Una tugs the bond so hard I can feel it in my breastbone. Come on.
“I told you to shut your mouth. Now you’re gonna lose your teeth.” The words are garbled by Una’s lengthening fangs, but we can all make them out. The pack edges backwards, riveted. Dams hiss at pups to back up.
There’s another yank at the bond like I got a goddamn leash attached to my solar plexus. Come, mate. We attack.
I can’t stop the stupid grin. Good thing Una’s focused one hundred percent on Haisley. “Alpha doesn’t pity me. Alpha belongs to me.”
Hell, yeah, I do.
As Una’s body breaks, I become the wolf, and howl the truth to the rafters. Finally, the insolence in Haisley’s eyes dims, and her gaze darts around the room. Cheryl’s waving wildly, but Eamon and Lochlan are still standing, unbowed, so she hesitates.
Big mistake.
I bolt for Haisley. Females scream. Haisley abandons her skin to her wolf who promptly panics as she registers the enraged alpha leaping for her.
Haisley should thank freakin’ Fate that Una shifts slow as molasses, and I beat her wolf across the floor. If Haisley raised a paw to her, I’d rip her head from her spine.
As it is, all I have to do is snap my teeth, and Haisley’s wolf skitters backwards and crawls under a table, mewling for her mother. Cheryl has backed off to huddle beside her mate in human form. No help coming for those quarters.
Dermot’s looking uneasy, but he’s not gonna make a move. Not for a “strictly for heat” mate. Not against certain death.
It takes a second for Una’s wolf to catch up to me, and she nips my haunch as she passes, howling and growling and letting the whole damn lodge know that no one touches her girls, and Haisley better come out and fight us.
Haisley cowers closer to the floor, neck bent at a right angle. Eamon and Lochlan exchange glances, but they don’t move to help her. She’s a female. In their eyes, she doesn’t rank. Not enough to risk skin or fur. They want to live to plot another day.
Una’s wolf yaps louder, unsatisfied with Haisley’s submission. She wants a pound of flesh.
Drag her out so I can kill her.
I love how her wolf doesn’t hesitate to boss my ass around. She knows how it is. But you can’t always get what you want, especially when you’re in charge. The sooner Una and her bloodthirsty wolf learn that the better.
I bite the scruff of Una’s neck and draw her back to the dais. She growls in the back of her throat and stays stiff as she lets me pull her away. It’s freakin’ adorable.
I shift back to human first. Gael’s right there with another pair of shorts. This pair rides up my ass. I don’t look around. I don’t want to know what scrawny whelp he got ‘em off of.
Una’s wolf rumbles a little longer to make sure her point is taken, and then she plops on her rump and gazes up at me expectantly. I squat, my back to the room, so that no one will see my beautiful mate in her bare human skin.
I know we’re shifters, and it’s normal and everything, but if shit’s changing, maybe we all need to get more modest. Fit in better with the humans or whatever. I’ll figure out a justification. No one sees Una’s tits but me.
Finally, Una takes back her skin, and she’s flushed and breathless. Magnificent. Gael lays a sundress on my shoulder and scurries away. That one is smart. The fabric smells like an unmated, protected female. Not ideal but acceptable.
I help Una tug it over her head. Her braid’s undone, and her eyes are still flashing with temper.
“No one touches my girls,” she says.
I turn to direct my response to the pack. “No one touches the lone females.”
“Or threatens them.”
I nod in agreement.
She lowers her voice, and her brow furrows, like she’s working something out. “She wouldn’t fight me.”
“Nope.”
“Because your wolf would kill her.”
“Yeah. Without hesitation.”
I can see the wheels turning.
“No one in this pack will challenge me now, will they?”
I shake my head. “Nope. They know I’d rend them limb from limb.”
“So I’m the de facto alpha female?”
“You’re the alpha female.”
Through the bond, I sense the confusion and awe as she comes to understand. I lead her back to her chair. Cheryl rushes over to coax Haisley out from under the table.
A few low conversations start, but mostly, there is uneasiness in the hall. Eamon and his contingent have taken their seats. No one seems certain of what comes next.
Truth be told, neither am I.
Una absently rebraids her hair, frowning. I don’t like it. Maybe some more meat would perk her up. I snap and point, and Gael brings over a platter. Una ignores it.
After a long time, she finally speaks. “It is dangerous to go into town.”
“Alone, yes.” There’s no way around it. Last Pack and human traffickers are a real threat.
“I was putting the girls in danger.”
I don’t answer. I can’t soften the truth. I feel her guilt, and I wish I could soothe her, but living with your own shitty decisions comes with being alpha.
“But it isn’t fair to keep us locked up and beholden, either. It isn’t right.”
I grunt. Sometimes the choice isn’t between right and wrong. It’s between the bad and the less bad. She knows this. She’s been leading her own little pack for almost as long as I have.
She thinks for a time. Folks relax and get up for a second helping. Mari and Annie come around with tea and coffee. Voices rise.
“A pack’s strength is in numbers,” she finally says. “We’ll just have to go to town in a big group.”
She’s so serious, I fight my smile. It is the logical conclusion, and there’s gonna be no shortage of unmated males who’d like to take a morning off training to escort a bunch of females to market. I’m gonna have to come up with a rotation. Maybe an incentive system. Now my wheels are turning.
There’s still an unsettledness in the air. Maybe there’s no time like the present to show the folks that change can be good—and impress upon them all one last time that the highest-ranking wolf in any pack is that one who rules the alpha.
“If we were to go to town now, mate, what could we do there?”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“You want to go to town now?”
I nod.
She searches my eyes, and I feel her nosing around the bond, trying to ferret out my intentions. “I don’t think much is open this late except maybe the bars?
“We’re not going to a bar. What else is there?”
She thinks. “Well, we could get ice cream.”
“Yeah?” Wolves aren’t that big on dairy.
“Mari and Annie love it.”
“It’s from cows right?” If it comes from a cow, it could be good.
“Yeah.”
“All right. Let’s go for ice cream in a big, safe group.” I help her to her feet and address the lodge. “Who else is coming to town for ice cream?”
The place erupts. Pups start begging. Half of the elders shake their heads, aghast, while the other half help each other up and grab their shawls and hats.