I Am The Alpha (32 page)

“There are a lot of Moon Forged females that have drifted into this Pack that were military before they were forged, they know how to fight, they’ve been trained for it. They wouldn’t make a good beta, not like me who was born into this, but Lucinda didn’t exactly bother to impress proper Pack etiquette, you know what I mean?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my eyes, “Just how big of a mess is this Pack?” I asked.

“Look, William’s dad was a good Alpha when it came to securing the pack from threats from the
outside
, but he was shit at dealing with the Pack internally and Lucinda may have been the biggest and baddest bitch on the block, but she was a shit Alpha Bitch and the last Alpha didn’t do anything to fix it. It’s pretty much all been Sharon and the Arbiter holding things down.”

Of course. I sighed and opened my mouth to speak but the front door opened downstairs and Markus called up, “Girls! It’s time to go, let’s get to it.”

“I’m nominating you, Nora, that is, if you trust me.”

“As my Alpha wills it,” she said dubiously, a glimmer of fear in her eyes.

“I do, I also will that you be here every day from today until the next full moon so I can train you, hopefully being wolf-kind will give you an inside edge on the learning curve.” I said and we both got up.

“Okay,” she said but she didn’t look sure. Damn it. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. I followed Nora downstairs and William smiled a little wanly at me.

Neither of us wanted to do this, yet here we were, just the same.

Chapter 25

William

I didn’t feel much like talking on the drive. It didn’t seem like there was a lot to talk about anymore. We’d been doing nothing
but
talking,
when we weren’t fucking
, for far too long already. Markus seemed to catch the vibe and drove silently. I sat shotgun with Chloe clutched in my lap, staring intently out the passenger window at the trees drifting by. Fuck the seatbelt laws. I wanted her close, and you went days and sometimes weeks without seeing a human cop or state patrol out here.

I really wasn’t positive what to do about Remus. And I really wasn’t looking forward to it.

“What’d you mean last night when you said ‘local Pack’?” Chloe asked suddenly and I turned my attention from the window to her.

“With a Pack as large as ours we can’t all remain in the same area for long. Hell, we’ve already lived in Washington longer than we have almost anywhere else. With how slowly we age, we have to Pack up and move every so often to keep people from getting suspicious. Most of the Pack lives scattered across the country, typically going about their human lives. The Moon Forged do at least. Like I said, they can do without the immediate support of the Pack better than Blood Born can.

“There’s usually two or three that stick together as a sort of small Pack unit for support and to help keep each other out of trouble and under the radar. We have several events throughout the year where the extended Pack members will fly or drive in for a week or two spending time with the Pack as a whole.”

“So local Pack would be just the ones that lived in Washington?”

“Just the ones that live on the Olympic Peninsula.”

“How many is that?”

“Fifty or sixty?” I said in a questioning tone to Markus who nodded without saying anything or taking his eyes from the road. “Fifty or sixty,” I said to Chloe with a touch more confidence in my tone. “And even that number fluctuates any given week.”

“How are you supposed to keep track of all this?”

“Years and years of practice and lessons. You’ll learn, my love. Try not to worry overly much about it right now, okay? It’s really not something you need to concern yourself with right this second. You’ll have time to get all this straight.”

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before she gave a short nod.

“So today we’re expecting in the fifty range as far as attendance goes?” she clarified and Markus gave a growling agreement.

“Somewhere around there,” he said. “The vast majority of the Pack left yesterday. They’ve got their regular lives to get back to. This situation with the Alpha succession has thrown everyone’s usual schedule severely out of balance. Jobs still have to be held though, so they couldn’t stick around any longer.”

“I’ll help go over all of this with you later, Chloe,” Nora offered from the back. “It really isn’t as difficult as it seems. One thing you have to remember is that you’ll probably never know where each individual member is at any given time. It’s just too big and constantly shifting and fluctuating. All you need to know is that even if we don’t have all their locations, we do have all of their phone numbers and we can contact any of them at any time. That’s how we get everyone here for emergency meetings like the Alpha’s death. Phone trees and coded email blasts.”

Chloe and Nora quietly discussed things as we traveled the last few minutes’ worth of miles to the clearing. I was starting to get tired of that damned clearing. I think I had seen it too many times in the last few weeks as it was and nearly every time it was because something terrible had happened or was going to happen. Father’s death, Chloe’s attack, the fight against Romulus, and Chloe’s battle with Lucinda…

Yeah, I really hate this damn clearing.

Next to me Chloe looked up and slipped her hand into mine, twining our fingers together. “I hate it too,” she muttered and I blinked for a moment.

“Did I say that out loud?” She nodded and I frowned.
Pull it together, idiot. Now is really not the time to lose your shit.

“When are they bringing Remus?” Chloe asked and I gave her a sidelong look.

“They who? Who would bring Remus?”

“Well the…” she trailed off floundering for the word she wanted. “Guards or whatever the wolf-kind equivalent would be. I mean he had to have been taken into custody or arrested or something to get him to show up here tonight, right?”

Understanding dawns clear and bright on even the most overcast of days, as father used to say. That light of understanding went off and everything made perfect sense all of a sudden.

“No, no, he wasn’t captured or arrested or anything like that. He’ll be here of his own accord.”

She gave me a look that clearly suggested she thought I had lost my mind and I frowned at her. “What?”

“Seriously?”

“What?” I was getting confused again.

“You honestly believe that Remus would just show up here, knowing he’s going to be basically on trial for patricide, regicide, and treason? He probably high tailed it out of the state while we were on our way home from the fights of succession.”

“Chloe, wolf-kind don’t work that way,” I said gently, “If he ran we would hunt him and he would die in a very slow, very unpleasant manner. He knows that he’s in trouble and the wolf won’t let him just run. He’ll face his mistakes head on. Besides, if he ran, aside from us hunting him down, he would basically be declaring himself an Omega. No one would voluntarily do that.”

She still looked dubious but let the matter drop and turned just in time to see Sharon walk into the clearing, her head held high as if she owned the forest and I couldn’t help the turning of my upper lip into a hate filled snarl that bared my teeth for just a moment at her. I had counted Sharon as one of my best friends and biggest supporters. And while she might have supported me, she didn’t support my mate and in my eyes that was almost worse. An outright betrayal.

She didn’t react to me and walked on to stand to the side of the clearing, hands clasped calmly in front of her. The bleachers, still standing after they had been erected for the succession challenge, quickly began to fill. Stands meant to hold nearly three hundred people looked woefully empty with a paltry fifty butts in the seats but within half an hour everyone had arrived… except for Remus.

Chloe kept glancing at me. I could see her out of the corner of my eye. We stood between the stands, looking down the length of them toward the trees. Chloe stood to my right and Markus stood on my left with Brent and Nora behind us. Four of us stood still and calm, just staring ahead in a show put on for the wolves in attendance. We had to look as if we were calmly in control. Chloe didn’t quite fit that but she was new to the whole thing, so could be excused.

She looked over at me again and opened her mouth. “He’ll be here,” I interrupted before she could say anything. I turned my head slightly to look at her and gave her a small smile. “Listen, I can already hear him.”

She frowned but a moment later closed her eyes and cocked her head to the side slightly, straining to focus her new senses to hear what I had already heard. Footsteps. Deep, heavy footsteps. Approaching with no sense of urgency. A calm measured cadence of foot falls on the rich forest floor.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

He stepped from between the trees and paused for a moment at the very edge of the field and across the expanse between us. Our eyes met. I think that he knew then what I intended to do for his shoulders sagged the smallest bit as if a heavy weight had just settled on him.

The quietly talking wolf-kind in the stands fell into silence as Remus started across the clearing. He walked with the same pace he’d used on his way in, the measured, even step of a man that knew everything that stood before him, and who knew that he deserved what was going to happen to him.

“William,” he said curtly as he stopped a few feet from us. He didn’t speak loudly but everyone in the stands would easily be able to hear him. He glanced at Chloe and greeted her as well. “Chloe, you’re looking better already than the last time I saw you,” he said in a polite tone.

“I’ve been eating better,” she told him and a small smile tugged at his stony features. He glanced back at me and I fought to keep my face an emotionless mask. Now was not the time for an Alpha to be emotional. Remus reached out and opened the left side of my loose jacket, just enough to see the scarred over bite mark on my chest and his face split again into a satisfied smile before he looked up at me, meeting my eyes with a steady gaze.

“Congratulations, William. You took one hell of a risk marking a human. I’m glad to see that it’s paid off for you.”

“Thank you, I wish these circumstances were different, Remus–”

“But they aren’t,” he said, cutting me off. “I know. Let’s get on with it. There’s no sense in dragging things out.”

He took a step back and let his hands drop to his sides, waiting calmly for my sentence. Markus waved one arm, motioning to a group of young men standing before the stands on my right. They came forward, bringing with them a small but heavy table carved from a solid chunk of redwood and two boxes made of a similar material. The men carrying the boxes did so as if they contained live ordinance that could go off at any moment and their hands were covered by leather gloves that reached past their wrists. Overkill, I thought. But they were scared of what the boxes contained, and I couldn’t honestly say that I blamed them. I wasn’t thrilled about it myself.

I took a step closer to Remus, raising my voice slightly even though it really wasn’t necessary for me to be heard. “Remus Reese,” I said. “You have committed crimes against this Pack that are unforgivable. You conspired to kill our previous Alpha, our father, with your brother Romulus. Worse, you conspired with The Hangman, the worst of the Hunters, and revealed to him the location of our Pack. In the months ahead, hard decisions will need to be made. It is uncertain if the Pacific Northwest Pack can even remain in the Washington Territories any longer, knowing now that the Hunters know where we are.

“You have jeopardized the lives of more than two hundred of your own kind, who are precious few already, for your own selfish reasons. According to Pack Law there is only one punishment for your crime. Death, at the next full moon.”

Remus nodded. “I accept my–”

“I’m not finished Remus Reese,” I cut him off and he blinked in surprise. “Pack Law dictates that your punishment should be Death at the hands of the Alpha. However, I, as Alpha, reserve the right to adjust sentences as I see fit.” A quiet muttering spread through the crowd as people began to wonder where I was going with all this.

“Remus, you’re a smart guy. You’re driven and methodical. And despite everything you have been more of a brother to me than I would usually be willing to admit,” I added the last with a glance over my shoulder at Chloe who gave me an encouraging smile. “You helped Chloe, and me, when you didn’t need to. So I won’t be ordering your death today, Brother. I won’t bring in my reign over this Pack with any more of my family’s blood. But you can’t stay with the Pack.”

The mutterings grew louder as some people started to figure out where I was going with this and Remus had gone white, all the blood draining from his face as his mouth dropped open.

“No,” he whispered, hands beginning to shake at his sides. “William, no. Kill me. Don’t do this. Don’t do this, William. William!” As he spoke I turned and opened one of the boxes and reached within it to remove the item that had so frightened the men that carried it to our side.

It looked like a craft stamp, a simple handle of highly polished wood and set within the flat surface of it was a band of metal in the shape of the Greek symbol Omega.

The mutterings in the audience grew even louder as those that hadn’t realized it yet, finally figured it out.

“I can’t William,” Remus said. “You know I can’t. Blood Born need a Pack. Blood Born
need
a Pack!”

“Remus.” My left hand grasped his shoulder and I held the brand loosely in my right, my arm hanging at my side. “Remus, look at me.” The panicked expression on his face was difficult to see. Remus Reese had always been the calm and level headed one. The one that rarely showed emotion, and to see him breaking down at the mere sight of the brand…

He looked at me and I smiled at him as kindly as I could. “I love you, Remus. You
are
my brother, and I can’t kill my brother. There’s been enough death in this family already. Do you understand me? There has been enough death already.”