Page 364 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha
“Don’t mention it—and I mean that. I don’t even want to think what your mate will say if he found out about this.”
I laughed. That bit of levity was more than welcome at this tense time.
Finally, finally, we reached the summit, and the tunnel opened at the top of the cliff. Kai set me down, and I carefully walked to the edge.
The déjà vu overwhelmed me as I stared down into the gorge. It was filled with the fading orange light of the sun. Seconds later, hundreds of wolves poured into the gorge from the many tunnel openings that led there. The fight had begun.
I spotted Night immediately, his dark fur streaking back and forth through the battle with the deadly grace of a predator.
“You were right,” Kai said, awed.
At my side, Cat was scanning the wolves, her eyes jumping from spot to spot until she saw Leo’s orange fur fighting in the stream. “I need to get down there. I can’t leave Leo to fight on his own.”
I wanted to hold her back, but she was his beta. Of course she needed to be there. “Go. It’s okay.”
She nodded her thanks to me, then made her way down.
“What’s your plan, Bryn?” Kai asked. “What do you need us to do?”
“Send some of your men after Cat, let the rest stay here. Other than that…” The sentence stopped there. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Night and the others were definitely trying to avoid killing the ferals, only subduing them if possible. That was significantly more difficult, not just because of how wild the ferals were but because Troy’s men added to the chaos. They were directly impeding the efforts of our fighters.
The only way to get the ferals to stop attacking was to kill Troy, but they were protecting him. It was only a matter of time before the feral from my vision delivered the blow to Night that would take him down.
What could I do? There had to be something I could do to turn the tide of the battle. Otherwise, my mother wouldn’thave shown me this. I tried to replay it in my mind, searching her words for some kind of clue. She’d mentioned the word “missing,” which made me want to start looking into the missing children again.
“Bryn?” Kai prompted.
I turned a sharp glare on him. “This would be a lot easier to think through if you didn’t keep saying my name, Kai—” I stopped as an idea formed abruptly. Wait, could the solution be that simple?
There was only one thing I could think to do, one thing I believed would distract the ferals long enough to subdue them. I had to give them back the thing they were missing, the thing Gregor and Troy had taken from them. The thing that would remind them of their humanity.
129
NIGHT
When we burst through the tunnel, my men and I following closely behind Troy, I wasn’t expecting to find myself in a ravine. But the locale of the showdown didn’t matter to me. All I cared about was sinking my teeth into Troy’s throat and squeezing until he stopped breathing.
Moments after we entered the ravine, we encountered waves of young wolves, ferals eager to tear us apart. Thanks to the Garou Pack’s ingenuity, our claws and fur were dipped in a paralytic that would subdue the ferals seconds after entering their bodies. It wouldn’t hurt them. The trick was to scratch them without seriously injuring them or getting our fur into their mouths.
It went against our very nature to purposefully let an enemy get close to us like that, but it was made even more fucking difficult by the fact that Troy kept flitting around the battlefield like a deranged mouse. The ferals and his men surrounded him, keeping him from the fray while he danced around us, his laughter echoing in our heads. It was pissing me the hell off.
“Take as many as you down as quickly as possible!” I commanded my men. “The more we take out, the easier it’ll be to get Troy on his own.”
There were determined cries around me. For a little while, they drowned out Troy’s manic giggling. But things weren’t happening fast enough. My only task was to corner Troy and kill him, but even I was struggling. My men were doing their best, and they were going strong, but the pressures of the battle would start getting to them. And me.
“There’s so fucking many of them!” Leo shouted, shaking off a feral that had tried to bite the back of his shoulder.
“And they just keep coming,” Dom replied grimly. “We need a break, or they’ll overrun us.”
That was such a sobering reminder. But I had to keep going—weallhad to keep going. The fate of so many lives hung in the balance.
And then, a voice sounded above us, pulsating through the gorge.
“Brandon Moore! Jakob Box! George Corle! Spencer Morely!”
I looked up. Bryn stood on top of the cliff overlooking the gorge. She, Kai, and Dawn were all there, looking down at us. Bryn had her hands cupped around her mouth and was screaming as loud as she could.
Bryn. Mate.My wolf and I were so relieved to see her that I almost stumbled as I maneuvered around the field. But what the hell was she saying?
