“All the more reason for them to come out and meet their favorite uncle,” I grinned, ignoring Eric’s pointed throat clearing.
“Uncle Beck will be their favorite,” Beck argued from his place at the head of the table. While our Pack Alpha was a wolf shifter and wasn't related to any of us by blood, he was one of Micah's best friends and the closest thing Brandt's alpha had to a brother.
“Aren’t you afraid of infants, Alpha?” Dex taunted him before I could come up with my own rebuke.
The handsome man in charge of leading our pack huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, dipping his stubbled chin in near petulance. “I’m notafraidof babies,” he took the bait, even as Eric, Brandt, and I all shook our heads. “Just because Ollie and I are waiting for Rory and Duke to be…”
“Less evil?” Dex offered, as Beck seemed to struggle for the right words to describe his rambunctious children.
Beck narrowed his eyes. “More independent.”
“Good luck with that,” Dex stretched his hand out in front of him, idly inspecting his perfectly manicured nails. He was such a brat, but I couldn't help how funny I found him sometimes.
“Anyway,” Brandt interrupted, wincing again, “I hate to admit it, but I do think Dexter may be onto something.”
In his seat across from me, Dex visibly brightened. “You do?”
“I do. We need to study the effects of the forced ruts more than we have, and we really should be taking more samples for our research to compare genetic makeup now that we have a much larger data poolto work with.”
Dexter slumped in his seat and pouted, a lock of his blond hair falling into his eyes. He made no move to brush it away. My fingers itched. “I wanted to go for the orgies.”
“That’s not a surprise,” Eric rolled his eyes. “But Brandt’s probably right, now that I think about it. We really should be trying to understandwhythese people have hidden alpha sides, and whether there is a test we can run to determine who does and doesn’t, rather than playing the hit-and-miss game of seeing who is affected by the pheromones and spells during the parties.”
“Plus,” Beck added, leaning forward over the glossy timber surface of the boardroom table, “with our pack producing so many alphas all of a sudden, we’re definitely in the Moonmusic peoples’ crosshairs more than ever. It would be nice to have more of a game plan than just unleashing a bunch of alphas for the hell of it.”
“It’s not really for the hell of it,” Eric argued. “We’re restoring magical balance and trying to save a few subspecies on the verge of extinction.”
“Yeah, well, Morstein isn’t going to see it that way,” Beck told him. “The existence of one alpha was a threat to his whole cult-y system. Suddenly, there are at least…what? Twelve out there now?”
“Morstein?” Dex butted in before Eric could reply to Beck, sounding uncharacteristically serious all of a sudden. “The weasel who tried to kidnap your children?” There was a growl to his accented voice which was kind of sexy.
No, brain. Stop that.
“The one and the same,” Beck nodded. “He’s been quiet the past couple of years, but I’m sure that with us suddenly having amagical way to unleash more alphas, and word spreading about it, he’s going to feel more threatened than ever by our existence.”
Moonmusic was the organization masquerading as a shifter religion, and they were the reason many packs were still treating omegas as little more than property. They had set themselves up with betas in power, seeing as alphas had seemingly gone extinct before Beckett had accidentally unlocked his own alpha side.
The Moonmusic organization’s leader, Joe Morstein, had made his stance on Shifters Sanctuary very clear. We were an aberration: a threat to what he called the ‘real’ way of shifter life. The fact that he was losing control of the people he had convinced to send him tithes and fund his cushy lifestyle was the actual threat.
Even though I’d never met him, I hated him on principle. People like him had destroyed things for shifters far more than the humans who'd run us all into hiding a couple of hundred years ago had. Not that shifters were in hiding anymore. But that was beside the point. The point was, Morstein was a manipulative, controlling sleazeball on a power trip.
“Are you sure we can’t just shift and eat him?” I asked. “It seems like the easiest way to deal with him, really.”
“We’re not stooping to his level,” Beck chided, but he sounded amused. “And I doubt he’d taste nice, anyway.”
“I hate having morals,” I complained. “Does he honestly think he’s got a chance against us now that we have so many alphas on our side? Even those that are leaving to return to their own packs would be our allies in a fight against Moonmusic and all of the packs they’ve got under their not-all-opposable thumbs.”
“I mean, he hasn’t issued any outright threats since we stopped that kidnapping attempt a few years back, but the ongoing silence is concerning, especially now that we’ve cracked the code on unlocking alphas.” He nodded towards Brandt. “Which takes us back to why learning as much as we can is a good idea. Knowledge is power and all that jazz.”
“So…does this mean we get to go to an Unlocking party?” Dex asked.
Eric sighed. “Make sure your Pill is up to date. Or don’t,” he shot my best friend a wry grin. “We could use more little dragons, after all.”
The look on my best friend’s face was priceless, even if I did have to smother a stab of jealousy at the idea of him hooking up with an alpha.
The fact that I also had to convince myself I was jealous of him and not of the fictional alpha in that scenario also made me squirm.
Bad thoughts, Sage,I told myself.Don’t go there.
