He’s doing it again tonight.
Connor eyes the line of older kings and their many bruised, bitten, and bleeding underlings, then throws back his head to howl. Announcing to anyone who can hear him that he can still fight.
That’s what he does, taking down high-ranking wolves in several opposing packs until Janus surrenders. It’s the first chink in the old kings’ armor.
I think it’s a game changer.
The old white-faced wolf backs away with his nose toward the ground, muttering about fealty. All the males in his pack do the same.
Beside me, Kendra makes a low noise. When I look at her, she looks triumphant. The way I feel myself—but can’t show. Not out in public like this, when too many people can see me.
One by one, the old kings fall.
Until it’s only McCaffrey’s pack that remains standing against Ty.
“This has gone on long enough,” Ty says impatiently. “Do you imagine that you can stand against not just me but all the wolves in North America? Surely even you aren’t that delusional, McCaffrey.”
“I’ve never liked you,” the old man sneers. “It’s time somebody taught you some manners.”
That reverberates through the hills like the slap it is.
Ty laughs. Then he leaps down from the rock above, landing nimbly and easily—and directly in front of McCaffrey. “By all means, motherfucker. Teach me.”
But McCaffrey is not the king Ty is. He has minions to do his dirty work, and he sends in another one of his lieutenants. This means Liam goes back in, and when more of McCaffrey’s men join the fray, more of Ty’s supporters do too.
I can’t take it anymore. I move away from my family, winding through the crowd until I reach what feels like my proper place. I stand behind Ty, studying McCaffrey’s pack on the other side of the makeshift fighting ring.
Maybe it’s unsurprising that it’s Deirdre who catches my attention. She looks pinched up tight with temper—and is aiming it at me, if I’m not mistaken.
Somehow, this tracks. Ty is trying something no other wolf has dared to try. Packs are fighting and drawing blood. Her mate is sending other males to get beat on in his name.
But sure, Deirdre is pissed atme.
As the men shout insults at each other and then lunge in—shifting into blurs of claw and fang—the older woman eases around the outside of the ring to close the distance between us. “Stop this,” she hisses at me. “You have tostopthis.”
I don’t actually laugh, though I come close. “Why in the name of the Wolf Moon herself would I do that?”
She presses her lips together so hard I’m shocked they don’t shatter. “You young people are always so eager to move on from the old ways,” she bites out, a blank sort of fury in her gaze. Or maybe it’s something else. Something like grief. “You have no idea what you’re doing. Or what you’re wrecking with your carelessness.”
“I think that some of the old ways make perfect sense to carry forward.” I lean in, and it’s a measure of how distraught she is that she doesn’t recoil the way she usually does when I get too close. This tells me that tic of hers was always performative, but I knew that. “Particularly the old law that states that should a king leave behind a queen with a dependent son, it is her choice of successor that will oversee the pack.”
Deirdre pales. Her gaze flickers, and I can’t tell where her eyes dart in that moment. To Kendra? To the son in question, a little boy of maybe five who should be back around her pack’s gathering fire?
“If I were you,” I say in a low voice, “I would think about that.”
“What does it matter if there is only one king and he’s out here on the West Coast, a million miles away from me and mine?” She spits that out at me, but she’s also looking across the ring, and this time I can see exactly what has her attention.
McCaffrey, her mate. The king who claimed her long ago and has made a great sport of fuckingbittenwomenather. The man who wanted to marry off her daughter to one of his seconds, who was soundly defeated in the very first fight tonight.
I reach over to grab her wrist. I’m not gentle. “Deirdre,” I say, with great deliberateness, “you have never been kind to me.”
Her eyes widen, but I push on.
“I don’t need to sink to your level, however. So hear me when I tell you this, because it is a kindness whether you want to believe it or not.” I angle myself closer to her to make sure no one around us can hear me. “If I were you, I would pick a replacement. I would make sure that he’s biddable. And I would encourage him,strongly, to make himself indispensable as one of Ty’s resources. He’ll need one in every pack. If you play your cards right, your role won’t change at all.”
For a moment, when she stiffens and looks down her nose at me as if I’ve lost my mind, I think I’ve misjudged her. Or this moment. One fight ends and another begins in the center of the ring, and she clears her throat. Then looks around.
“Point taken,” she says quietly. She glances at me swiftly, then says, even more quietly, “Take care of my girl.”
