I took a look. Both alphas had their auras out, so it was an easy assessment. “One on the left is fine. Right, looks like he’s on a knife’s edge. Could go either way on appeal day, but stress tends to destabilize, so I’d do what I can between.”
“Any advice?” the pack lead asked.
I sighed asthisinformation manifested from my missing memories without an issue at all. “Keep sparring. Shore up pack bonds—” I cut off, realizing the next thing I’d been about to say was get an omega. But I didn’t think we needed more targets on our backs, so I stopped there.
See. Icoulddo politics.
He nodded. “Alright. Thanks.” He clapped me on the shoulder and left.
I caught Sin rolling his eyes as I turned back to them.“What?”
“Gotta ask for favours if you’re going to do that.”
“We’re out in like… five seconds,” I said, though it hadn’t occurred to me.
I was still getting a grip on the politics of this place.
“You would have been useless even if you hadn’t been feral,” Sin muttered.
Rude.
Right as I thought it, there was a howl across the gym.
I spun, tense, but the threat wasn’t nearby. It took me a moment to hone in on it, but there was a deadly brawl going on in the sparring field. The pack I’d just assessed was nowhere to be seen—though I doubt they wanted anything to do with this attack when their appeal was coming up.
One alpha was already slumped, clutching his broken arm; a few more were backing up to encircle him, but the packs—attacking them outnumbered them and had boxed them in.
Everyone else on the sparring field was slipping away, clearly not wanting to get involved.
Good choice. Those packs were out for blood, though I didn’t know why.
I noticed, then, that one of the alphas being encircled had his hand around another—a slender, dark-haired man who wastense. The others were focused on protecting him, even more than their packmate with the gruesomely broken arm.
Goosebumps lit on my skin, as if my instincts worked it out first.
One of the attackers pounced, trying to break the wall of guys boxing them in. His aura flared, and I could see the glint of a knife before he fell limp.
“Fuck,” Sin muttered at my side.
“What?” I spared him a glance.
“That’s the Leo pack.”
Ah.
Shit.
I might not be great with politics, but Ididknow the Leo pack.
Their appeal call was today—so close to ours. Phantom, Karma, and Sin were honed in on their fate, because they would be the only pack trying to get out of here with an omega in tow before us.
It was putting them all on edge, and me by proxy. It was the first thing they’d been listening for when the doors unlocked this morning, but the call for appeal over comms didn’t come.
It often happened first thing, but there wasn’t a true routine to it. The only thing you could rely on was that it would happen during daytime hours when the cells weren’t locked.
It seems they’d come to the gym to pass the time, and it had given us all front seats to their massacre.
The smaller one in the middle, I now knew that was their omega.
