I’d rather not ruin my suit tonight. The family is used to blood, to seeing us covered in it for whateverreason, but I can’t risk running into Cheyenne covered in blood.
“Then what changed, friend? Who sunk their claws into you and offered something better?”
The chains overhead rattle as he begins to shake. Like prey caught in a trap, the danger he’s in really starts to sink in. This isn’t a beating and you go home, this isn’t even spilling his guts for talking to the pigs. This is going to send a violent and painful message to everyone in our village.
Nobody fucks with the Benettis.
“He-he said he could get me moved up the family,” he explains. “More than a made man.”
My eyes flick to the others. It’s not usually a risk we face. The pack is bound to secrecy, bound to each other. Our continued existence as wolves relies on keeping our fucking yaps shut. There’s always someone who thinks they can double-cross us, another family who thinks they can drop one of their sons or daughters into our ranks to spy on us.
But one of our own breaking rank and pack like this? It’s so fucking unfathomable, I can barely keep myself from changing. The rage, the fear for my loved ones, surges through my veins faster than my heart can beat.
“Who told you?” I demand.
“I can’t,” hewhispers.
I grab hold of his throat before he takes his next breath. His dark eyes widen, his lips tremble as he tries to draw in air. My hand shifts, claws extending into his soft jugular. That little pinprick of awareness flashes across his face. Like he sees the wolf I truly am.
“Who told you?” My canines extend again and my mouth widens.
“The alpha,” he gasps.
Andrea chokes while Marcello snorts with laughter. That is a debunked load of crap from a quack scientist studying wolves in captivity. Not how wolf packs work in the wild, and it certainly isn’t how werewolves work.
We are a fucking family. I may sit at the head of the table, but we are a unit that thrives on supporting each other.
“Who is that?” I taunt our rat, pushing him so he swings while I circle him. He drags ragged breath after ragged breath as I remove more of my clothes. He watches, piss dripping down his legs. Jesus, he needs to drink more water.
The leather of my belt slaps together hard. “Who’s the alpha?”
“I only ever saw the monster,” he sobs, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Did he look like this?”
I transform, muscles stretching, bones breaking and mending, and hair bursting through my skin.My stupid tail even pops out like a jack-in-the-box, wagging and ready for blood.
Giuseppe screams and cries when he looks at me under the light. I snarl at him. His heart beats too hard, like it’s about to give out. Maybe he’s having a panic attack.
“Who is the alpha?” I ask one last time, fist wrapping around the chain and pulling him up to my eye level. I place my other hand over his heart.
“I can’t—”
My claws break through his chest cavity before he can finish that same pathetic line.
The rat chokes as blood dribbles out of his mouth and around my fist. The colour drains from him and coats my grey fur. Sick and hungry satisfaction hums in my veins as I push a little harder into his body, reaching for his heart. How long will he survive this? Can I make him see his still-beating heart?
I’m not a surgeon on a good day. My claws sink into the organ, and I yank. Blood vessels and arteries stretch like elastic until they snap, spraying blood across me and the room. He probably died the moment I touched his heart, but I don’t care. He wasn’t planning to tell me who this alpha fucker is.
His blood is hot on my tongue when I devour his heart, chewing and crushing the musclebetween my sharp fangs. He doesn’t quell the fury I feel. It sinks in my gut while his useless corpse hangs there.
“Shit, Tino,” Andrea chuckles. “Turning more animal than man these days.”
I resist the urge to shake the blood off my fur, licking my snout.
Marcello calls Ugo in, and they work to unchain the rat and drag him outside. They’ll dump him somewhere for people to see, to send a message to our other associates that this is what happens to those who think they can back out of our agreement, who think they can be better than a Benetti. I’ll call our friends down at the morgue tomorrow morning. The wild boars in the area have gone a bit wild, what can I say?
“What was the hold-up earlier?” Andrea asks once the room is clear.
