One day, you’ll be like me.
The wood stretched out between my hands, and it took shape. There was a nose and lips, and wooden eyes, and it blinked again, and again, and then the mouth moved. The face of my father said, “I see you. I see you, Gordo. I knew you would be something special.”
I cried out as the pain in my head grew worse, as my father’s hands appeared in the wood, reaching up and covering the backs of mine, squeezing until I thought my bones would turn to dust.
But my father had always underestimated a wolf pack. And I had mine behind me.
They howled. All of them. Even the humans.
My father’s wooden eyes widened as his face split with a sharp crack, the door splintering.
He opened his mouth to speak, and I said, “No.”
The door shattered underneath my hands.
I was bowled over by a wave of violet rage, of rapacious violence.
And there, on the other side, stood—
I OPENED my eyes.
The others did the same, blinking slowly.
All except for Ox.
He breathed in and out. In and out.
I could feel them. All of them. My pack.
And more. So many more.
It was tornadic in nature, a self-contained storm that swirled in our heads and chests. I tried to find the edges, tried to find a way to contain it, but it was big, bigger than I thought it would be.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
Because he was here.
A boy who had become a man.
He who had become an Alpha even before he felt the pull of the wolf underneath his skin.
Oxnard Matheson.
The Alpha of the Omegas.
Behind him, a choking sound.
I looked over his shoulder.
Kelly had crawled on his knees toward his brother.
Carter was on all fours, his palms flat against the stone floor. His head jerked side to side as his chest heaved.
“Carter?” Kelly asked, voice trembling.
Carter looked up, face elongating, eyes violet.
“Kelly,” he growled. But it was the only thing he said before he shifted into a wolf.