For a scary moment, my mate appeared to fight the urge to kill anyway, or at least to beat him to a pulp. The whirlwind of emotion that flashed over his features told a story of grief, rage, loss, and hatred. Moriak destroyed so many lives, stole his youth, and enabled the downfall of one of Melelyn’s long-standing Prides. I couldn’t fault my mate for wanting to exact revenge.
But he couldn’t go down that path.
A muscle ticked on his temple, and he pulled his upper lip into a snarl. A part of me felt this was a battle he needed to win on his own. Yet another screamed that, as his partner, it was my duty to draw him back into the light when he began to stray.
The latter won.
“Gaelec, my love, he’s not worth it,” I said in a soft voice.
A violent shudder coursed through him. His steady growling stopped abruptly, and he blinked as if emerging from a trance. Despite that, he didn’t release him right away, but he loweredthe hand that had been hovering in front of Moriak’s throat, ready to shred it to pieces. His claws retracted, and he stared at the back of the older male’s head with a mix of hatred and contempt. The whole time, the pathetic Alpha kept pleading to be released while apparently struggling to breathe.
Suddenly, Gaelec smashed his face into the dirt, although nowhere near hard enough to cause any real harm. Maintaining his face pressed to the ground, my mate leaned forward to speak into his opponent’s ear.
“It took me mere seconds to knock you down and make you snivel and whimper like a wounded cub. Don’t ever come back to my lands again. Don’t ever show your face to me, to my mate, or to anyone that I value. Should we cross paths, no amount of pleading and begging will spare you. Next time, I will break every single bone in your body before I gut you like the animal you are.”
He released him just as brutally and got off him with an air of pure disgust on his face. His almost feral look, with his fangs bared, was both terrifying as hell and sexy as fuck. He took a couple of steps back while watching his defeated foe spit out the dirt and rocks that had gotten into his mouth when my mate shoved his face into the ground. Head bowed, Moriak clumsily got back up before limping towards the exit.
Oluina—who had been painfully recovering—stared at her defeated Alpha with burning resentment. She turned to us and started yelling a bunch of foul words.
I had zero time for that shit.
“Oh, shut the fuck up,pétasse!” I snapped before zapping her again with a second electric jolt.
She fell back down from her sitting position, her body shaken by spams again.
I turned to her companions, the anger I felt visible on my face. “You pick up that trash and take her back to your village.And make sure to warn her that the next time she comes here or tries to mess with me, I won’t be zapping her ass, I’ll put a fucking hole through her. I can’t fight like you Nazhral can, but when I shoot, I don’t miss. She picked the wrong woman to mess with. Get her the fuck out of here.”
They didn’t say a word or even appear to want to argue. Hooking a hand under each of her armpits, her two companions started dragging her towards their speeders.
“Remember well, Moriak, not to ever show your face here again,” Gaelec warned in a tone that brooked no argument, before glaring at Latsa and Olmar who were staring at the whole scene in shock. “And that applies for you both as well. For the record, know that even had you succeeded—which obviously wouldn’t happen—you could never get your greedy hands on any of this advanced technology. The day I leave Gyota, all this leaves with me, as per my agreement with the UPO.”
He waved at the beautiful village we had steadily been erecting.
“You want something like this? Earn it instead of trying to leech off the work of others. Now get out of my village,” Gaelec spat.
“Enculé!” I muttered at the idiot as he clumsily got back onto his speeder.
One of the females shared a speeder with Oluina, who seemed too out of it to ride on her own. They set her own speeder to follow and left under the jeers and mockery of the rest of our Pride.
Although they all stated that they would not follow another Alpha should Gaelec ever be defeated, I still hated that this possibility existed. Clearly, my man was badass. But where will things stand twenty years from now? Granted, an Alpha wasn’t technically obligated to accept a challenge. A would-be usurpercould simply be driven out of the village by everyone. I wanted to believe that this would be the stance he adopted going forward.
Gaelec turned to look at me with an amused expression. “What did you just call him? Is that the word for male prostitute?”
I snorted and shook my head. “No. Generally, it would be like calling someone an asshole or motherfucker. But the literal translation for this one means a person who got fucked in the ass,” I admitted sheepishly.
He burst out laughing and shook his head as if I was a hopeless case. But considering what just went down, I believed the epithet was more than appropriate.
“You’re wounded,” I said, grabbing his wrist to look at the cut on his forearm.
“It’s nothing, my mate. Those fancy medical pods Kayog sent us will have me as good as new in minutes,” Gaelec said reassuringly.
I still took a moment to have a closer look to make sure it didn’t require an urgent intervention. Only then did I look at him with the depth of emotions he awakened in me.
“You saved my life, just now,” I said, my throat constricting with emotion.
“I did half the job, you did the other,” he said. “Although you let her off easy.”
“Not really…”