Alpha's Strength (Fallen Alpha) (12 page)

“Sir, if I may say, the whole pack is thrilled by your true mating. We look forward to your moon ceremony.” Jensen smiled broadly. Cyrus wasn’t entirely certain he’d ever seen that particular expression on the other man’s face before.

“Thank you.”

“What’s a moon ceremony?” Betsy sipped her drink.

“Kind of like a wedding. But better.” He’d get into the specifics with her later. Someone would have to preside over it since he couldn’t do it himself, and she’d have to be comfortable with the nudity.

“My mate is looking forward to the movies tonight,” Jensen continued.

“Movies tonight?” Cyrus regarded at Betsy. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“Oh.” Betsy shook her head. “Lake asked me if I’d like to get together with some of the women sometime to do something. Very vague. I had no idea she’d planned it for tonight. This is a lot sooner than I expected.”

“Sounds like my sister.” Cyrus grinned. Leave it to Lake to disrupt the evening he had planned. “You should go. I have Alexei to deal with and this fool here. You’ll be safe with the pack, and after the movies, we’ll meet up back home.”

“Oh. Okay.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and it was everything he could do to not to tug at her shirt to look at his mark there. He salivated to see it. Betsy turned to Jensen. “What are we seeing?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, ma’am. I didn’t think to ask.”

“You,” Nathan called out from his cage noticing Betsy for the first time. “You’re with them now. I should have known it. A leopard can never truly hide his spots. My father warned me you’d always be mostly animal, even if you hid it better than the other abominations. You’re an animal. We should never have thought to save you.”

Betsy jerked as though he’d struck her. “What did you say?”

Jensen growled, launching himself at the cage. Nathan screamed like a woman and darted to the back of the bars. “You will not insult the Alpha’s mate.”

“Oh, the Alpha?” Even as he shrieked, Nathan continued his insults
. Stupid boy.
“You’re fucking the Alpha, you slut. Can’t you ever keep your legs closed?”

“I never slept with you.” Betsy sipped her coffee, and he could smell her fighting for calm. It burned his lungs. He hated to smell her so stressed out. “Then again, I’d never sleep with a rat like you.”

Cyrus walked toward Jensen and nodded for him to get off the cage. This was one of the reasons he hadn’t left her within talking range of Nathan the day before. The pathetic excuse for a life form couldn’t be trusted to not hurt her in some way.

“How did you know she was a werewolf? How did you know when she didn’t?”

Nathan laughed, a hysterical whiny sound, but it did little to disguise the disgust in his gaze as he focused on Betsy. “Oh, everyone knew. We kill your kind. We do it when you’re babies.”

Cyrus almost gave in to the urge to claw out the man’s eyes. The human shouldn’t be allowed to look at Cyrus’ mate. Instead, Cyrus held onto his calm and took a sip of his coffee. It wasn’t time to kill Nathan…yet.

“But you didn’t change, and neither did your sister. So, even though we knew you had animal parents, my father—who is a great man—said it was our duty as true believers to give you the chance to be saved from the pit.”

Betsy had gone very pale. “So you all knew I was a werewolf this whole time? And my sister too? What did you do with her? Send her off to another true believer?”

“I don’t know anything about where your sister went. I just know what I know. My father saved you from the pit, and I was supposed to save you the rest of the way. Until you went and started sleeping with
him
.”

“Cyrus.” Betsy’s voice was very low. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

He put his arm around her. “Take some deep breaths. Jensen, go get my sister.”

“Yes, my Alpha.” Jensen shot Nathan a look that could have scorched the earth before he ran from the room.

“Betsy, listen to my voice. You aren’t going to give this man the satisfaction of seeing you throw up.” She raised her now red-rimmed eyes to look at him. He would make Nathan suffer tenfold for the pain Betsy endured. “And we don’t know what is true. He is a stupid asshole.”

He’d said the last part loud enough for Nathan to hear and was rewarded when the other man cried out. Good, Nathan should know how lowly Cyrus viewed him. The man was nothing more than a coward pretending to be a tough guy.

“We’ll find out what is true and what isn’t. Then, I promise you, Nathan and his like will know the pain of crossing us. I give you my word.”

Betsy nodded, giving him a small smile that broke his heart for its bravery. Jensen rushed back in the door, followed by Lake. His sister must already know the situation because she walked right to Betsy and placed a hand on her arm.

“You feel sick? Like you might lose your cookies?”

Betsy laughed, a shaky sound. “Great phrase.”

“Thanks. I use it with the pack pups. It always makes them laugh. I think you’re doing better. I can feel some of the pain leaving you, and I think we can credit my brother for that.” She nodded. “But I can help the rest of the way.”

Lake placed a hand on Betsy’s arm, and Cyrus let go of his mate. Betsy needed the healing, not he, and he wouldn’t suck any of Lake’s magic touch from his mate by accident. He never thought about his own healing abilities. His pack’s Healer happened to be his family, and he used her whenever someone needed help, but Alphas could heal with their touch. There was no kind of magic to it, just plain old comfort in being held by the person who was responsible for the person’s care. It went along way to relieving fear and angst.

He didn’t know that he’d done that for Betsy. Their relationship would never be entirely Alpha and pack member. She belonged to him differently. Maybe his holding her would be more effective because of that. They’d have to find out together.

Cyrus walked to cage, where Nathan trembled. “You have a venomous mouth for someone so terrified.”

“You’re just an animal.”

That had clearly become the human’s standard reply and ultimately what all true believers said when they found themselves in this kind of situation. Lucian had held a policy of not dealing with them at all. His last summer with the Alpha Prime, Cyrus had witnessed him beheading two of them. Cyrus could remember that day vividly, not because of some kind of horror associated with it—beheading was certainly a brutally effective way to send a message back to the other true believers—but because he hadn’t felt anything at all about what he’d witnessed. Not one damn thing. They were humans who wanted to kill his kind; they needed to die, like removing a wasp’s nest before the creatures inside could sting anybody. Death was the only answer.

“You’re right.” Cyrus nodded. “I am an animal, sort of. But I’d never do to a woman what you did.”

Nathan spit from the cage, almost hitting Cyrus’ two-thousand-dollar suit.

“Spitting is a dirty habit.” Cyrus set down his coffee. “It spreads disease, and your fragile little bodies can take only so many encounters with illness before your hearts stop beating. If I were you, I’d be more careful, although I suppose it doesn’t matter. You aren’t going to live long enough to get sick again. When I’m done with you, I’ve decided to give you to my friend Alexei. I hear he likes to play with his food before eating it. You’ll beg for death before he’s done.”

Nathan cried out, big fat tears streaming down his face. The man wasn’t a true believer—he was a bully.

“Jensen, see that he calls his father for his daily report. He’ll be leaving with Alexei later and get the plane all set up for a trip, will you? A bunch of us are going to be visiting Montana tomorrow.”

Betsy sipped her strawberry daiquiri and regarded the other women who surrounded her. They were all members of her pack, and they were all talking at once. She smiled at one who had said her name was Liana before she took another sip. The whole evening was different than she had imagined it.

“This is our version of the movies.” Lake laughed, taking a large swig from her pink-colored drink. Betsy had no idea what it was. In fact, she had no clue about what most of the women were consuming. She’d never been to a bar before. She’d ordered her own drink because she’d seen it in a movie once, and at least she had something to order other than the whiskey her father preferred. She hated the smell of that and detested the taste even more.

It was loud, and everyone in the place seemed to be having a good time. Her group had a table in the corner.

“We can’t admit we go to bars.” Lake shrugged. “Or the men send a representative to guard us. What point is it having a ladies’ night out with them watching over us like we need babysitters? We’re female werewolves. We can take care of ourselves.”

“Here. Here.” A redheaded woman on the other side of the table saluted with her beer. Betsy tried to recall the woman’s name. Rachel? Raquel? There were fifteen women with her, and, if she was lucky, she’d remember the names of five of them by the end of the evening. It might be a year before she could remember the name of every wolf in the pack. She sighed, stirring her drink with the little plastic umbrella someone had stuck in it.

“So,” Lake continued, holding her hands over her head as though she was stretching her arms into the sky, “we say we’re going to the movies, and we all meet here. No harm, no foul. For some reason, bars seem more risky to the men.”

Betsy tried to digest her words and found she couldn’t ignore the twinge they gave to her insides. “I don’t think I’m comfortable lying to Cyrus.”

The whole table fell silent. The women seemed to be making eye contact all around her, as if they were silently communicating in a way she couldn’t follow. Wouldn’t anything ever be easy? Couldn’t she just make friends?
No.
She bit down on her lip.
Not if it meant betraying Cyrus.
That felt wrong.

“They don’t understand.” One of the women, who had been quiet most of the night, whose name she could actually remember since she’d met her briefly in Cyrus’ office building as Kyra, smiled at her kindly. “They’re not in a true mating. You and I are the only ones here—actually, the only ones in the pack—to find a true mating. The others have mated with men who are not their true mates, which is fine and their decision, or they are still single. They don’t understand what deceit feels like to us.”

Kyra had brown, shoulder-length hair and kind blue eyes. She was slightly on the chubby side, with ten pounds she might not need hugging her hips and breasts. Betsy liked her tremendously, and she’d never exchanged more than hello until that moment.

“Who are you true mated to? I’ve met only a handful of the werewolf pack members.” Actually, she’d spent most of the day closeted away in a room with a man named Luther who was about ninety and who’d given her a history and mysticism lesson about werewolves. By the end of it, her head ached, and she wondered if she’d made a mistake thinking she could get her high school diploma since she obviously could not retain information the way she needed to.

She still couldn’t figure out the difference between all the moon cycles and why they had anything to do with the chemistry inside of her body.

“I think you’ve met him several times actually. And talked to him. His name is Jensen.”

She brightened at that, letting go of the breath she held. Yes, she knew Jensen. He’d come to Brooklyn and thrown himself on the cage today. She could see them together. They fit in the way people seemed to do on television, as though they’d been cast to be together by some authority that knew these things. His dark hair would complement her lighter brown, and he’d gaze into her blue eyes adoringly every morning.

Like Cyrus had looked at her when she’d fed him the eggs. She sighed at the memory. What was she doing in a bar when he was not with her? She was making friends. Or blowing it so the whole pack ended up hating her

Liana, who sat next to her, spoke. “Let’s not make it seem like those of us who fell in love with our partners are somehow slumming it, because we aren’t
true mates
. We met someone, fell in love, committed, and have families—like the humans do. It’s a commitment, and I won’t have it dismissed because you smelled your mate and it happened to work. Our unions are just as sacred.”

Kyra nodded and bit down on her bottom lip before she spoke. “I would never disparage your relationship or anyone else’s, sister wolf. It’s that while you might choose not to lie to spouse, and I commend you for that, it’s physically painful for me to do it, and I don’t blame Betsy for sensing that she doesn’t wish to give that a try.”

“Then how do you come here when we do this? How do you lie to Jensen?” Lake took another swig from her drink. How many had Cyrus’ sister had?

“I don’t lie. Jensen knows where I am and what I’m doing.”

A hush fell at that response. Finally Lake spoke again, this time with temper in her tone. “How do you know he won’t tell the Alpha and Cyrus will put a stop to this whole thing?”

“I don’t.” Kyra shrugged, smiling at Betsy. “But if he does, it’s not the end of the world.”

“Not the end of the world? My brother has never seen a good time he didn’t want to break up.”

Okay, Lake was drunk. Betsy had seen it many times with her father. She hadn’t liked the look of it then, and she didn’t now. Only now, the toxic alcohol fumes coming off the pack Healer made Betsy want to sneeze too.

“That’s not true. He wants you all to have great lives. His only concern is keeping you safe.” Her defense of him was swift. If Lake believed that, then she really didn’t know her brother at all. What had he done to make them all so completely misunderstand him? She drummed her fingers on the table. He needed to hire a PR person for his own pack mates.

“Don’t get us wrong,” the Raquel/Rachel person said. “We love the Alpha. Things were so bad before he took over. My parents call him the savior. They say the pack was all but decimated and he put it back together. We could never get on without him, but, no offense, he has a real stick up his ass sometimes.”

“No offense? How am I not to take offense? He’s my mate and your Alpha.” She growled. “I can promise you he’d never speak about you so disrespectfully.”

This had been a mistake. She couldn’t have friends, not if it meant listening to them complain about their Alpha, who happened to be her true mate. She didn’t need this kind of stress.

Liana put her hand on Betsy’s. “Ruth is drunk. Don’t mind her. I would never speak about Cyrus Fennell any way but with reverence. He is my Alpha, and I am so glad you are here to bring happiness to him.”

“Thank you.” Some of her urge to get up and stomp out left.

“Neither would I.” Kyra smiled. “And I think in a few minutes it’ll be time to get his quite intoxicated sister home to bed.” Kyra stroked Lake’s hair. “She’s not usually this type of drinker.” Lake stared off into space as though she’d missed the whole conversation. “Something has plagued her lately.”

“Jensen knows you’re here, and he lets you come anyway?” Betsy took another sip of her drink and winced. It was really too sweet for her. Maybe she wasn’t meant to drink anything but water, milk, and coffee.

“He’s outside in the car.”

“What?” Ruth—whose name was obviously not Raquel—slammed down her drink. “He’s outside? That spoils the whole point of not having a guard dog roaming around in here killing all the good times.”

“Oh really?” Kyra’s tone said she’d had enough of Ruth’s crap. “Did his sitting out there every other time we’ve gone out spoil your fun? You went home with how many random humans? Did Jensen say a word? And if you call him a guard dog again, I’ll rip out your eyes.”

Maybe female company was going to be really out of the question. Leaving the two of them to fight it out, she stared back at Liana. “How does it work if you’re not true mates?”

“What do you mean?” Liana smiled.

“Well, you commit to each other, like a marriage, right? You have kids, form a family?”

Liana nodded happily. “Exactly. We’re hoping to start one the next time I go into heat.”

“That’s really wonderful. But I guess I’m confused because what will happen if you are in a committed relationship and then one of you finds your true mate? How will you handle that? Is there a system?”

The other woman’s face fell. “Most of us will never find a true mate. If such a person exists for us, they are somewhere we’ll never find them. With the exception of the Alphas, most of us will never leave our territory. Ever. It’s not safe. And, as for me, if it happened, I would never leave my family under any circumstances. Besides, this is all so hypothetical. I can’t believe the moon would ever be so cruel.”

“In other words…” Lake slurred her words, apparently tuning back into the world around her. “They all hope really hard that it’s not going to take place.”

Something was going to have to be done about Lake. Betsy didn’t know her mate’s sister at all, except that she’d been really kind to her when Betsy had almost vomited in the basement. Afterward, Betsy had felt heaps better and had thanked her. Lake had seemed sweet, now just despondent. Of course, the woman had also turned Betsy from latent to full shifter without asking permission. Maybe she had a volatile personality.

She’d no sooner had that thought than her attention shifted. There was a change in the room. Something smelled wrong. Her nose twitched, and she tried to make sense of it. A group of men and women had entered. It smelled as though they’d bathed in perfume or cologne. Betsy gagged and, seconds later, so did several of the women at the table. Lake and Ruth didn’t seem to notice. Maybe alcohol dulled their ability to scent things.

Betsy turned around to stare at the stinky people. Who walked around draped in so much fake scent that it was practically a noxious gas? The group of eight stared back at her table, which seemed kind of odd. To an outsider, her group was a pack of women talking loudly. She didn’t know that much about bars, but surely their like could be found in about any drinking establishment any day or night of the week.

TV was filled with shows of women talking about inappropriate things while they sipped way-too-expensive cocktails. It was fashionable, and this was Manhattan, where fashion was king.

A feeling of dread filled her stomach. Something was wrong. “We need to get out of here.” As a human, she’d ignored her instincts, but if she’d learned nothing in the last forty-eight hours it was that her instincts were far more accurate than she could have imagined. Her hands shook, and her heart raced. She wasn’t a fighter, not really. It seemed pivotal to flee.

“I agree.” Kyra jumped to her feet, tugging at Ruth, who was sluggish.

“What are you two fussing about?”

A woman with long white hair got up from the table, making Betsy nervous, and moved to the door. She closed it and stood in front with her hands on her hips. Now that really couldn’t have been misinterpreted as anything but weird—if not downright threatening.

Kyra walked to the side of the table and took her hand. “Listen to me. I think we’re in trouble here.”

Lake stumbled to her feet. “What’s going on?”

Kyra pushed on Lake’s shoulder, pushing her back down in her chair. “Quiet.”

Betsy spoke to Kyra, a bead of sweat travelling down from her neck to her back. “I agree. These people—”

“Are here to do us harm. Yes.” Kyra nodded. Betsy was glad Kyra was so calm because it kept her cooler than she’d otherwise be.

“What should we do?” Her hands shook, and she shoved them in her pockets.

“Well, we don’t know how dangerous they are. They might be here to spit evil nonsense at us, or they might mean to attack us. In the meantime, I’ve sent Jensen a text. He’ll get in here. I know he will. And I’m sure he’s let the Alpha know we feel threatened.”

“Great. Cyrus can ban bars.” Lake rolled her eyes.

“Would you shut up? We’re here, we’re in some kind of trouble, and we are responsible for the Alpha’s mate. She’s new to this. Nothing can happen to her. It will kill your brother. Despite whatever is up your ass tonight, you would never want to harm him in any way.”

“All right,” the woman by the door called out loudly. “If you are a human, get out the front door. Now. This is your last chance to leave.”

“If we’re human?” a man screamed out from the back of the bar. “Funny joke, lady. Have another one.”

She opened her jacket and pulled out a large silver knife. Any doubt Betsy had about their intentions disappeared. Yep, these people were here to cause violent trouble.

The other seven people at the table rose, pulling out their own versions of the knife from their articles of clothing.

“Do we look like we’re kidding? We’re actually here to protect you from the scum that is here to destroy our lives. So, if you’re human, get out now.” She gestured her knife in their direction. “And don’t try to fool me. We know who all of you are. You’re not sneaking out, creatures.”