He said, “Oh, Ox. I only showed you what you already had inside.”
I pushed on the pack bonds, but they were lost in a haze of pain and Gordo’s magic.
He said, “You must listen to me.”
I grunted as he stumbled again. Somehow I was able to hold him upright.
“You will—” He coughed, body shaking. Then, “The tether will be the most important thing. Those ties that bind you to each other. It’ll have to be you. For all of them. It’s a terrible thing I must ask of you, especially in light of all you’ve lost. But it can only be you.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he said fiercely. “You are more than you think. Ox. The power of the Alpha passes to the one who takes it. If it can’t be me and it can’t be Joe, then it needs to be you. He’s not here and I am asking this of you.”
“What?”
“Richard can’t have this,” Thomas said, lips shiny with blood. “He can’t. The things he would do with it… no. And I can’t hold on. Not like this. Not for very much longer. I can’t heal, not from this. I’m slipping.”
“No,” I said. “No. You can’t—”
“I need you to become a wolf,” Thomas said. “I need you to do this for me.”
It was too much. This… everything he was asking of me. I still hadn’t yet made a decision if I was going to take the bite before all this happened. And now? Now he was saying—
“You want me to be the Alpha.” My voice sounded small.
“Yes.”
I couldn’t find the words.
Thomas said, “I believe in you, Ox. I always have. You are my son just as much as the others are. I will always be—”
“There you are,” Richard Collins said from behind us.
Thomas snarled, forcing me behind him with strength I didn’t think he’d be capable of. I tripped over my own feet, falling to my knees. Thomas towered over me, but he only had eyes for the other wolf.
Richard didn’t look much
better. Someone had removed my crowbar from his back. His skin was soaked with blood. His rotting eyes shone darkly, claws extended, teeth sharp and flashing in the starlight.
He said, “You had to know it would always come to this, Thomas. There was no other way that this could end.”
“Only because this is what you chose,” Thomas said quietly. “We were friends once. Brothers.”
“If you were my brother,” Richard snapped, “you wouldn’t have let them die. And even if they still had, you would have done everything you could have to make sure the ones responsible suffered. The humans should have suffered for what they brought upon our pack. And instead, you embraced them.”
“They were a few,” Thomas said. “A select few. What possible outcome do you think this will have?”
Richard’s claws extended farther. “I will become the Alpha,” he said. “And then I will make them pay. For everything. The humans will bow to me and I will end them.”
He launched himself at Thomas, shifting in midair, clothes shredding into tatters, hair sprouting. Before I could even shout a warning, there was a snap of bone and muscle and wolf met wolf amongst the trees, fangs snapping, paws scrabbling for purchase.
Thomas was the bigger of the two, but even shifted, the blood still flowed, matting his fur. Richard was vicious in his assault, and I was knocked back as they rolled toward me, teeth buried in each other, broken growls falling from their mouths.
I looked around for something, anything, any kind of weapon I could use to stop this. To stop Richard before he could make things worse. I came upon a rock just smaller than my hand. I grabbed it without a second thought because this was my Alpha. This was Thomas and I couldn’t let him go.
He’d taught me about myself. Who I could be.
Alpha meant father.