Page 6 of Forced By the Alpha

“I said Get. In. Side. Or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

With extreme difficulty, I peeled myself off the ground and shuffled back into the house. My father’s threat still rang in my ears as he slammed the door shut behind us. He hadfollowed through on that threat enough times that I rarely showed any emotion anymore.

I wiped my eyes, doing my best to hide the despair I felt at the loss of my mother and brother.

“Good riddance,” he said, plopping down on the couch and taking a swig of the beer he had opened in the moments before my life had come tumbling down. He made a face as the warm beer touched his tongue and slammed it down on the end table, sloshing the liquid over the rim of the can. “Fetch me another, boy.”

My footsteps were quick and silent as I did as I was ordered, returning within moments with a fresh, cold can for my father. He smiled at me tightly, and I decided to take advantage of the momentary lapse in sternness to ask the only question I needed an answer to.

“When will they be back?”

“Humph,” he grunted. “Never. Your whore of a mother isn’t welcome here, and neither is that bastard of hers.”

Tears welled in my eyes, hearing his words. It wasn’t the insults or the profanity that made me emotional. I had heard him call Mom and Ki much worse things before—all because she had a baby with someone else before my parents met. No, it was the fact that I might never see them again that broke me.

This was my life now.

I vowed that day to never feel the hurt that my mother and half-brother had caused ever again. Never again would I allow myself to feel an attachment even close to love. Never again would I be weak.

“He’s dead, Franco,” my father’s second told me. His face was expressionless, as befit the occasion. No one in the pack had followed my father out of love or loyalty—only fear. He had been a ruthless son of a bitch who always got what he wanted, and he had taught me to be just like him.

“Deal with it,” I ordered. “We leave in the morning.”

The beta nodded and left me to my thoughts. I was the alpha now. I was free.

“What have you done?!” I shouted at my pack. The clearing was littered with bodies—some human, some animal—and the entire pack was covered with blood.

“Alpha, forgive us,” my beta begged, kneeling at my feet. “Something came over us. A darkness. A hunger. We couldn’t stop ourselves.”

Indeed, I felt the same darkness he spoke of. I wanted to rip the throats out of every member in the pack for disobeying my orders to stay hidden. There was a huge mess for us to clean up, and it wasn’t one that we could keep secret forever. The human authorities would find out about these deaths sooner or later. All we could do was make sure the blame didn’t land on us.

“Stop groveling,” I ordered. “I don’t care that they’re dead; I care that you made more work for me. So get up and help me deal with it. Now.”

My beta obeyed, and the entire pack began to move the bodies, staging the humans inside their tents to look like they were attacked in their sleep instead of tortured and massacred outside.

I grabbed one of the bodies, my hands sinking into what was left of the torn flesh. Blood coated my hands and clothes as I carried him to his sleeping bag and tossed him inside.

“Burn it,” I ordered.

I woke with the vision of that man’s death stare burned into my retinas. My body was covered in sweat as I swung my feet onto the floor and stretched my tense muscles. The nightmares weren’t unusual, but the feeling that accompanied this one was. I was on high alert and felt uneasy and shaken. It was as if I needed to fix something that couldn’t be fixed.

I got up to get a drink from the kitchen sink and looked toward the cot where Sienna had fallen asleep. It was empty.

“Fuck,” I growled.

She couldn’t have gone far. The pack would still be awake, satiating their bloodlust. Someone was bound to have seen her.

I ran outside and headed straight for the sounds of revelry coming from the makeshift arena I had taken Sienna to earlier. My eyes scanned the area for her red hair, knowing that no one else in the pack had a similar hue. After pushing my way through the crowd, I finally saw her standing next to my beta, Dylan.

His hand gripped her elbow as he was forcing her to watch yet another violent battle between a captive rogue and a member of the pack. The sight of his hand on her skin sent bristles down my spine. Sienna wasmine. He had no right to touch her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, striding up to Dylan and forcefully taking Sienna’s arm away from him.

“Alpha,” he replied. “Just giving her a repeat performance of what she saw earlier.”

“What makes you think it was a good idea to enter my cabin without permission?” I couldn’t explain why I felt protective over the girl, but the thought of someone taking her out of my sight had caused a surge of possessiveness to course through me. I was determined to make sure it never happened again.

“I didn’t want her coming up with any crazy schemes about trying to run away,” Dylan said. “Best she has all the information about what she’d be dealing with upfront. You were asleep, so I was just trying to help you out.” He shrugged.

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