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His muscles relaxed, but not fully.
“Put Tor in his fucking place, then,” he hissed.
He pushed me away, and I let him, but I moved under my own power, so he understood who had the upper hand here.
Black was a delicate situation now. As was Tor. As was everyone.
“Get out of my sight,” I growled. “And get your temper under control.”
I have never, ever, needed to keep an eye on Black after a confrontation – which we almost never have. I always turn my back on him, and let him walk away. It’s a sign of respect between us, that we can disagree and still trust each other.
But this time, I watched him, and he glared back at me angrily.
But for now, he was going to do what I said.
I thought.
He left.
*
Tor.
Of all the men on the ship, Tor was the last one I would have suspected to make a power play like this. Tor was a delta male, through and through. The type to keep his head down, to do his job, to not complain. He had never made a move to change his status, never thought further ahead than what he was told.
But this was open rebellion. The move of a gamma male or an omega, and we had none of those on our ship.
It required careful thought, a better understanding.
Problematically, Alena was in the crossfire. This wasn’t the kind of thing I would have cared about under any other circumstances. Any other female, any other situation, I’d just walk down the corridor and put Tor in his place. Or ask him what the hell he was thinking.
Or just give him the female in question: it wasn’t as if I had a problem finding more.
But all my men behaved strangely with her.
Even Black.
Even me.
I was beginning to regret my decision to allow Alena to stay awake for this journey.
This was something I liked even less. I don’t look back, even if I made a wrong turn. The past is in the past and there is no way to un-do it, so you had better learn to adapt.
That was sound advice for life. Especially for an alpha male.
The only problem was this: I didn’t know what I was adaptingto.I didn’t know in whom I could confide. Not even Black, whose hunger for Alena burned in his eyes so obviously I sometimes felt like hitting him.
Just thinking of it set my blood boiling. It was a different kind of boil than any other I had ever felt: not the boil of blood lust, the urge to protect, the need to control, the aggression of war. It was as intense, as undiluted as all of those things, but it was something else.
The rumor that ran through all our society was that, when you felt the instinct to mate, you would know it. But there was no guidance when that instinct might conflict with your duty as a leader, when the mate in question was a bad political choice, a disaster for your clan, a woman who more than one man seemed to want to claim.
If I wanted Alena, I only had to say so, and she would belong to me and me alone. No one could challenge that.
No one would dare.
And in the past, no one would dare think ahead to the possibility of claiming her for themselves. No one would plan for what they would do if Ididdiscard a shared female like Alena.
Tor’s boldness, his manipulation of her, spoke of a deep bond – at least for his part – with Alena. I couldn’t let that stand even if I didn’t want her.
