Page 7 of Ascension of the Pack

He made horrible gurgling noises as he kept trying to breathe through the windpipe I’d ripped out, then he slid to his knees and toppled to the ground. It took a few more moments for his chest to recognise the reality of his situation – and then it stopped rising and falling.

I had never imagined I could take pleasure in death, but there was a certain satisfaction in watching that bastard’s life drain from his eyes.

I didn’t know their names, but I knew that a good number of the lone wolves huddling in Nina had come from Rain’s pack. This was for all of them: let them see me and learn what a good alpha would do todefendtheir wolves, rather than to punish them.

I looked up from my enemy’s cooling corpse and saw the moment one of Rain’s wolves tried to use the spectacle ofdeath to his advantage. Whilst everyone stared at me, he continued trying to set fire to Nina. Rage reignited in my heart in an instant.

This wasn’t an unknown intruder attacking Nina but one of Beckett’s wolves that I’d let walk away. They had walked away after Beckett’s defeat and immediately kneeled to Rain; they’d deliberately found another wolf who they thought could take me down. Well, they’d been mistaken – but I’d been mistaken to let them live.

I had compassion, yes, but some of it was making me stupid and I needed to harden up. These fools solidified the lesson that my ex, James, had started to teach me: don’t leave an enemy alive.

Esme and I shifted and she took front and centre with my blessing. When she howled her challenge to the twat with the lighter, he dropped it and hastily shifted. He’d barely finished his transformation before we were on him. Esme didn’t believe in sportsmanship and she felt no urge to let him find his feet as a four; he was alive one moment and dead the next, his blood dripping from her maw.

She pivoted and found the Devon pack deserter who was holding the battering ram. When our eyes fixed on him, the scent of urine filled the air and he turned and fled.

Prey!Esme crooned with delight as she ran him down. She toyed with him, letting him put a little distance between us so he’d think he could really escape.

A furious Ares put paid to that right away, cutting off the intruder’s escape route. The wolf whirled to face us and, in doing so, left his back exposed to the unicorn. Like Esme, Ares had no problem with attacking a foe from behind; the animal kingdom didn’t believe in fairness but in might and survival. He reared his powerful body and slammed his clawed feet back down, crushing the werewolf and piercing his vital organs with his deadly talons.

Ares was happy to keep repeating the experience, rearing up and down until the werewolf started to resemble hamburger meat. With a whicker, he called Ivy and told her to join in. The young foal started stomping joyfully on the mess – it couldn’t be called a corpse any more – then hunger got the better of her and she started to chow down. Ares looked proud; it was his own version of immersion therapy.

I grimaced. That wolf wasn’t going back to the Great Pack because there was no way I could deliver his smashed remains into Nina’s hall – and anyway, there was little chance she’d want to help the wolf who’d tried to set her on fire. I guessed he was destined to remain unicorn food.

Esme and I settled our gaze on the cowering attackers. Now what would we do with them?

Chapter 5

Terrance helped me retain my clothes as we shifted back to human, then I stalked towards the thirty-odd men who were encroaching on my lands. As I moved closer, they knelt to me as one, sliding onto their knees, heads bowed and braced as if I were about to bring an axe down on their heads.

‘Alpha,’ they murmured in a slightly creepy chorus.

I spoke into the silence that followed. ‘I am. Iamyour alpha and your Queen. What punishment should I dole out, do you think, for you coming here and attacking me and mine?’ I let my words hang heavily in the air.

A soft voice rang out. ‘If it pleases you, Alpha, have mercy. They were just following orders.’ I turned to look at Nova as she came out of Nina, Reid still clinging to her hip. She looked at me entreatingly. Her words were brittle and bitter, as if she had uttered that phrase a hundred times before.

‘“I was only following orders” is the battle cry of cowards everywhere,’ I shot back.

Nova grimaced, but she didn’t disagree. One of the kneeling wolves looked up and his face drained of colour as he locked eyes with her. ‘Nova! Oh my God! Nova!’ He staggered to his feet and ran to her, then skidded to a stop before he reached her. He was staring at her and her son with wonder. ‘It’s a miracle,’ he whispered, eyes wide.

A small, reserved smile touched Nova’s lips. ‘Hello, Dad. This is my son, Reid.’

‘You’re alive! Alpha said you were dead.’

‘Alpha was a lying piece of shit,’ Nova spat. ‘May he rot in hell, for that is where he’s destined to go.’

Her dad looked down and away and his shoulders bowed as shame filled him. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Him, and most of us too.’

‘You were following orders,’ she repeated. ‘Head down, don’t make eye contact, do what he says. It kept us alive.’ It was clear from the way that she said it that it was a common refrain, probably a phrase her father had repeated to her many times.

Her father closed his eyes. ‘There comes a point when that stops being enough.’

‘Yet still you followed him.’ Nova’s voice whipped out, sharp and cold. There was nothing soft about her asshe drew herself up with icy, judgemental eyes. She had left rather than follow orders, she had gone lone. Her father had not.

‘He held you over me. Obey, or else…’

‘And when I left?’ she barked. ‘What then?’

He shook his head. ‘You’re not the only one I love, Nova.’

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