“Get the other alphas together,” I said, shoving the paper back in my pocket. “Hurry. Get them to my house, and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
He shifted and sprinted off to find the others. With bitter resignation, I shot a text to June, telling her to come to my house for an emergency meeting. Not waiting for her response, I shifted and ran back to my house.
Ten minutes later, June came rushing through my door, looking harried.
“What happened?” she said as the door swung shut behind her.
I’d been pacing the floor waiting for everyone to arrive, trying to think of how to proceed. Things had gone to shit and fast.I had to have a plan in place before things grew too chaotic.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable. We hadn’t seen each other since the banishment, and now I’d called her here. In a few seconds, she’d realize she’d been right all along. “Listen. We need to talk about?—”
The front door opened again, and Rainier walked in with the four alphas.
“Damn,” I muttered, and touched June on the arm. “You’ll hear it all in a second, just hang on.”
“Hear what?” she hissed, but before I could say anything, Hakeem stepped forward, looking worried and confused.
“Levi, man, what’s up? Rainier said something bad happened. Told us we had to hear it from you. What the hell is going on?”
The others echoed his concern, and I had to raise my hands for quiet. Once they calmed down, I began.
“The men who took Anders and Eugenia away came back and gave us bad news.” I shot a guilty glance at June. “A group of RedMaw men cornered them and attacked my people. Anders and Eugenia escaped and joined up with the Red Maw.”
June sighed heavily. “This is exactly what I was worried about.”
I winced inwardly at the statement, mostly because it was true and I knew it. I held my composure while the news settled in. Devon and Blaise looked shocked. Like me, they had probably assumed the Red Maw wouldn’t be the place a power-hungry asshole like Anders would want to go. All he wanted was control and power. Desdemona ran the Red Maw with an iron fist. She’d never give him anything he wanted. Though, I hadn’t taken Anders’s desperation into account. Desperate people did desperate things.
Hakeem and Patrick looked more pissed than shocked.
Patrick ran a hand through his beard. “That little fucker is gonna give them every bit of intel they need. Christ, as far as we know, the Red Maw didn’t know about our alliance. You can bet your ass they do now.”
“Right,” Hakeem agreed. “Once they have all the information Anders has, what’s to stop them from attacking immediately?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “I know we said we’d plan for a few days before doing anything, but at this point, I think we have to go on the offensive as soon as possible.”
“I agree,” Rainier said.
“Jesus, this is fucked up,” Blaise said. “If this is the plan, I need to go get with my people. We’ve got to hurry.”
“If we’d kept Anders under our thumb here, he wouldn’t be with the Red Maw,” June said, her tone dejected rather than accusatory.
“I’ll admit, you were probably right,” I said, and then shook my head wearily. “We can’t go back in time, though. It is what it is, and we have to move on.”
“Right.”
I sighed with relief that she wasn’t pushing me on this even when she had every right to.
Turning back to the alphas, I said, “Are we in agreement? It’s time to go after them rather than sitting back and waiting?”
The others nodded. They all looked tense and worried, but they were willing to do what needed to be done.
“I can have my folks ready by tomorrow morning,” Devon said.
Each man agreed, promising to speak with their people and have as many fighting bodies as they could by dawn. My stomach twisted with the fear of the unknown. I’d never gone into battle like this. Never in all my years had I led my pack against another. Even when I’d butted heads with Blaise’s great-grandfather, it hadn’t been this bad. There was the chance a lot of people could die—people under my care. If a leader didn’t feel the weight of that, they had no business leading anyone.
“Okay, then,” I said, coming to terms with what was coming. It was all happening so fast. “Rainier?”
“Yeah, boss?” He lifted his eyebrows expectantly.
