Page 59 of Alpha Wolf's Nanny
“You’re a damn fool,” Rick muttered, softer this time, “but I get it.”
Felix gave him a weary smile. “I thought you were incapable of love.”
Rick sniffed, “Just because I’m smart enough not to lose my senses over somegirl, doesn’t mean I don’t respect the power it holds.”
Felix opened his mouth to retort, but just as he did, the door slammed open.
Mud. Blood. The wild scent of fear.
Dane stood in the doorway, barely upright. His shirt was torn, his face streaked with blood and grime. Panic radiated from him like heat. “Felix,” he rasped.
And the room froze.
“Felix,” Dane gasped again, stumbling forward.
Felix was already across the room, catching him before he collapsed. Nicolas shut the door behind him, locking it.
Blood-soaked Dane’s shirt, most of it drying, some of it still wet. He smelled of smoke and metal and ash.
“Sit,” Felix commanded, voice low and dangerous. “Are you injured?”
Rick shoved a chair closer, and Dane collapsed into it, clutching at his ribs. “No, Alpha, just winded. This ain’t my blood.”
“Tell me,” Felix demanded.
Dane looked up, face pale beneath the grime. “It was a scouting band. Mostly nomads. Cubs, their mothers. Maybe a couple of lone males. Small. Unarmed. They didn’t stand a chance.”
“How many survivors?” Nicolas asked.
“None. Just…pieces.” Dane’s jaw clenched. “I tracked the scent. Some of it was familiar.”
Felix stilled. “Him?”
Dane nodded once. “Red Teeth.”
Silence crashed into the room.
Rick cursed under his breath, pacing in a tight circle. Nicolas stood rigid, his fists balled at his sides.
Felix closed his eyes for one beat, willing the fury rising in his chest not to take control. When he opened them again, his voice was like ice. “Are you certain?”
“The bite marks. The mutilation. The…thetorture. This wasn’t random. It was a warning.”
Rick stopped pacing. “For you?”
“For all of us,” Dane replied, voice hoarse. “But especially you, Alpha. He knows you’re still trying to hold this place together. He’s baiting you.”
Felix exhaled through his nose, the fire in the hearth suddenly too warm.
He had hoped, naïvely, perhaps, that Red Teeth had been killed in some remote forest, buried under rubble, or torn apart by something more monstrous than himself. But monsters rarely died cleanly.
Red Teeth had once been the alpha’s enforcer, the brutal right hand to a mad dictator. More wolf than man, more ghost than flesh. A specter of pain and ruin, unleashed upon those who disobeyed or dissented. Felix remembered the screams. The torn bodies. The way Red Teeth’s lifeless eyes glinted beneath his mask of bone as he tore through flesh.
“I didn’t believe the first reports,” Felix admitted quietly. “I thought…it had to be someone else. Some rogue trying to mimic him. But if he’s getting close, if it is him—”
“I’ve seen his work before, Alpha,” Dane said. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Felix nodded once. That was enough.
