Page 17 of Alpha's Arranged Mate

“I can’t do that,” Dash protested.

The bile in Braxton’s throat started to clot, choking him. Taking a deep breath, he looked the alpha in the eye and asked, “Do you think your two witches can take on all the demon wolves in hell alone? Because that it what they will be doing if you don’t take off these cuffs.”

At his back, Braxton could feel the demon wolves gaining on them. The look in Dash’s mate’s eyes as she stared over his shoulder suggested that they were in very real danger of being burned to a crisp. Even his own skin was beginning to feel the heat of the advancing wolves.

“Dash, you came here for an alliance, how can we possibly have one if you do not trust me enough to remove my cuffs?”

“He’s right, Dash,” Raya, the alpha’s mate said, baring her teeth at the demon wolves coming toward them.

“Stand your ground,” Braxton advised. “They are as frightened of you as you are of them.”

He could only hope that he was telling the truth as he held out his hands and awaited Dash’s final judgment.

At a nod from the alpha, Malia, Emily’s sister, stepped forwards and gripped hold of his cuffs. Closing her eyes, she chanted under her breath, and Braxton felt the cuffs heating around his wrists. They burned so badly that he had to grit his teeth to stop from yelling out loud.

It was as the cuffs came loose that Emily stepped between him and the advancing wolves. Though he could not see it, he could sense the pulsing of the hellstone around her neck as it kept the portal behind them open. At one word from her, he knew it would close, and they would either be trapped in hell or safely back in the Silverdale manor. Either way, he knew they had to get on with things quickly.

Turning to stand at Emily’s side, he watched the fear flash through the demon wolves’ eyes. Though he half-hoped it had been fear at seeing him, deep down he knew that the only thing demon wolves were truly scared of was the stone hanging around the witch’s neck.

Though he had hoped to take the pack upon his own merit, he could see now that the only thing they would listen to was sheer force and numbers. He might well need Dash’s backing along with the witches to get the job done, but first, he had to at least try.

“Stand back,” Braxton hissed to the witch, half-commanding and half-warning.

“I will not be ordered around by a demon wolf,” Emily snapped back at him, but just as quickly the witch was dragged backwards by her sister.

“Let him do what he needs to do,” Malia whispered into her sister’s ear just loudly enough for Braxton’s keen ears to hear it.

Even as the Silverdale wolves pressed themselves back, close around the portal in order to protect it, Braxton stepped forth, and for the very first time in months he shook off his human form.

The pain was excruciating, threatening to burn him up from the inside. Every bone seemed to break a thousand times over, blazing with hellfire as he transformed into the demon wolf he had been born to be, and somehow, he felt much larger than he had before. He knew it was impossible, his demon wolf had been fully grown long ago, but it felt so.

Raising his head to the fiery skies, he released such a howl that it stopped everybody dead in their tracks. The demon wolves who had been hesitantly advancing with bared teeth stopped, their blazing red eyes widening with astonishment at the sight of him.

Things changed quickly after that. Just when he believed he had gotten the attention of them enough to transform back and speak, several of the demon wolves attacked.

They hammered down on him, the sheer weight of their combined bodies dragging him to the floor. Had he been a simple werewolf, his body would have been burned up in an instant.

He fought with all his might until he wasn’t sure he could fight anymore, lashing and biting and clawing until his lungs hurt and his body felt like it might never recover.

And just when he thought it was all over, just when he heard Dash give the order for the witches to help him, Braxton thought, no, I am Alpha!

With another great howl, Braxton forced himself upwards, shouldering the other wolves off him. With a loud, booming growl, he ordered the demon wolves away, and something seemed to switch in his opponents.

As though his alpha heart had finally spoken to their own, they dropped down onto their bellies, their ears flat as they scuttled backwards out of his range.

“What is the meaning of this?” came a sudden voice, one that he knew well. The moment he heard it, he wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or terrified.

The demon wolves before him parted like the Red Sea had parted for Moses as his silver-haired grandmother stepped forwards. A scent that had been familiar to him since childhood flooded into his nostrils, and he immediately felt more at home, but more than that, he sensed the scents of two much younger demon wolves—two that he had longed to see for so long their scents immediately made his heart hurt.

“Diana, Duncan!” he exclaimed, so happy to see his children that tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.

At a gesture from his grandmother, two blazing demon wolves stepped before the four-year-old and his six-year-old sister in order to stop them running into his arms.

“What is this, Braxton? Why have you brought them here?” his grandmother demanded, her voice far more animalistic than human. She glowered at Dash and the others as though she would have liked to tear their throats out.

Immediately seeing the look on her face, Braxton knew exactly what he had to do. It was time to take a leaf out of his father’s book. Though he would never truly be like his father, it was what his pack needed right now, and so he stood up as tall as possible, raised his chin and demanded, “Who are you to question your alpha?”

“Alpha?” his grandmother scoffed, looking at him with fire in her brown eyes. “You are a boy. Who are you to name yourself alpha?”

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