But there was one, one that was brighter than all the others. Closer. Angrier.
I felt his fury. I felt his magic.
Gordo.
Gordo was here.
Gordo was here.
I rolled over onto my back. The crowbar was off to my left, within reach.
Richard towered above me, a look of disgust on his face.
I said, “If I give you this. If you take this from me, you give me your word that you’ll leave them alone. All of them. The pack. The people. Green Creek.”
“I don’t know that you’re in a position to ask me for anything, boy,” Richard growled. “You are human. You may be an Alpha, but it was never yours to have. I will take it from you and you will—”
“Don’t you want to know how I did it?” I asked, clutching my wrist to my chest. “How a human became an Alpha?”
He paused. Then, “I’m listening.”
“They’ll hear,” I said. “The Omegas. They’ll hear and they’ll try to do the same. They’ll take it from you. They’ll try to become an Alpha themselves. You don’t want that.”
He crouched down next to me. Stupid man. I hated him more than anything in the world.
“You should speak now,” he said in a low voice. “Before I run out of patience.”
And I said, “Fuck you.”
I moved quicker than I ever had before. I was fueled by sorrow and despair, by ire and that feeling, that goddamned feeling of my father, my daddy saying you’re gonna get shit, Ox, because here he was, here was Richard fucking Collins proving my dad right. He was giving me shit, and I wasn’t going to take it now. I shouldn’t have to begin with.
But most of all, it was pack that pushed me, pack that allowed me to move as I did, it was pack and pack and pack, these people, these wolves that were my family. And Joe, who I could feel rising within me, Joe who was scared and furious and coming, oh god he was coming for me.
I pushed along the thread toward Gordo, stronger than it had been since he’d come back, saying the humans the humans the humans you can’t let them hurt you have to help them save them help them, even as my fingers curled around the crowbar in the dirt.
Richard’s eyes flickered to my hand.
I swung the crowbar in a rising arc. It smashed into the side of his head with an audible crunch, the breaking of bone jolting down the bar into my arm. He grunted and started to drop to the side.
Gordo came then.
He stepped out from behind the truck, tattoos blazing brighter than I’d ever seen them before. The raven flapped furiously, and I swore I could actually hear its cry when it opened its beak, a loud, shrill call that vibrated deep into my bones. I felt the thrum of his magic on the ground as it pulsed deep within the earth. It called to me, saying AlphaAlphaAlpha and I pushed into it, grabbing the thread between Gordo and me as tightly as possible.
Even before Richard hit the ground, a snarl already forming on his broken face, the ground around the humans and the Omegas shifted and broke apart. Great columns of earth rose up with a loud roar, knocking the humans forward and the Omegas back.
Osmond was moving forward as I pushed myself to my feet. His focus was on Gordo, claws outstretched, snout elongating as he ran toward him. I flipped the crowbar until the curved end faced away from me and swung it down at Osmond’s legs as he tried to run by. The crowbar smashed into his shins as I put my all into that hit. He cried out at the crack of bone, the sizzle of skin, but I pushed through the swing as hard as I could, sweeping his feet out from under him. He fell forward into the dirt, the momentum causing him to skid along the road facedown, coming to a halt near Gordo’s feet.
I didn’t stop, turning away from them, trusting Gordo to have my back. I ran toward the broken earth, sliding in the dirt as I fell to my knees in front of the humans. They were dazed and unsure. I started with Judith, ripping the gag from her mouth.
“You have to help me,” I said, cupping her face as the earth continued to crack behind her. “You have to get them out of here. Untie them and take the truck. Go to Green Creek. Don’t stop until you’re at the garage. You stay there.” I let go of her a moment and dug the keys out from my pocket. She started to lose focus, whimpering and looking around with a dazed expression. The others were moving slowly.
“Hey!” I snapped at her. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”
She whispered, “Ox?”
I held up two keys in front of her, inches from her face. “This is the key to the truck. This is the key to the garage. Do you understand?”
“I…. Ox, their eyes, it’s—”