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This bar, shitty as it was, was my sanctuary. Which I had to remind myself over and over as I pushed water toward the drain with a squeegee. I couldn’t afford to hire anyone, but this was far better than the alternative.
ChapterTwo
Luke
“Should we cut off their hands?”Blake asked.
I lifted a brow, a silent reminder to my beta that we weren’t doing things the way my father did them.
Blake huffed and shook his head, his gray hair falling into his eyes. He pushed it away with his thick fingers. “You won’t keep this pack hidden for long if you go easy on trespassers.”
“They’re humans who were hiking,” I said, a note of warning in my tone. Nobody would accuse me of being kind. Or even being level-headed. But I was trying. If the hikers had been shifters, they’d have been ripped to shreds the second they were brought to me.
“They know we’re here. They might bring more,” Blake said.
“They don’t have enough supplies to be a threat,” I said. Add in the fact that they’d been terrified and practically starving when we found them. They’d clearly been in the woods too long and weren’t prepared.
“Have Zoe see to them,” I said.
Blake bared his teeth. “You put too much trust in that witch.”
I charged forward and shoved Blake against the wall. Pinning him with a hand around his throat, I held a knife to his groin. “Challenge me again, Blake. You know the only way I can get one of my men into your post is if you die. Go ahead, give me another reason.”
He sucked in a breath and swallowed hard. I tightened my fingers around his neck. “You have anything else to say?”
Blake shook his head.
I lowered the knife and released my grip. “This is my pack. I don’t give a fuck what my father did or what he promised you. I’m in charge. If you have a problem with it, you can challenge me outright, or you can leave.”
“Sorry, boss,” he said, dipping his head in submission.
Jaw clenched, I stared at the pathetic excuse for a beta for several long seconds before turning away. Our laws were clear. Alpha transferred through bloodlines. Betas were chosen by the alphas, but an appointed beta kept the job for life. Until Blake stepped down or I killed him, I was stuck with him.
Every day I was getting closer to wiping him out, so I didn’t have to deal with him. But he was old guard, a reminder to those who questioned my authority, that I was alpha.
I was confident I could take anyone who challenged me, but the transition from my father to me had been rough. Nobody expected it. I didn’t expect it and I sure as hell couldn’t admit I wasn’t ready for it.
I’d trained to be alpha my whole life, I just thought it would come later. My father hadn’t ascended to the title until he was fifty. I was the youngest alpha in a century at twenty-six.
In theory, I knew the job. But things had changed rapidly since I was born. The world wasn’t the same place it had been two decades ago. We had satellites mapping our lands, GPS, and better maps. It was getting more difficult to keep our pack and the riches our land held hidden from greedy humans and shifters alike.
To most of the supernatural community, we were a myth. The Lost Pack was a legend, a pack that might have once existed. To the humans, we were even more elusive. They didn’t know shifters existed in the first place, so when a rare human stumbled across us, they figured we were some backwater hick town. Or a cult.
My father’s policy had been death on site. I wasn’t my father. Blake’s idea of compassion was leaving permanent disabilities. It was probably one of the reasons my father chose him. He’d go along with any of my dad’s schemes, no questions asked.
“I’ll get Zoe,” Blake said.
“Right choice,” I said.
He left my office and as soon as the door was closed I sagged against the wall, taking a few deep breaths. I’d only been at this alpha thing for three weeks and my dad had left a lot of unfinished business. Including the cause of his death.
I wandered to my dad’s old desk. It was mine now, but it still felt wrong to sit in his chair so I usually sat in one of the chairs he reserved for visitors. Plopping down, I began to sort to through the photos and notes and information we’d collected so far.
They’d found his body mangled nearly beyond recognition washed up on the riverbank. The Copper River was the northernmost border of our expansive territory. Anything on the other side of the river wasn’t our land. Whoever had disposed of his body either attempted to hide it from us, or send it back to us. I still wasn’t sure which.
The worst part was that nobody knew why he’d left town. He was gone for three days without saying where he went or why he’d gone. Blake didn’t know. I didn’t know. He’d never done anything like that and then he’d ended up dead.
I set down the coroner’s report and raked a hand through my dark hair. It was longer than I usually kept it, but there hadn’t been time to visit a barber. A sudden pang of sorrow tightened across my chest. With my rapid transition to alpha, there hadn’t been time to process my dad’s loss and every so often, the emotions bubbled to the surface. I shoved them down and rose from the chair.
