Page 10 of Forced By the Alpha

“The curse is happening,” a voice said from my right.

I jumped out of my seat, not realizing anyone had been close enough to hear me, and turned to see who it was.

“Franco,” I said.

“You need to get back to the cabin,” he replied, eyeing the pack’s uneasy behavior. “Unless you want to see more of the violence you witnessed the other night.”

I shuddered at the memory, but I had no intentions of going anywhere. Franco’s story about the pack being cursed was still unbelievable to me. I wanted to see it for myself before I made up my mind.

“Not happening,” I said petulantly.

“Suit yourself.” Franco took a seat in the chair I had just vacated and waited silently.

In only a few minutes, everyone seemed to snap. They became unrecognizable to me from the obliging, happy people I had seen before. Even Clara, who had been kind and gracious to everyone, was affected.

“Who touched the coffeemaker?” she screamed.

“It isn’t yours! It belongs to everyone!” another woman shouted.

Clara growled and took an aggressive step toward her. She launched herself forward and tackled the woman to the ground, ripping the coffee cup from her hands as she did and smashing it on the floor by her head.

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” I asked Franco, horrified by their behavior.

“No,” Franco answered, and I detected a note of sadness in his voice. “In the beginning, I tried to temper their anger and violence, but we realized there was no point. The bloodlust continues until it’s been satiated. No interference from me will change that.”

“So you just let them beat each other up?”

Franco shrugged. “We all try to channel it as best we can. You’ll see.”

The room devolved into chaos as petty fights turned into real ones, and arguments were moved outside to avoid damaging the dining hall. Franco and I followed them, watching the disarray. The atmosphere was alive with sparks of electricity and darkness. There was something deeper at work here. Someform of magic that seemed to permeate the very air we were breathing.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Franco asked.

“I feel something,” I told him. “But just because there’s magic at work doesn’t mean your story about my father is true.”

“It is true,” he growled.

I looked into his eyes and saw that the same darkness that had consumed his pack was beginning to affect him as well. I may be protected from his wolves, but something told me that protection wouldn’t extend to Franco. I may not be able to prove my father’s innocence right now while Franco was affected by the bloodlust, but I vowed that I would find a way.

“I think I’ll go back to the cabin now,” I told him quietly.

He nodded tersely and turned his back to me.

Chapter 6 - Franco

It didn’t matter to me much whether Sienna enjoyed her time in the Forsaken Shadows pack. What did matter was that she got adjusted to her new reality and came to terms with her purpose here. I didn’t need a luna or a partner. What I needed was for her to witness the effects of the curse her father had put on us and find a way to break it.

I had ordered my pack to give Sienna as much freedom as she wanted—within reason. The entire territory was inescapable. The system of traps, borders, and guards was flawless at keeping Sienna in and others out. There was no doubt in my mind that she was completely trapped and at my mercy.

The only issue I had needed to address was the pack’s proximity to the small town of Preston, but that had been easily overcome by putting another layer of guards on duty. At my request, Sienna was allowed to travel into town, but no further.

It had been a few weeks since she had been captured, and although I wanted to give her time to acclimate, I was beginning to get impatient with the seeming lack of progress. She still hadn’t accepted that her father was responsible for our predicament. Even more annoying, she had begun sneaking away without telling me where she was going.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I said to my wolf. We had just come back from an excursion away from town to find her missing yet again.

What did you expect? That she’d stay here?Blizzard scoffed.You should know better than that.

Damn witches.

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