Page 100 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha
It made me wonder if this was at all how Bryn felt interacting with her wolf now, feeling a stranger acting independently in your own body. If so, my heart ached for her even more.
I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since that night, and the only thing keeping me from losing control entirely was my determination to get my girls back.
But here in the conference room, I tried to enjoy a moment of peace. There would be a meeting here soon, but for now, I was alone. I walked to the wall and looked up at the framed pictures. Most of them were taken by Mom in the days after I killed Peter to become Alpha. They were images of Dom and me as teens,heading the construction of new cabins. Planks of wood, buckets of cement and paint, and felled trees were the backdrop for many of the images.
I remembered the story of each one so clearly. If I closed my eyes, I felt the blazing sun on my back, the rush of a cool beer after a day’s hard work, and the taste of Mom’s cooking as she and other wolves worked together to hunt and feed our pack. Things had been so hard, and the work seemed never-ending. Yet, we Wargs had persevered, and we had survived. We hadn’t received any help from other packs—Gregor had made sure of that—but we’d done well without it. We thrived.
I had spent so much of my life invested in the health and prosperity of my pack, my wolves, and my people. Now Troy stood a good chance of taking it all away from me. I’d wanted to take control of the Kings all my life, but now that things had ended up like this, I found myself questioning every decision I’d made to try and make that happen. Wanting a better life for my pack was one thing, but it was another for me to selfishly tie my own desires to the welfare of my pack.
I clenched my hands tight, my stomach churning. Maybe I was no better than my father.
I turned to the door when I heard footsteps approach. Dom popped his head in. “Hey, I’ve got a surprise.”
“What is it?”
He opened the door wider, revealing Kai, Redford, Vince, and…my eyebrows raised when an old friend walked in. Evan Brandy, a wolf I’d grown up with and someone I considered to be a very close friend. He looked the same as when I had last seen him: chocolate brown hair, casual grin, and an old, jagged scarrunning vertically down his left cheek. I remembered the day he’d gotten that scar. It had been when we were eleven and an adult thought he could bully us around. My mother ended up giving Evan stiches because his parents had already died.
Evan wasn’t in the pictures that hung on the wall. I’d sent him to infiltrate the Kings pack shortly after I became Alpha. Evan served as a fighter for the Kings, which put him in a prime position to learn the goings-on of the pack as well as strategy for what the Kings had planned. My trust in Evan ran as deep as my trust in Dom, so he was the only wolf I could have put in this position.
The last time Evan and I had been in the same room together was last December. That was back when Gregor was still alive and my hope of taking control of the Kings pack was still a distant dream.
It felt like years had gone by since then.
I crossed the room and pulled Evan in for a hug. He laughed, firmly patting my back. “Yeah, it’s been a while, buddy.”
“No kidding.” As I pulled back, my grin at seeing my old friend dimmed to a small smile. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”
Usually, Evan only came around when there was an obvious threat to the Wargs, which helped to keep his cover so that he wasn’t disappearing from the Kings pack all the time. Dom, evidently, had brought him in now because he knew that I needed everyone I could trust on deck. I appreciated the gesture.
“Same here, Night.” Evan patted my shoulder, and then crossed his arms. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and ripped jeans. He wasn’t as muscular as me or Dom, despite being a fighter. ButEvan was wiry and strong. I’d seen him take down wolves twice his size, so his skills as a fighter went unquestioned. Evan had almost become my beta, but Dom had come out on top in that battle.
“I’m sure you all remember what things were like at the end of Peter’s rule as Alpha,” Evan said. “Food was hoarded, everyone was on edge, construction projects were abandoned, and Peter himself was a ticking time bomb.”
Everyone in the room nodded. We could all recall how difficult it had been to exist in a pack that was run by a selfish, paranoid Alpha, and we’d had to endure it for months.
“Then you all will understand the way things have gone for the Kings. Ever since Troy took over, the Kings have been suffering. The man has done nothing but accuse wolves of being traitors left and right without any evidence. He then challenges these so-called traitors, but before the challenge can take place, Troy and his closest wolves beat him within an inch of his life.”
“So they’re no match for him by the time the challenge happens,” Kai said, his voice dripping with disgust. “The coward.”
Evan nodded. “He’s doing this to show the pack that he’s powerful, but all he’s done is sink pack morale. The only members of the pack who are doing alright are those who were already in Redwolf’s favor. Everyone else is struggling to stay alive at this point. Wolves are trying to leave, but that’s hard to do when Troy keeps his own pack under constant surveillance. Women, children, it doesn’t matter. If they try to leave, he wants them either killed or captured for interrogation.”
“Damn,” I said. I hated hearing how the innocent members of the Kings pack were suffering, but this would make it allthe better when we took Troy down. His people would want someone better to lead them. “Do you think they would support a change in leadership?”
“Absolutely,” Evan said. “The pack has always had some semblance of respect for the Redwolfs because at least the pack was prosperous. They believed that Troy would continue in his father’s footsteps, but obviously that hasn’t happened. Troy’s run out of all the goodwill his family name had, so yeah, I think they’re eager for new leadership.”
“Why would he attack his own men?” Redford asked.
Evan shrugged. “He’s always been a little…off, but he hasn’t been the same since Gregor died. It’s like he’s been let off his leash, and no one can rein him in.”
“Sounds like he’s trying to reestablish his Alpha status,” I said, the gears in my mind turning. “He probably felt pressure to be just like his old man, to provide in the same way, but he hasn’t earned the respect that Gregor had. So he wants to prove to the pack that he’s the strongest to compensate for that.”
“The only way he knows how to rule is through fear,” Dom said.
I nodded. “He’s also probably trying to weed out those he thinks are weak so he can try to take us down.”
“I see what you’re saying.” Evan scratched his chin. There was a five o’clock shadow growing along his jaw. “Troy has been snapping at just about anyone and has shifted and killed countless fighters from his own pack, especially in the last few days. He walks around like a fucking maniac, and even his usual group of followers are avoiding him. Well, aside from Harlon and Samson.”
The changing dynamics of the Kings pack meant that the information Bryn had given me before wouldn’t work for us now. Evan’s being here was perfect timing. Without him, I risked going in blind.
