Page 190 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha
I met Jasmine’s gaze, annoyance flaring up again. I stepped forward and pressed my palms to the table as I met each of their gazes. “With all due respect, Jasmine, I’m aware of what my duties are. I hate Troy just as much as any of you. I’d love to have him dead at my feet, but?—”
“Excellent,” she interjected, a small smile touching her lips. It wasn’t a friendly expression but one with bloodthirsty intent. “As alpha, you understand the threat Redwolf poses to us.You’ll see no problem with sending our own hunting party and nourishing our lands with his blood.”
I raised a brow. “And all five of you have come to this same conclusion?”
There were nods around the table. I frowned. I wanted to send a hunting party out badly enough to argue with my mate about it, but the fact that the council wanted me to send one made me feel…torn. I didn’t want to go against my mate and undermine her status. If the Wargs’ hunting party found Troy first, it would show the Kings that Bryn wasn’t a strong leader because her search party had failed.
But if I didn’t show a strong hand here, or if I opposed the council’s rule outright, there were other risks to consider. Someone could go over my head and send out their own hunting party, thus weakening my alpha status. I would have to challenge the guilty party and kill them in front of my pack to regain the pack’s respect.
The absolutelastthing I wanted to do was kill one of my own wolves, especially when Troy was on the loose and doing fate only knew what. My hands were tied, and the easiest path forward was to go along with their desires and send out a hunting party.Bryn’s team has a head start,I reminded myself.My men are on that team as well, and there’s a good chance they’ll find him first.
Guilt coiled tight in my stomach. Bryn would eventually find out about the hunting party, so I’d need to make things right with her when I returned.
“Alright,” I said, stepping back from the table. “I’ll send one out after our meeting.”
“Great.” Wayne smiled. “What else do you have to report, Alpha?”
“My men have been helping rebuild the Kings’ buildings after the feral attack, and we’re establishing more of a presence there,” I said. “Our goal to eventually merge the packs gets closer and closer with each cabin we repair. I genuinely feel that we’re on the right track.”
I’d hoped the good news would break some of the lingering tension in the room. But if anything, it only thickened.
“Right. The merger.” Wayne’s smile disappeared. “I never much liked the idea.”
His response blindsided me, and I couldn’t catch myself before raising my eyebrows toward my hairline. I knew the older generation of Wargs hated the idea of getting close to the Kings, but the council had never said they disapproved. They’d even encouraged me when we talked about it in the past.
“I know there are decades of bad blood between our packs, but the alpha challenge will put an end to that,” I said. “That challenge is happening in a couple of weeks. When I win, they’ll have no choice but to merge with us.”
“Alpha Night.” Ida was a woman of few words, so I was surprised when she started speaking. “Take a minute to consider something. Don’t you think it’d be better if we had control over both territories without compromising at all?”
My wolf started to growl low again, but this time, it was a warning to me. I didn’t like the sound of this, either. “WhenI win the challenge,” I began, not wanting to preface this statement with “if” the way I had with Bryn and Dom, “I will become alphaof both packs. The packs will merge either way. I don’t see the point of your question.”
She shook her head. “No, Alpha, once you win the ceremony, you will be alpha of fresh territory. That territory—that land—will become the Wargs’, and the Kings will be no more. We will scrub their existence from the face of the earth.”
My hackles rose. “And what exactly does that mean for the Kings, Ida?”
The five of them exchanged another glance, then Wayne met my gaze. He looked at me with some sympathy, like he was about to deliver disappointing news to a pup.
“Well, they won’t be welcome unless they assimilate completely,” he said. “They’ll have to abandon their pride as Kings and take on new identities as Wargs. If they don’t want to do that, they can leave or be killed. Likely, it will be the latter.”
“But your experience with the Kings is now decades-old,” I protested. “I have seen this pack with fresh eyes, and after spending time with them, they’ve shown me that they are capable of accepting change. Of course, there will be Kings who hate the merger and abandon the larger pack, but there’s real potential for them to?—”
Jasmine let out a harsh laugh. “Potential, Night? Potential for what? For the Kings to accept living with a pack they havealwaysviewed as lesser? Not a chance.”
My wolf growled at her disrespect. I bit back the retort my wolf and I desperately wanted to make, forcing my voice to remain calm. “I’m saying that a violent takeover won’t be necessary. If we want to end decades and decades of hate between our pack and the Kings, there’s a peaceful way to do it.”
Graham steepled his fingers in front of his face. “Do not misunderstand, Night—we Wargs are not trying to make peace with our former oppressors.”
The shock was a lance that speared me where I stood. “The council,” I managed to get out, “has never expressed this position. None of you have ever mentioned that you didn’t want a merger. You all seemed open to it just a few weeks ago. What changed?”
“For us, nothing has changed.” He shrugged. “Up until now, your goals and ours aligned. With the work you have been doing with the Kings, they will expect us to play nicely. They won’t attack when we start to move in after you’ve won the ceremony—not until it’s too late. The only difference is that now we are letting you in on our thoughts, Night.”
I shook my head, my thoughts barraging me with negativity and worry. “No. That was never my plan. What about the women and children? You know they’re treated like second-class citizens, don’t you? You want to punish them for things they had no say in? How is that any better than what the Kings did to us?”
None of them rushed to answer me, but their silence said enough. It took everything I had not to lash out at them. To take things so far…it waswrong. The traditional hostile method of taking over a pack was killing the male wolves loyal to the previous alpha. That had been my original plan before I met Bryn, and everything changed. But what the council was suggesting was unnecessary and dangerous. Sneakily and underhandedly forcing so many wolves into the wilds could result in even more feral wolves, which meant a greater threat toeveryone—not just the Wargs.
And if Troy managed to escape the search party and the hunting party, more ferals would give him an even bigger army. I opened my mouth to tell the council that, but as I looked from face to face, I could see their minds were made up.
Damn them. I could never be that alpha. I refused. I would send out a hunting party as they’d asked—I’d already promised them I would—but there was no fucking way I’d oversee the slaughter of an entire pack.
