“So, she applied for abdication from her herd. They were more than happy to grant it when they thought she was just going to fuck off to who knows where, but then they got pissy when they found out she was happily married with an adoring husband in my pack. Probably because her fertile sister also chose to leave the herd.”
“Why would they care?” I asked, multiple concerns popping into my head. Like yikes, talk about way too much of a focus on reproduction. Surely shifter numbers weren’t that endangered!
“Because they were horse shifters and thought it was unnatural for her to be among wolves. Mind you, they didn’t want her around them either. They just wanted her to be alone. They were also probably pretty pissed about losing one of their few unmated females.”
“And the sister came to live with your herd too?”
“Pack. Wolves have packs. Horses have herds. Bears have enclaves. But basically it’s all just different words that mean community. And no, she decided to travel. Experience the world outside of her herd’s lands. That’s how she survived.”
Oh… right. Every story he was about to tell me had the exact same tragic ending, didn’t it? “So, the lady who married into your pack was killed?”
“Along with everyone else. It was a trick set up by my second in command.” Finally, Ben turned to me, but I almost wished he hadn’t. The expression on his face was one of pure, undiluted, excruciating agony.
God, I’d been so wonderstruck at being catapulted into a world of shapeshifters and magical beasts that I’d forgotten the awful nitty-gritty of the matter.
The man before me had truly losteverything.
Well… almost everything.
His children had survived. They were safe and sound, asleep upstairs. Thank fucking God. Because if he had lost them too…
I really didn’t want to think about it.
“In shifter packs, we’re born with certain designations. Alpha, beta, omega. Alphas, which is what I am, have an ability called an alpha voice, which utilizes the sub-harmonics we communicate with to exert influence over the rest of our pack. We are generally much larger as well—in both forms—and have certain, uh, reproductive advantages.”
I blinked at him. Once. Twice. “Reproduc—”You know what? Maybe now’s not the time.“Never mind.”
He heaved a sigh, then continued. “Betas are smaller, but they have an ability to exude calming pheromones far more potent than anybody else. They tend to have even-keel temperaments, are more logical-minded, and low or non-existent sex drives.
“As for omegas, we tend to know the least about them, as they’re the rarest, but they have even more exaggerated healing capabilities, much lighter frames built for speed, and the ability to emit pheromones that can trigger berserker-like fugue states in other susceptible shifters—even across species.”
“Okay,” I said after a pause.
“In almost all wolf shifter packs, every alpha has a beta. Think of it more as their counterpart than their underling. While the alpha is meant to lead, to protect, and to fight, the beta is meant to hone them, advise them, and help them stay even-keeled despite their nature. Two halves of the same coin.
“My beta was named Charles, and we’d been friends since he was adopted into our pack when he was a kid. I trusted him with everything. Little did I know he’d grown to resent me and our entire pack. He thought we were beneath him.” Pain and anger coated his every word. “He’d gotten caught up in a gang of roving shifters, many of them with alpha designation but for some reason or another, hadn’t been chosen to bethealpha of their packs. They concocted a plan to wipe us out, steal our territory,steal our pack coffers, then live the high life until they found their next targets.
“That’s all it took for Charles to betray us. The promise of gold, glory, and gluttony. They descended on our pack when I was away, and no one’s defenses were up because it was Charles.We all knew and loved him. Never in a million years would we have thought that he’d bring nearly twenty alphas down on our heads.
“They killed everyone.Everyone.Women. Elders.” His voice cracked but somehow he continued, and it was taking everything in me not to cry. “Children. They had no mercy. The only reason my son and Veronica survived was because my wife and Veronica’s mother were having tea with Charles’s mother at our head lodge. That was basically our community center but also where my family lived as the leaders of the pack.”
I could see it all too clearly in my head, playing out like a horror movie in slow motion.The screams.The people greeting a beloved friend warmly just to have monsters descend out of nowhere.The blood.
“We had a safe room built beneath my wife’s crafting room. One only we knew about. It was small and lined with wolfsbane.”
“Wolfsbane?” I whispered, almost too scared to speak. “Like the plant that’s supposed to hurt werewolves?”
“Yes, exactly. It had taken my wife two years to fully line it with dried boughs. Even with heavy protection and coverage, she’d have a bad reaction that she’d had to hide for several days so no one noticed.”
“And why would you want something like that?”
“Like I mentioned before, our children aren’t technically wolf shifters yet, so before the first change, they’re not susceptible to the plant. It was meant to be a last resort to save kids if the pack was attacked. We weren’tactuallysupposed to use it.
“But she did. She got Ben and Veronica in there while Charles’s mother bought them time at the door. I suppose they all thought that even if she couldn’t convince him to stop, he would at least spare her. But he didn’t. Cut down his own mother just to get to my wife.”
Ben shuddered, and a sob escaped his lips as he crumpled to the floor. I was out of my chair and around the island, arms extended to help him, but he held up a hand.
“I’ll never be able to forget how I found her. He wascruelto her. Violent. He drew out her and Matilda’s death beyond the point of all reason. Theysuffered.” More sobs, each one bigger than the last, and I was worried his children might wake up and rush downstairs to find their father in this state.
