Page 94 of Unforgivable

"Oh, OK," she says with a sad frown.

"Here, Lyri," a hand takes the pie and holds it out to me.

I'm frozen solid. The pie, just a damn bunch of flaky crust and sugared fruit, looks as poisonous as a snake. I try to speak, move, to do anything, but my body doesn't obey my internal pleading. I feel Thjis wrap an arm around my shoulders, his substantial warmth holding me together.

Deep inside, her eyes glowing as she crouches low, peering out of the shadows she's hidden in, my she-wolf eyes her biggest threat. To her, to her instincts, he is our biggest betrayer.

"Thanks," Ezra takes it from Alpha Jax with a smile that I can tell is fake as can be. "I'll make sure she eats it later, hmm?" he says with a wink at Gina.

Alpha Jax nods and walks back to his table, sitting down without a care in the world.

Rhet calls Gina over to the counter, "Gina, what flavor of pie do you want?" he asks.

"Ice cream."

"You want ice cream?" Rhet shakes his head, "alright, it's fuc- it's cold outside, but maybe Anne has ice cream."

"There's always ice cream," Anne says with forced cheerfulness. Bustling around her kitchen, Gina is handed a heaping vanilla cone with sprinkles and a cherry.

"Yea! Thanks, Lyri," she bounces away to sit with her parents, who are pretending that they never saw their daughter's interaction with the outcast and their alpha.

Anne gives Rhet the box with three pies. She leaves the top open, and Ezra plops the strawberry pie inside and closes the top himself before tucking the box under his arm.

"Three pies and one ice cream," Anne says, "thirty-eight, fifty."

Rhet pays silently. As we walk out, Alpha Jax doesn't look up from his coffee and pie.

---

Alpha Jax

I resist the urge to throw my coffee against the wall. Every eye is on me, on their alpha, their leader, the male who let over a dozen males rut a that tiny, helpless female.

She's skinny and scarred. Her eyes... the glimpse I had of them showed me precisely what little Lyri Song thinks of me. I'm a fucking monster. I'm not her alpha. Not her protector, her leader. I'm her enemy.

What good did allowing a Shaming do, anyway? Daan and Cloe's mating is still fucked. Parents with young females don't trust me to keep their daughters safe. I wanted to show the pack that you can't break up mated pairs, that you can't be a rank-climber. Instead, I've created a bunch of monsters who prey on little females and have to be watched to make sure their wolves stay under control. I've turned Luke and Jake Rosen into pack-murderers. I've watched young females leave the pack in an exodus because they had pre-mated sex and are terrified of facing the punishment that Lyri Song suffered.

I wince as my perpetual headache starts to pound away. I just need to leave. When I stand up, I note how many of my pack cringe and how many of their wolves cower away from their alpha.

I walk out after leaving a fifty-dollar bill on the table for Anne. There's not much damage to her place, considering how brutal a fistfight can be. I'll make sure to send more money to her for the repairs.

It's raining heavily when I leave. I turn up the collar of my jacket and walk. I'm not ready to go home. It was only this morning that Jessi told me that she practically ordered the Genom wolves to come into town.

"I want that rankwhore to know her place," she had told me.

Lyri Song is gathering to herself a harem of strong males. She's rebuilding her life with males that I don't control. I was close enough to smell her. Close enough to know that she's fucking all three of those males. Their scents are intertwined on them as if they're their own pack, their own mated family.

The pack needs those males. We eat their food, and they protect our north-western border. I don't even want to contemplate what it would do to our pack to piss them off. I know where Rhet and Thjis came from.

This means, unfortunately for Jessi, Lyri Song is no longer nullavenia. Ironically, she's just climbed rank right into an untouchably high position.

---

---