Page 21 of The Alpha's Arranged Mate

By the time he’d reached the yacht, he’d fleshed the plan out fully. The hardest part would be the legal side of things—making sure he could get the company into Lyrie’s possession without his legal team thinking he’d completely lost his mind. Good thing he didn’t feel like he was ever going to be able to get to sleep again as long as he lived. After a quick stop at the kitchen for the largest pot of coffee he could carry, Reeve headed for his office and locked the door behind him.

Time to do what he’d always done best—take a good look at the mess he was in, then run at full speed in the opposite direction.

It only took three days, in the end, to get his affairs in order. He was careful about what parts of the story he shared with which of his advisors, knowing their varying comfort levels with ancient and esoteric shifter traditions, and a complicated network of NDA’s were put in place to ensure that nothing too weird got out into the mainstream. But by the end of the third day—and much of the yacht’s stores of coffee—everything was in place. Later that evening, his yacht would simply sail off into the night, never to be seen again. The following day, a different boat would arrive, carrying a transition team from the company who were under strict instructions to seek out Lyrie and Darion and explain everything. The conditions of the Blood Rite would be fulfilled, and Darion and his pack would officially have complete control and ownership of everything that Reeve had built here on Earth.

And Reeve… well, he hadn’t decided what he’d do on a personal level, not yet. Liquidate his assets and find somewhere modest to spend some time, that was the rough outline of the future—lay low for a year or two, just until he was sure that Darion hadn’t sent a team after him to drag him back to face his fate. If he was honest, it was impossible to picture the future. He simply didn’t care what happened to him. Whatever life he ended up living, he knew one thing was certain—he’d never see Lyrie again. That made everything else fade into meaninglessness.

The sun had just set. The final preparations had all been made, and his crew were just waiting on his order to sail away and leave all this behind. But something made Reeve linger. He was standing on the uppermost deck of his yacht, ten paces away from where he’d lost control and kissed Lyrie for the first time. Maybe that was what was holding him back, keeping him standing there by the railing with his eyes on the peaceful island of Kurivon. From here, he could just make out the docks, the curve of the beach, the thick vegetation beyond which lay the construction sites. It was a shame he’d never get to see the finished cottages. All that work to build a community he’d never be a part of.

And right when he’d gathered the energy to make the call to sail away, he heard it. A low, mournful sound, echoing over the water and sending the hair standing up on the back of his neck. For a moment he didn’t recognize it—it had been so long since he’d heard it, and his confused mind wondered if it was the cry of some sea creature in pain. But his wolf knew. He was halfway to the door when his mind caught up, and he knew that what he was hearing was the raising of the alarm.

How could he have forgotten about the demon attack they’d been preparing for? Here it was, right on schedule. He almost ran straight into the pilot of the yacht, who barked a quick apology before shifting uneasily from foot to foot, her eyes glued to his face.

“Waiting on your order to leave, sir,” was all she said. But Reeve remembered seeing her in the training ring, working harder than any of the wolves around her to perfect her footwork, a wooden sword in her hand.

“Belay that, captain,” he said. “We’d best lend a hand on the mainland first, I think.”

And so it was that Reeve set foot yet again on the shore of the island he’d sworn he’d never return to. His whole crew were with him, to his surprise. His domestic staff were all wolves, but he hadn’t really considered them part of his pack, beholden to the same goals. But it seemed that he’d been alone in that. They made haste up the narrow path towards the settlement, the pilot and head steward in their four-legged forms to take point and bring up the rear, respectively. Reeve found himself marveling at how much they’d learned without him noticing in just two short weeks. Lyrie was capable of all kinds of miracles, it seemed. He couldn’t have imagined a better person to take over the company he’d built.

Just as the lorekeepers had predicted, the demonic assault came from the southern end of the island. Demons were always drawn to areas of significance to wolves, places that had been imbued with care and effort… there was something about energy that attracted them. And their first instinct was always to destroy. Even with night closing in, he could see the damage done—building supplies, once neatly stacked, had been broken and scattered across the site, and he noticed a few walls that had been brought down too. All around him was the tell-tale stink of demonic taint, a scorched, sulfurous smell that set his wolf baying for blood in his chest. And up ahead, he could see that the battle had already well and truly begun. Dozens of wolves, snarling and snapping at the misshapen, hideous bodies of demons, the majority of the battlefield swallowed by the darkness.

“We’re late,” he said to his steward, who chuckled. Then, as if they’d rehearsed it ahead of time, his domestic staff shifted into their four-legged forms and lunged into the fray. And Reeve was right there with them.

With adrenalin singing in his blood and the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears, Reeve quickly lost himself to the rhythm of the fight. The demonic onslaught was considerable, as they’d been warned—dozens of the creatures, possibly even numbering in the hundreds, rushing out of the trees to the south where the patrols had been reporting increased signs of demonic taint. He thought of the first battle he’d fought on Kurivon’s soil, of the way the six Alphas had battled together like a well-oiled machine. That had been when he’d still believed things with Darion could be improved, that fighting at his brother’s side could help mend the terrible rift between them.

Well, that wasn’t true. But that didn’t change anything about the fact that these demons needed to be put down… and when he ran across a familiar form, pinned beneath the thrashing, writhing bulk of a many-winged, many-eyed demon, Reeve didn’t hesitate to leap to his aid. He knocked the demon off-balance with the force of his leap and saw his brother seize the opportunity to struggle back to his feet. Just like that, he felt the brush of his brother’s mind, and his vision blurred as he gained access to Darion’s line of sight as well as his own. There was no resentment, no recrimination, no blame… only the demon that was rounding on them both, acrid sludge pouring from the dozens of mouths that covered its soft, fleshy belly.

They fought like one wolf. Reeve let everything else fall away as he lost himself to the rhythms of battle, all the muscle memory of his training rushing in. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to fight like this, with someone whose movements you could predict as easily as your own. More wolves joined them as they fought to get the great, undulating beast under control—he felt the brush of his old teacher’s mind, falling into perfect lockstep behind him. On the other side of the demon, an almost hysterically eager mind, but the young wolf was as sure and strong as a veteran when he darted in to rip a limb clean off the shrieking demon’s form. It was Kear, the kid who’d approached him what felt like a lifetime ago, eager to help him repair the rift with his brother. Shame he’d had to disappoint him on that front. The least he could do was to help him take down the last of these demons.

It wasn’t long before their victim had dissolved into a thrashing pool of that thick, awful sludge that was the closest thing demons had to blood. Quicker than they’d arrived, he felt the other two wolves peel off to find the next battle to wade into, leaving him briefly alone with his brother. For a moment, they regarded each other with nothing but the quiet acknowledgement of a foe vanquished by their combined effort… and then Darion was gone, paws churning up the soil of the battleground as he hastened towards another fight.

The battle wore on well past midnight, in the end. Reeve lost count of the demons he’d fought, sliding in and out of short-term groupings of wolves who’d come together to take down one foe or another. He couldn’t help but notice that every group he encountered seemed to include wolves from both packs. But that wasn’t the right terminology any longer, was it? There was only one pack now, here on Kurivon… his brother’s pack. The pack he’d chosen to abandon, and yet found himself still haunting like a ghost.

Well, he was determined to make himself a useful ghost. With a few dozen wolves, he headed north to scout the uppermost edge of the battlefield, suspecting that the demons might have a few tricks left up their sleeves. Sure enough, there were more of the creatures lurking in the trees, some of them large enough to merit the whole group merging into one team to take it down.

But even with his muzzle covered in demon blood and the adrenalin singing in his ears, he couldn’t mistake the touch of a familiar mind. There she was, loping through the trees, her russet pelt daubed with blood and a steely determination in her silver eyes. She was wounded, he realized, a blur of phantom pain in his own foreleg reflected in the slight limp in her gait. Fresh fury rose up in him, and he lunged at the demon they were fighting, determined to end its life before Lyrie even reached them. Would she object to his rudeness, he wondered?

He needn’t have worried. As soon as the great beast fell, half a dozen more came skittering out of the trees, as if summoned by the death of the largest. Reeve found himself fighting at Lyrie’s side, struck by how strangely familiar it felt. He’d expected Lyrie to fight exactly like his brother, but he found that nothing could have been further from the truth. For all her hero worship of Darion, Lyrie fought with a style that was all its own. Fluid and shifting like water, always in the right place at the right time… an effortless combination of flawless technique and a willingness to improvise that was downright beautiful. This was how he’d always wanted to fight, he realized, following her lead with a giddy rush. The way she was moving, the way she manipulated the forms to her own advantage… this was exactly the kind of artful rule-breaking his teachers had always punished him for.

It wasn’t long before they stood triumphant over a field of dead and dying demons. Lyrie shifted back, wincing as she held her bloodied arm protectively to her chest, and he joined her, still breathing hard from their exertions. “How do you get away with fighting like that?” he heard himself demand, breathless and irate. “That was—magic. But didn’t the masters rip you apart for breaking the rules?”

Lyrie smiled the broadest smile he’d ever seen, her face alive with the glow of their victory. “Not once I’d beaten them with it,” she said smugly.

He’d never wanted to kiss her more than he did in that moment. But at the same time, he realized that this was the first time they’d spoken since the absolute disaster that had been the dissolution hearing. The look on her face told him that she was thinking the same thing, and they both averted their eyes, looking around aimlessly at the vegetation around them. The other wolves were gone, presumably finishing the scouting mission they’d started now the demons in this part of Kurivon were taken care of.

“I thought you might have left,” she said carefully, not looking at him. “Sailed away and never come back for the duel. There’s precedent. The challenge would stand indefinitely, of course, so you’d never be able to come back… but you could live out the rest of your life out there. I would have liked to know that you were safe out there, somewhere.”

He looked down at her, knowing that she was giving him her tacit blessing to run away. Her approval was more than he deserved, he knew that. And slowly, he shook his head. “No, Lyrie,” he said softly. “Not this time. I ran away from my brother twenty years ago, and look where that got me.” He took a deep breath, knowing as he spoke that it was the only decision that he’d ever be able to live with… even if he didn’t live very long.

“I’m staying for the duel.”

Chapter 14 - Lyrie

There was a very strange atmosphere in town in the days that followed the demon assault. If it wasn’t for everything that was going on with Darion and Reeve, it would have been a time of unbridled celebration. The battle had been an unqualified success. More than a hundred demons had been torn apart, nothing remaining of them but the faint lingering smell of their sulfurous bodies and a few lingering stains on the soil. It was an enormous victory—and all with zero casualties on the side of the wolves of Kurivon. There were a few dozen injuries, of course, a few of them quite serious, but nothing that a few days of rest wouldn’t sort out. Lyrie’s own wound had healed over within a day of the fight, leaving nothing but a faint scar that she knew wouldn’t last longer than a week. And the impact the battle had had on morale was incredible. Every wolf in town was walking with a proud swagger when the sun came up over Kurivon the next day. Just about everyone in town volunteered for cleanup duty, even a few of the injured wolves, who were quickly appointed to supervisory roles. It was barely an hour before the pack had repaired all the damage the demons had managed to do before the alarm had been raised.

The pack, she thought faintly. They’d really taken the singular form of the word to heart, hadn’t they? A few short months ago, there had been two packs, bristling with so much suspicion of one another that they could barely share the same paths. Now, everywhere she went she saw groups of wolves talking and laughing with one another in that oddly beautiful fusion of languages. It was already getting hard to tell a wolf’s native language from the way he spoke the combination.

It was all good news… but Lyrie couldn’t bring herself to feel anything about any of it. All she could think about was the miserable weight of the Blood Rite, pressing down on the future like a great suffocating cloud. She’d been beside herself since the hearing, barely sleeping, barely eating, pacing the floors of the spare room she’d been offered at Syrra and Renfrey’s cottage as she tried to work out a solution to the mess they were in. Her last, desperate hope had been that Reeve would simply run away. Syrra had gone through mountains of records and found a story about a Blood Rite that had ended that way, with one Alpha simply disappearing from the area completely. The thought of never seeing Reeve again was awful, but at least she’d know he was alive out there somewhere. And at least Darion would be spared from the horrible task of killing his own brother in ritual combat.

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