I drop into the seat beside her bed and take her pale hand in my tanned one, letting myself remember all the things Emily and I have shared over the past few weeks.
She has to be okay.
Chapter Two
Luca
“This is a fucking mess,” Ryan mutters. His brown eyes go glassy as he sends a mindlink before giving me his hand and hauling me to my feet. The world tilts for a moment before I steady myself. The blood flow from my gashes has already slowed down, but shit, do they sting as I assess the scene in front of me. A dead alpha and six dead warriors. Mess is one word for it.
A fucking disaster works too.
“Maybe we should have told Sofia what Caleb told us yesterday.”
“Nah, man,” I reply. “She never would have let Emily go, even if she knew it was to save others. It’s not as if Jackson was going to stand back either. It was a decent plan to follow the Blood Moon group and gather intel, but in hindsight, it was never going to work if there was a risk to Emily. You wouldn’t have stood by if he had started hurting and it seemed he had no plans to wait till they got home.”
Because, unlike me, who only cared about Sofia’s safety, Ryan is a good person and a great alpha.
“That’s true. Fuck, Aidan Blackwood deserved to die, but I just wish we could have gotten some answers first,” Ryan replies, referencing the dead alpha.
Five warriors emerge from the tree line moments later. Their jaws hang open, and their eyes are wide, taking in the chaos in front of them. I can’t blame them. It’s chaotic as fuck. Six warriors in wolf form lay dead, as well as their alpha in human form, with his throat slashed. The choking coppery stench of so much bloodshed and the beginning of decay is already rising, assaulting our sensitive shifter noses.
Sasha, one of the warriors, tosses Ryan some shorts as his clothing was shredded when he shifted and jumped into the fight. “What happened, Alpha?” she asks.
Ryan lets out a loud sigh and pushes his hands through his hair. “I don’t have time to explain right now. We have an alpha challenge starting soon. Burn the bodies, and we will debrief later today. Keep it quiet for now.”
Fuck, it’s been an intense twenty-four hours. First, John Anderson, the alpha of the Iron Fang pack, assaulted Emily. Then his beta, Caleb Cooper, intervened, not only to stop him but to challenge him for his position. And if that wasn’t enough, then Caleb told us an insane story about missing omegas, faked deaths, and potential trafficking. All before Emily’s ex turned up and tried to grab her. And he just so happens to be the fucking alpha of an equally shady pack to Iron Fang, and Caleb thinks they were working together. Or he was before Emily rejected their mate bond and ripped his throat out.
My head is spinning trying to make sense of it all.
“Yes, Alpha,” the warriors chorus. They won’t question him, no matter how confused they are. Hierarchy is clear for shifters, leaving no room for questioning their alpha’s authority. Part of me wonders if that’s how these wolves ended up dead. If they had been born into a different pack, is it possible that they could have been decent or even good?
But it doesn’t matter. Not really. The excuse of following orders isn’t good enough. Not when it comes to torturing those weaker than you. They’re still culpable.
Ryan and I walk away from the chaos.
“Do you need to go see Doc?” he asks.
“No, I’m fine,” I reply. My voice is rough and pained. Each step pulls at my wounds as my wolf works to heal me. I probably need stitches, but it can wait until after the challenge.
Ryan raises an eyebrow and stares at me.
“I’ll go afterwards,” I relent with a sigh.
“Yeah, okay. Thank you for keeping Sofia out of it. I know she can handle herself, but I wouldn’t have been able to keep a clear head unless I knew she was safe.”
“She was emotional. No one thinks straight when emotions are that dominant,” I respond with a shrug that has me wincing in pain. Not that it matters. Sofia is an alpha wolf; she’s more than capable, but I couldn’t bear to see her in danger all the same.
“I get it, man,” Ryan says. “She’s as much your sister as mine.”
I swallow down the bile that threatens to come up at those words. Goddess, I wish I could still see Sofia as a little sister. Theway I used to see her when she was a little kid, following her big brother and his friends around. Or how I saw her when she was a young teenager with an obvious crush on me. It was sweet in a never-going-to-happen-because-she-is-a-literal-child kind of way. And she knew it too. She knew she was way too young for me and never made it weird.
So why did I miss it when she stopped looking at me that way? Like I hung the fucking moon. She stopped seeing me that way right around the time I started to notice her. When I came back to the pack after two years away, Sofia was eighteen and had curves for days and a bratty new attitude that had me wanting to dominate her and shut her up by crushing my lips to hers.
Fuck. I’m sick. Twisted. And nowhere near good enough for her.
But that doesn’t stop me—or my wolf—from pining for her.
Ryan pulls me into a one-armed hug and tells me to get changed and meet him at the pack house. We have an alpha challenge to facilitate.
