Page 30 of To Challenge a Wolf

Low growls sounded throughout the group. Trevor gave a little yip, too quiet to be heard by the rogues yet too loud for Rhett’s comfort. Now was the time for stealth.

Malachi handed his phone to Robert, then slipped away into the trees. Fifteen seconds later, at the head of their formation, an enormous pale wolf stepped out and took his place. Rhett stepped up, first on Malachi’s left, while Aaron took first position on Malachi’s right. Together the pack set out at a run, just as Rhett had taught them. Beside him, Malachi loped full-out, his signature essence at its very thickest. They were going into battle together, and Rhett yearned to join his alpha in his moonbound form, but the full moon was more than a week away.

As he moved through the trees, Rhett breathed deeply and extended all his senses ahead of him. He moved faster, blood pumping harder, once he crossed onto his own trespassed property. Then he caught it, far ahead of him—the familiar gamey essence, blended with bitter herbs. The violent alpha. Drew.

In the weeks after the attack, Rhett had relished the chance to head their strategy and to incorporate the ideas of Malachi and Ezra, two sharp-minded wolves. He had relished seeing his pack grow faster and smarter in a fight, learn to use their strength in ways they’d never imagined before. But most of all he’d relished the plan itself: to turn Drew’s tricks back on him. And that plan had been hammered out in detail. They had drilled together, learned their positions and their tasks. Their scents were alert, angry, resolved, ready.

They crept through the forest shoulder-to-shoulder, darting around trees to maintain their formation. Single file, their scents would have reached Drew one at a time. Instead they rushed in force and were rewarded by shouts and chaos when their collective essence struck the rogues all at once.

“What the—?”

“Drew! Wolves out there!”

“That peak alpha! I smell him!”

“Great. This time I’ll make sure he’s dead before I—”

With his pack charging on either side of him, Rhett burst out of the darkness and crashed into the man who had first identified Malachi’s essence. The man hollered in shock. With a roar, Rhett threw a knockout punch and then hurled the rogue away from him—straight into a tree trunk. He’d survive to heal any broken bones at the next full moon. Probably. If not, well…Trespasser. Attacker. You follow an evil alpha who assaults women and ambushes fellow wolves.

One down—one of the strangers. Rhett broadened his focus to the fights near him. The rogues hadn’t expected a coordinated defense, didn’t even know what to do with it for a few advantageous seconds, but then the element of surprise ran out, and the other two strangers began to fight. They knew how. Trained. Maybe military. Rhett thought he smelled a weapon, but it wasn’t a clear scent, chemical as well as metal. They surely didn’t have an arsenal like they’d used against Malachi before.

Nearby Corbin and Nathan, still too young to match the full strength of a more mature wolf, had teamed up to engage one of Drew’s pack. The rogue lost quickly and crawled behind a rotting log, groaning, holding his side. Two wolves down. Where was Drew…?

There.

Drew had leaped onto Malachi’s back. He tore at the alpha’s fur as he delivered savage, full-strength kicks to Malachi’s ribs and underbelly. Malachi rolled over, taking Drew with him, and Drew made a strangled sound. Malachi was up first and pinned Drew to the ground with both his heavy front paws, and then Rhett’s focus was snapped away by the groan of one of his own. It was Robert, battling another from Drew’s pack, hismovements not as quick as those of a younger wolf but still crisp and confident, now well practiced. But in the half-second Rhett took to decide Robert was holding his own, the rogue threw a stunning punch to Robert’s head and then reached into his coat, and…there it was. Slathered all over in fresh lacquer to confuse its scent.

The rogue leveled the handgun at Robert’s chest.

A howling roar echoed. Malachi charged. The rogue swung his arm in a wide arc to level the gun at Malachi.

Rhett’s entire body seemed to shriek with fury at the sight of a gun aimed at his alpha, as his mind flashed back to the bullets Drew had used against Malachi before, left him bleeding and dying, and Rhett might not move fast enough, but hetriedwith every ounce of strength and speed he had in him, set into motion everything he had ever learned, everything beaten into him by Stone and by the wolves and vampires hired to turn Stone’s only son into a killing machine, while his wolf heart screamed for Malachi’s life.

Alphabound!

The word rang in his head like the boom of a cannon, and Rhett didn’t understand it but grasped it and held onto it as though his brain knew somehow this word could do what he couldn’t. As he leaped toward the rogue, his clothes split away from his body. His fur came, brown and shaggy. His feet and hands morphed to paws. His snout and his teeth came too.

Only one second had passed. Now two.

Rhett crashed into the rogue with all four paws, bowled him over and landed on top of him, sank his fangs into the hand that held the gun and used the full strength of his jaws. The rogue screamed as the gun fell to the ground.

Standing over him, Robert shook his head to clear the impact of the rogue’s punch, or maybe to try to understand what he was seeing. But he didn’t stand still long. He hurried to rejoin thefray, and Malachi veered off to do the same, but their enemies were no longer fighting. Rhett watched his pack round up the rogues and herd them in his direction, while he held down his personal prey with the weight of his front paws. For good measure he clamped his jaws down on the barrel of the gun and crushed it too. The taste of lacquer and metal was revolting but worth it. He lifted his nose and howled up at the night sky. His pack had triumphed.

The night grew quieter, but the scent of death seeped into the forest, an agitation to the senses of everyone present but especially to Rhett in this form. This form…how had he…?

As if in response to his thought, Malachi padded up to him. Rhett bowed his head in submission. Then he nudged the rogue’s neck with his nose.See, alpha, I brought him down and kept him down.

Malachi bumped his head to Rhett’s and growled quiet affirmation, and Rhett’s wolf heart lifted.I did well. I knew it.

The alpha pawed at the mangled gun, and a growl rumbled from deep in his chest. Then he kicked it away with one hind foot as though it might still hold some danger.

When Rhett stepped back from pinning him, the rogue hurried to join his companions—the other man from Drew’s original pack and the three new additions, now all corralled in a cluster. Drew wasn’t among them. Rhett lifted his nose windward and found the bitter-herb essence a hundred feet away, quickly succumbing to the thickening stench of death.

Guarded on all sides by a strong, calm pack and stunned at the loss of Drew, the trespassers were shaking, huddled together, nursing injuries. At Malachi’s approach, the air grew thick with yet another scent: fear. They shied away, and a few even whimpered.

With a low growl, Malachi seemed to freeze all of them in place. Aaron stepped up on his right, and Rhett joined him onhis left, relishing the way they tripped over themselves to avoid him too.

“Quiet,” Aaron said, and the rogues shut up at once. “Your alpha is dead. Obviously you want revenge.”

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