intercepting his glare at Reed.
“Yeah, well,
Reed isn’t challenging you. Jasline is challenging me, and I can’t stand by and watch her take you any more than you could watch someone else take me. I will stand for the challenge, and you can either help me, or get out of my way. But I’m not backing down, and I’m hurt that you’d ask me to. That you’d just assume she’s stronger.”
“She’s alpha! Of course she’s stronger!” He rammed a hand into his short hair and began to pace angrily back and forth, making the large office feel tiny. “This is why alphas are supposed to mate with other alphas,” he growled under his breath, but I heard him.
The knife in my chest twisted as I stared at him, and I blurted out another question. “Do you want to mate with her?”
“What? No!” He lunged forward, grabbing me around the waist with his stupid-fast shifter reflexes before I could bolt. My wolf and I had to have a talk about her showing up more when I needed to evade assholish alphas, because seriously, I should be able to dodge as fast as he was able to grab.
“Look at me, Brielle.
Never could I want anyone besides you. But to lose you would rip my heart out of my chest, and I can’t handle that right now. I barely have a grip on all the new pack bonds in my chest. I need you to steady me, and I can’t live without you.”
“So you think I can?” My voice cracked, the pain finally leaking through. “You think I can step aside and watch you mate someone else, just because she’s an alpha and I’m not?” My voice shook, but I couldn’t stop it if I tried, pride or no pride. He was seriously trampling all over my heart, not to mention my self-esteem.
“I would never, Brielle. We’ll mate tonight. Once the rites are complete and you wear my bite, our bond can never be challenged again.” His grip on me tightened to near pain, a frantic determination in his eyes.
“You can’t do that, Kane.” Gael was the one who finally stepped forward, a hand raised in a peacemaking gesture.
“Why the hell not?” His voice grew gravelly with his wolf’s urging.
“Because if a challenge for mating rights is accepted and then one of the challengers attempts to circumvent it by completing the bond, it’s an instant forfeiture of their life. You’d be signing her death warrant. For better or worse, she accepted the challenge in front of hundreds of witnesses, and she has to go through with it. All we can do now is help her win.”
You could have heard a pin drop in that office, and I’m pretty sure no one breathed for at least a minute as the weight of what he’d said sank in. I was in it, and there was no way out but through the fight. Fangs and claws and blood. It was the wolf way.
“No. I’m the high alpha. I’ll not let my defenseless mate be torn apart by some alpha she-wolf with something to prove just because some dusty old law says so.
No.”
Defenseless.
Was that how he saw me? His poor, defenseless not-alpha mate. Couldn’t do anything for herself, let alone earn her place at his strong, capable side.
My heart was like a paper crane, crushed under his harsh words. It wanted to crumple up and die, hide away from the unflattering truth.
But that wouldn’t solve anything, and I wasn’t a quitter. You didn’t make it through life as a wolf who couldn’t shift by being a quitter. You didn’t make it through med school-with no family or pack support-as a quitter.
I had been dealt plenty of shitty hands in my life, and every single one, I’d overcome. I could do it again. He thought I was some weakling? I’d just have to prove him wrong.
Prove that there was more to strength than simply being an alpha.
Drawing myself up a little straighter, I leveled a no-nonsense look on Gael and then on my hurtful mate. “As I said, I accepted the challenge, and I will be competing in it. I’m definitely not going to waste any more time talking about how weak and defenseless I am, just because I wasn’t blessed to be born alpha. Leigh, Shay-take me back to our room, please.”
My besties surged forward, bracketing me and lending their support.
“Let’s do it to it, bestie,” Leigh said, looking down her nose at Kane.
Shay didn’t speak, but she shook her head sadly at him.
And then we walked out, three slack-jawed alpha males staring after us.
“I’m just saying, if you’re not one-hundred-percent sure he’s the one, I’ll happily murder him for you for being a douche canoe, and then we can pretend that none of this ugliness ever happened,” Leigh offered again.
I couldn’t hide my groan as I slathered on my nighttime lotion in the bathroom mirror.
“Leigh, give it a rest. You’re just mad she named me her second,” Shay grumbled.
“No, I’m not. I know why. I mean, I’ve never spent an entire year of my life furry, so, yeah. I get it. You’ve got the wolf mode on lock, and you’re the obvious choice. Doesn’t mean I can’t mess that asshole’s pretty face up just a little for talking down to my girl.”
“Yes, it does. She wants him to stay pretty so he’s worth the trouble.”
Leigh cackled. “Okay, touché. Can I beat his ass? That’s not pretty, right?”
“Wrong,” I called again. “Please don’t beat any part of him. I intend to do all the beating myself.”