“Well, I told you it wouldn’t work.”
Alpha Grayson’s voice was loud in the otherwise silent clearing, his heavily muscled arms crossed over his chest as he scowled at the SUV carrying the wounded Texas pack alpha away. He turned to Carter and curled his lip in a sneer. “They were never going to make peace with us. It was fucking naïve to think that they would. I told you this was a mistake—right from the fucking start I told you they’d fuck us over.” He gathered a wad of spit and aimed it at Carter’s feet. “This never should have happened.”
Carter didn’t bother with a reply. He kept his gaze fixed on the retreating vehicle and wondered if the Texas alpha would survive the wounds he’d suffered in the fight. If he didn’t, things might get ugly.
It didn’t bear thinking about what the werewolf council would do if the Texas pack forced them into open warfare. Neither pack would survive the absolute hell that would rain down on them if any humans got whiff of a conflict. Werewolves were supposed to be peaceful. Protectors—not loose cannons who fought each other like wild beasts.
The Texas alpha had to survive.
“Anyone hurt?” Carter asked, turning his focus away from Alpha Grayson and toward the five wolves standing to his other side. Though the meeting with the Texas pack was supposed to have been a peaceful one, he’d made sure that Grayson had brought his best fighters. They weren’t necessarily the biggest guys in the pack—after all, muscle didn’t always translate to skill—but they were the most ferocious. There was no one else Carter would rather have at his back in a fight.
All five of them studiously avoided his gaze as they answered.
“No, Carter,” they chorused, voices gruff and exhausted. They looked beat up and bloody, but none of them looked like they were seriously injured. They should all be completely healed up by the morning.
“Good. You all did well,” Grayson said, putting himself between Carter and the guys. He came just shy of shoving Carter out of the way, and Carter suppressed a growl. “You can all head home and report back at the house in the morning.”
Grayson sounded proud, and he had every right to be. The seven of them had sent the Texas pack running with their tails between their legs. After nearly a decade of peace they had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they weren’t an easy target.
The silver lining was a faint one.
Carter watched as the weary group made their way into their cars and trucks, eager to get back home to their mates now that the fight was over, crossing his arms to ward off the chill that was setting into his body. His sturdy leather jacket had been torn to shreds in the fight—saving his skin and taking the brunt of the Texas pack’s enforcer’s claws in the process—and his jeans were wet and cold with drying blood.
He was fucking freezing.
“Heading home?” Alpha Grayson asked, walking toward his SUV. He was parked next to Carter’s truck, the only two vehicles left in the clearing. Carter fell into step next to him and nodded, the gesture short and curt.
“Yeah. You?”
Alpha Grayson’s nostrils flared at the lack of an honorific, but he looked away without saying anything.
“Yes.” He gave Carter a nasty look. “Mymateis waiting for me.”
Carter just rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like he needed to be reminded of the hold Alpha Grayson had on him. Even if Grayson never told the rest of the pack about Carter’s unnatural tastes, it would get out eventually if Carter tried to become alpha. As an enforcer no one cared if he had a mate or not, but an alpha was expected to settle down and form a family. Breaking that tradition would invite scrutiny that Carter couldn’t afford.
“Well… have fun with that,” Carter said. He wasn’t going to let Grayson get to him.
Grayson didn’t respond, his hackles raised and his shoulders stiff as he climbed into his SUV, and Carter grinned. He was never going to challenge Grayson for leadership, no matter how much his wolf felt it was his due, but they both knew how a fight between them would turn out.
Carter would rip the older man to shreds.
Grayson slammed the door of his SUV shut and pulled out of the clearing. Carter watched him drive away, waiting until he was out of sight before letting out a long breath. He climbed behind the wheel of his truck and winced.
His whole body hurt.
Ignoring the pain, knowing that it would be gone by morning, he wondered how things had gone from peaceful to absolutelyfuckedso quickly. It didn’t make any sense. Eighteen months he’d spent negotiating a peace treaty with the Texas pack. Eighteen months down the drain with nothing to show for it but an “I told you so” from Grayson. Tonight was supposed to be the culmination of Carter’s enormous efforts, but instead he was sitting alone in his truck, bleeding, humiliated that the peace he had promised was now further away than ever.
How the hell had this happened?Carter slammed his fist down on the steering wheel with a growl of rage, the blare of his horn startling him and making him slam his fist down again.
“Fuck!”Carter spit the word out with a snarl, fury coursing through him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, breathing in through his nose, and forced his clenched fists to relax. It didn’t matter that no one was watching him, he couldn’t afford to let his emotions show like this.
He turned his mind back to the events at hand.
One minute Carter had been talking to his counterpoint from the Texas pack—a stubborn old alpha with a chip on his shoulder the size of his home state—and the next thing he knew Alpha Grayson and Alpha Tiller were at each other’s throats like a pair of rabid dogs. Within seconds every wolf present had joined the fight, instinct making them follow their alphas’ leads, Carter going head to head with the Texas enforcer in a confrontation so brutal that at one point he’d wondered if he was in over his head.
He wasn’t.
Turning the keys in the ignition, Carter pulled out of the clearing and set off for home. As the interior of the truck heated up, hot air blowing against his bloody shirt and jeans and making him feel sticky, he shrugged off the remains of his jacket and threw it on the seat next to him. Looking over at the bunched leather he had to concede to himself that it was completely beyond repair.
