“I told you once, for reasons that I can’t really fathom, that by the time this was over, I’d be six feet under, or I’d be free.”
The real meaning of Lucas’s words—his definition of free— hit me a moment too late. I’d believed—we’d all believed—that Lucas just wanted to be free of Shay and the psychics, that he’d wanted to transfer to Cedar Ridge because he knew we’d keep him safe.
It had never occurred to me that to Lucas, giving himself over to another alpha—any alpha—might feel like a trap. I’d never thought, even for a second, that he might have something else in store for us—for me—once his transfer into our ranks was complete.
I should have seen it. We all should have, but for a werewolf, Lucas was small, weak—not a threat to anyone or anything.
Unless you were human.
Dead-eyed and sure, Lucas spoke. “As a member of the Cedar Ridge Pack, I question your right to lead us. I question your power over me.”
I felt the pull of the pack-bond like a noose around my neck. The hair on my arms rose, and a growl worked its way up from my diaphragm. My lips curled in warning.
Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t say the words, Bryn.
But as alpha, I had to say them, and the instinct that propelled me to do so became clearer and more insistent in my mind. “Are you issuing a challenge to your alpha?” I asked, Shay’s warning that Lucas would bring me nothing but trouble echoing through my memory, taunting me with every sign I hadn’t wanted to see.
“Yes,” Lucas said in the same throaty whisper he’d used with Maddy. “I am.”
Pack. Pack. Pack.
There was growling and howling and the snapping of teeth. The pack, already on edge before our run, felt the call of darkness and blood at the very sound of our newest member’s words.
Challenge. Challenge. Challenge.
The word passed from one mind to another, and it didn’t matter that none of us had ever seen a challenge. It didn’t matter that our pack wasn’t supposed to be like any other pack. The animal part of their psyche knew what this meant. I knew what this meant.
Saying no was never an option.
A direct challenge to the alpha always ended with a fight to the death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
INSTINCTIVELY, THE PACK MOVED OUT, ENCIRCLING us, but leaving space enough to fight.
I had no weapons, a bum arm, and none of Lucas’s speed or strength. I was human. He was a Were. It didn’t matter if he was weaker than others of his kind. It didn’t matter if he was smaller. It didn’t even matter that I was Resilient.
I would have stood just as much of a chance against an atomic bomb.
The only reason I’d lasted this long as the Cedar Ridge alpha was that the others had chosen me to lead in the first place. Any one of them, at any time, could have done what Lucas was doing now. They could have challenged me, they could have killed me, and they could have claimed leadership of the pack themselves.
The laws that forbid one werewolf from killing another only applied between packs. Within our own ranks, Pack Law and survival of the fittest were one and the same—at least when it came to being alpha.
Think, I told myself, my breath coming quickly and my chest tightening. Think, think, think!
But I couldn’t. There was nothing to think. There was no answer. There was only me—human and breakable.
Meat.
I remembered, suddenly, what it had been like growing up in Callum’s pack, knowing that if he hadn’t protected me, one of the Weres might have killed me. I remembered knowing how dangerous werewolves were, but life as the Cedar Ridge alpha—in their heads and out of them—had undone a lifetime of lessons.
You’ll never be as strong as they are.
You’ll never be as fast as they are.
If they lose control, you’re dead.
I’d forgotten. I’d let myself forget, and now there was nothing to be done.
I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. I had to stay and fight and die, because I’d wanted to help. Because I loved Maddy. Because I couldn’t let myself believe that some people were too far gone to save.
In an ideal world, I would have had time—to think, to prepare—but this wasn’t an ideal world; it wasn’t even a human one, and any challenge to the alpha had to be settled at a breakneck pace.
Sometimes literally.
I tried not to think about all the ways this could end, tried to concentrate on the here and now, but the more I concentrated, the direr the situation seemed.
Lucas was already on one side of the circle. He took off his shirt, and any remaining hope I’d had that he might fight me as human evaporated from my mind. He was going to Shift, and he was going to devour me whole.
I turned to walk to the opposite end of the circle, my head held high. Damn him for doing this to me. Damn him to hell and back, but I wasn’t going to die crying. Given half a chance, I’d take out his eyes.
Devon caught me roughly by my good arm as I walked by, and I turned to glare at him. This was hard enough without thinking about all the people I was leaving behind, all the people I was letting down. This was hard enough without looking at Devon’s face and realizing that he was going to have to watch me die.
“You’ll challenge Lucas,” I said softly, my voice full of knowing. “The second this is over.”
That was the real tragedy here, the thing that made this whole exercise pointless. Absurd. The moment Lucas had issued this challenge, he’d signed his own death warrant as much as mine. It didn’t matter if he was stronger than I was. There were plenty of people in my pack who were stronger than him, and they wouldn’t allow him to lead. They wouldn’t let him kill me and live another day.
Lucas was so far gone he couldn’t see it, and somehow, I doubted that Shay had pointed out the inevitability when he’d planted this suggestion in Lucas’s head.
Layers upon layers upon layers.
Shay had known that Lucas was going to do this. He’d broken him and sent him, broken, to me. He’d played me—the bet, the stakes, scratching on the eight ball when he must have always intended to lose. This was his fail-safe.
This was the endgame.
“You’re not going to die.” Devon spat the words right in my face. “You are not allowed to die.”
“Fine,” I said. “You win. I’ll just—oh, wait. I don’t have a choice.”
I didn’t want to be doing this—not with Dev, not with any of them. I didn’t want to say good-bye.