Page 77 of Forgotten Arcane

“What the fuck!” one of them yells, anger and fear present in his exclamation. “You can’t just make us shift!”

“Clearly he can,” Calia replies drily, and I try not to smirk. Now is not the time for that and would most likely just piss the wolves off more.

“Quiet,” River orders, he looks at the one closest to him. “Why are you attacking us?”

The wolf looks nervous, and in a weird way relieved. I must be reading that wrong. Ransom gestures for me to come closer, and I move away from the ring of wolves that are staying in place and staring at River, and over to his side.

The wolf swallows as he looks at River, and answers without needing to be prompted again, “Alpha said that . . .”

“Logan!” one of them snaps, the threat clear in his voice.

As he starts to lunge toward Logan, Truip grabs him and pins him to the floor, pulling out a set of silver cuffs and securing him.

River looks at Logan, “You were saying?”

“Alpha ordered us to attack. He said that if we didn’t, then he would kill the women and pups,” Logan explains, looking both angry as hell and frightened.

We all look horrified.

“He gave you an alpha order?” River asks.

Logan nods and looks relieved that River believes him, so much so that he opens his mouth to continue talking. My attention briefly shifts toward the other wolves, and I get Ransom’s attention as my intuition begins to ping.

“Can you put magical handcuffs on certain wolves from here?” I ask him quietly.

He glances down at me and nods, “Which ones?”

I love that he doesn’t question me or think that I’m crazy. I quickly point out the wolves that my instincts and my observational skills are pointing out to me. By the end of it, there are seven more wolves with magical handcuffs on that will stop them from shifting, and none of them are happy about it.

“Care to explain why you just did that?” Doc asks curiously, since all conversation stopped when we started cuffing the wolves.

“I don’t know how they knew, but they’ve handcuffed all the wolves loyal to the alpha,” Logan says, while the other wolves not handcuffed stay silent and look relieved. He looks around at the dead wolves, and his eyes widen, “Fucking hell, you’ve only killed the ones loyal to Alpha.”

“My instincts were telling me which ones I could kill, and which ones just to knock out,” One of Eamon’s fighters says.

“Same,” Doc agrees, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

It quickly transpires that everyone got the same instinct alert that I did, that the wolves that aren’t dead, even though some of them are injured, are not loyal to the asshole alpha.

I love how magic works.

Eamon’s eyebrows rise in surprise. But he keeps his questions to himself for the moment.

“Alpha has the pups and women somewhere. None of us can find them. He’s had them for over a week now. He’s dangerous, really fucking dangerous,” another wolf says, desperation lining his tone.

“Why haven’t you told anyone?” Griff asks. “You could have reported him to High Alpha Ahren.”

A different wolf shakes his head, “No, we couldn’t. He gave us an alpha order. We weren’t allowed to speak of anything that happened or that we witnessed, and we were banned from speaking to the High Alpha. The only way that we would have been able to tell him would have been if he had asked us ourselves, but we never go to the meets, so that was impossible.”

Coen growls. Being ordered not to tell the truth is a hot topic for him, for obvious reasons, especially when it involves leaders abusing their position. Leaders are supposed to look after their people, not take advantage of them and cause them more pain.

“Is there anything else that you can tell us?” Evander asks. “Like why your alpha suddenly decided to attack the compound?”

The wolves in the cuffs growl and pull against the manacles around their wrists, their magic trying to fight the effects to no avail.

River doesn’t even say anything, he silences them with a look, and even the guys and I raise our eyebrows. It would appear that River has hit a whole new level of alpha, and he was already really fucking impressive.

“It’s okay,” Eamon says. “You can answer the question. We want to help you.”

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