Page 27 of Scapegoat

“Hey…”

I jerked my head off the pillow, the dream where Kaia and I were locked together tighter than Fort Knox still playing out in my head, but it wasn’t my mate standing there, it was my dads.

“What?” I snapped. I had no chill when woken up.

“The alphas have agreed to allow the challenge to take place tomorrow,” Jackson said. “Well, today now. It’s 2am. Get up, have a shower and then meet us downstairs in twenty. It’s go time.”

I rolled out of bed then, his words clearing my head better than anything else. The challenge. This was more than me and my brothers finding our wolves. Today we were going to find out if we were suitable mates for Kaia and potential leaders of the pack. So I stumbled into the en suite and turned the taps on, ready to carpe this diem.

The dads obviously got Xavier and Atlas up too, because by the time I stumbled out, Xave was brushing his teeth and Atlas was pushing past me into the shower.

“So we’re gonna do this?” I asked the two of them, forcing them to pause.

“We’re gonna do this,” Xavier replied with a nod. “For Kaia.”

“For Kaia,” we all agreed.

So that was the kind of energy we brought to the challenge. We ran downstairs dressed in loose clothing. We would need something we could get out of quickly when the change happened and we met our wolves, and I could feel mine shift inside me in anticipation. Alert, finely tuned to the environment and ready to go in a way I’d never be able to match when I was running the show. I was shit in the mornings. But the wolf had my eyes shifting, away from the dads and towards the staircase.

“What about Kaia?” Atlas asked, his wolf thinking the same thing as mine. “She should come.”

“She—” Jackson started to reply.

“Will just be a distraction,” Greg finished. My other dad frowned slightly but then nodded. “You need to focus on the dominance fight. Remember the Randalls?”

Four of their boys had proposed a challenge to the alphas when they came of age and it’d all gone very badly for them. They’d been so focussed on their girl, they’d barely made it five seconds against the alphas. Michelle, the girl they were so into? She left them for someone else when they weren’t successful.

And we couldn’t have that.

Kaia was far more loyal than Michelle, but we didn’t want to put her in that position. If we failed at this, we’d all be forced out of town… I jerked my attention back to the dads.

“All right, let’s get this show on the road then,” I said. “We’ll smash the challenge and then be back before Kaia even wakes up, ready to serve her eggs, bacon and piping hot alphas for breakfast.”

“You fucking idiot,” Xavier muttered. “If we fuck up because of you—”

“Stay focussed.” Atlas didn’t have the last word often, but he did now. We all nodded slowly and then moved out, climbing into our dads’ truck.

“Do us proud today,” Greg said, staring at us in the rear vision mirror. “Just do your best. It’s all anyone can ask of you.”

But doing our best was never going to be enough, not for Kaia. She deserved so much more than that. To find her wolf, that was the first thing. Once she did, she’d become recognised as an adult in the pack and never have to deal with her stupid bitch of a mother again. But the second? Omega Campbell? That had a damn nice ring to it. She’d wear my marks and Xavier’s, alongside Atlas’. Not only would she belong to us for the rest of her life, but a small shitty part of me loved the idea of her lording it over her mother at council meetings, shouting her down or fuck, silencing her outright. Omegas had the power to overrule anyone, even if they didn’t use it often, and if Kai couldn’t, I would. Those vicious little fantasies kept me amused, right up until we reached the forest.

It was very early in the morning, the moon still high and the sun nowhere in sight, so the night air was cool, curls of mist rising in the moist air as we passed. Made the place look damn spooky until we stumbled out into a clearing to find the alphas standing there along with some of the other boys.

Their son, Colin, and a few of his buddies, were going to have a crack at the challenge, as well as some guys who’d been puffed up by their dads, despite all evidence to the contrary. They weren’t challengers.

We were.

“Welcome.” Brock was one of the alphas and he stepped forward then to survey the lot of us. “Today all of you will find your wolves.” No question there, even though a very small minority didn’t. The guy just gave off serious vibes, like he could see the future or something. “And today you get to find out, one way or the other, if you are the next leaders of this pack.”

His eyes, and that of the other alphas, scanned the lot of us. They all seemed to take our measure in a neutral, observant way. We were left to fill in the gaps in what they didn’t say, what they didn’t do, work out for ourselves if that was good, bad or indifferent. But somehow I knew. When Brock’s eyes met mine, each time any of the alphas stared at me, I felt like they were looking back at an equal.

Because this was the first part of the challenge.

Dominance was like a vibe, an atmosphere, but it took on a strange kind of weight. It wasn’t just that someone that was more dominant could trick you into backing down, scare you into doing what they wanted. You had to. You moved without meaning to, obeying them, and the flush of shame that came afterwards? It stopped you from trying shit with them again, to save face.

I saw the other boys in the clearing tense their muscles, cords standing out in their necks as they tried to hold the alphas’ eyes. Small groans of frustration made clear how successful they were. But us? It took nothing to meet their gaze. I could feel their dominance like it was a weight on my chest, but it was one I could carry easily. I straightened up, squared my shoulders and stared right back, making clear my intent, my brothers doing the same.The alphas nodded to me and mine and that’s when I felt a white hot burst of something. Relief, I later realised. We’d passed. We’d fucking passed. As long as we could get through the pack fights, we’d—

“We’ll summon forward your wolves now,” Jack, another alpha said. The other two men stepped forward then and faced down each group. “And when you are in fur, you’ll have your one and only chance to fight this shit out.” Muttering immediately started around the circle of boys. “Under our instruction. The bonds you’ve created with the other men around you will be respected. You’ll have a chance to test them today. We’ll pit one group against the other until only one lot stands.”

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