Page 5 of Wanted By the Wolves

The new king isn’t any better. Krum came in after the last king was killed. The pack alphas had decimated their own ranks, and all the long-standing powerful families had been wiped out. It wasn’t until they were weak that he challenged for Alpha King. He may have taken the title of Alpha King in a fair challenge, but his victory was uncontested at that point. Some think he was smart, but he waited until it was a sure thing before fighting. The move reeks of cowardice.

I’m sure this celebration is supposed to be a gesture from the new king. With the numbers left, there should be no divisions between us, but the new Alpha King rubs me the wrong way.

I don’t guess it matters who leads. No matter how powerful the king is, he can’t compete with extinction. Dex and I have traveled most of the wolves’ five territories on our mission to rid the forest of the feral packs. Few villages remain, and none are without casualties. Our people are dying without omegas. Wolves are desperate. Unless the King has some magic to rid us of the ferals and stop the moon madness, all we can do is hold on. Even that won’t work forever.

As Dex falls in step with me, he is quiet. We make our way up the lawn toward the Alpha King’s compound. The burned-out evidence of the dragon’s wrath scars the walls, though the new construction tries to obscure the wreckage.

Word is the previous Alpha King tried to take the female dragon by force when she refused to comply with his plans. It doesn’t take more than natural sense to know that was a bad idea, but it seems common sense fled with our magic. I doubt it will return with this new king.

Maverick, a young wolf who works the front guard tower, races down to meet us. “You guys are back? How many ferals this time?” He takes the jar from Dex, silver eyes wide as hecatalogs the number of fangs we will deliver to the King. “You two are badass. This has gotta be more than a hundred!”

Dex growls in reprimand, and the young wolf pales. My littermate is intimidating by sheer size, but the added scars and burned flesh make him look meaner than he is. About lost wolves, though, he’s serious.

“We don’t celebrate the passing of wolves, Mav. Even the ferals. Every one of those fangs was a man we lost,” I explain.

The young wolf swallows roughly before nodding and lowering his eyes in submission.

It doesn’t take more than a moment for the bouncy young wolf to find his beat again. In the next breath, he’s talking circles around us and sharing news. I tune out most of it as we walk the last leg across the sprawling lawn to the compound, but the word “omega” jerks me back to attention.

“What did you say?”

The blond wolf misses the danger, too excited to read the change in my tone. “We caught one!”

This time, it’s my growl that makes him pale. “What do you mean wecaughtan omega?”

Wolves don’tcatchomegas. They aren’t fucking rabbits.

“She was in the Outskirts. The king had her brought here. He's taking her as his mate,” the boy rambles.

“Alphas don’ttakemates,” I warn.

An alpha’s power should come from his ability to protect, not force.

Krum is from the Outskirts, like my brother and me, but we aren’t the same. Dex and I grew up orphans in the Outskirts, never knowing our family pack, until a chance encounter with Elder Mako saved us. Mako took us in as headstrong teen wolves and made us into alphas. Though he was never a pack alpha, his lessons rang with truth. He taught us about the concept of balance, about giving as much as we take.

Krum talks a big game about protecting wolves, but as a young alpha, he was ruthless in his drive to become the top wolf in the tents, and I’m old enough to remember his willingness to kill sane wolves who got in his way. If he would do that to an alpha, what’s to stop him from taking what he wants from an omega?

Maverick looks nervously between us.

The rumbling threat of my growl hasn’t let up, and beside me, Dex has gone still. We’re on the same page, but it clearly isn’t the same one as other wolves.

“Explain again from the top,” I demand.

Maverick steps back, his body finally cluing in to the danger. His words are fast as he details the last two weeks. It sounds like a tall tale, how a guard found her in the tents and the harrowing story of how she was almost mauled to death by the alphas in the Outskirts when she was spotted. The longer he talks, the more my wolf wants to be let loose. When Maverick gets to the part where he explains how the king promised that she would be his mate and he would share her for pack breeding, Dex almost loses his shit. I can feel him radiating barely restrained fury.

Right there with you, brother.

Each word makes my wolf more agitated. My stomach flips in horror at what my people are capable of. She’s an omega wolf—possibly the last of her kind—and this is how the king thinks to treat her?

Dex grinds out his words. “To her. Now.”

The young wolf hesitates. “She’s in the pit. They say she’s killed two already. That maybe she’s feral.”

An omega in the pit? The king has lost his damn mind.

Without waiting for the boy, I take off for the back of the compound, Dex on my tail.

Chapter 4

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