Page 81 of Marked for the Pack

“Freya!”

Chapter 27

Heath

Gage, Flint, and I took turns at Freya’s side, refusing to leave her alone until she healed. Especially since we considered ourselves in hostile territory. Days passed slowly as we waited, anxiously hoping for any sign of change.

The finest healers in the Frost Fang pack kneeled at her bedside, following orders from their new pack alpha to heal his mate or else. But the truth was, no one knew exactly how to treat wolfsbane in a half-breed wolf shifter who couldn’t shift.

We even contacted Shante, who contacted Brielle. The healers tried everything Brielle suggested to no avail.

If Freya had been a full witch, perhaps her magical blood would’ve cleared the poison more easily. If she’d been a full wolf shifter, she might have already been dead, since wolfsbane prevented shifting, which was the only way to heal fast enough to stay ahead of its effects.

It was a wicked poison, and for one wolf shifter to use it on another was enough to make all but the most loyal wolves turn their back on Nira. Many Frost Fang wolves had already done exactly that after word spread that Gage had defeated Nira in a pack alpha duel. Wolves came from across the packlands to swear their loyalty to Gage, their new pack alpha by right of combat.

One day at Freya’s bedside, Flint murmured to Gage, “Frost Fang is wondering if you intend to change the name of their pack.”

I smirked, noticing how he said ‘their pack.’ The Frost Fang pack had once exiled all of us. Gage may have bested their pack alpha, but Frost Fang would never truly be our pack ever again.

“No,” Gage growled. “We are the Howling Echo. They are Frost Fang.”

His words gave both my wolf and me a great deal of satisfaction. Gage had put his finger on exactly what had been bothering me these last few days… We weren’t Frost Fang. We were the Howling Echo. Nothing would change that.

When one pack conquered another, the victors usually gave their pack name to the conquered. Except in the case of Denraider, where they enslaved most of the conquered, refusing to bring them into the safety of the pack.

On very rare occasions, the victorious pack alpha would come up with a new pack name or an amalgamation of both names, such as Howling Frost or Fanged Echo, but I knew Gage would never go for something like that. Frost Fang held too many dark memories, and he wouldn’t want his past intruding on what he’d built on his own, free of this place.

Still, his new duties as pack alpha over Frost Fang often took him away from Freya’s side, which he hated. But Flint and I reminded him over and over that we would be there for her, and that, as the new pack alpha, only he could do what needed to be done.

In the meantime, that meant Gage assigned me a different task.

“Call Rowan,” Gage said with a strange light in his eyes as he followed Flint from Freya’s room. “There’s no need for him to stay on that job now that things have changed.”

He was right. The jobs we’d once taken to keep the Howling Echo afloat were no longer necessary. Our money troubles had disappeared overnight. Everything that once belonged to Gage’s father, to his brother, or to Nira now belonged to him, as the new Frost Fang pack alpha.

It also meant Gage could distribute the pack’s funds however he wanted to. In states like ours that ran under pack law, the pack alpha’s decisions were final. His rule went unquestioned. No one could challenge his edicts unless they challenged him for pack alpha status.

As crazy as it sounded, Gage’s new status as the pack alpha of Frost Fang solved a lot of our problems. We all knew we could better protect Freya with a big pack behind us. But it also introduced new problems, like not knowing who might stab us in the back. Word had already gotten back to the Ironwood pack somehow that Luka’s future betrothed was dead and displaced, leaving the pack alliance in question.

My friend Gage had enjoyed running a small pack that never played by the rules. But now he’d been pulled back into the old game, and there were plenty of political landmines to dance around. Thanks to my father, I could help Gage spot some of them before he stumbled over them, but I was out of practice, too.

Gage hadn’t formally decreed Flint and me as his enforcers yet, but since we’d been his enforcers in the Howling Echo pack, no one questioned it. When Flint or I gave an order, most Frost Fang wolves jumped to obey. Not all of our decisions were popular, however…

We executed every one of Nira’s allies who’d laid a hand on Freya, just as Gage had promised — including Karina. Then Gage exiled the rest of his father’s old mates, the ones who helped Nira kill Garth. Without an ounce of remorse, he sent the older, subordinate female wolves out into the wildlands to die.Our pack alpha knew Frost Fang needed to take him seriously, and he didn’t hesitate to show them what happened to traitors.

Out of spite, he began forcing the rest of Frost Fang to swear fealty to him one by one. After all, the pack had done nothing when Garth exiled Gage — none of our old friends had spoken out about it. Frost Fang had even accepted Nira as their sole pack alpha after the mysterious circumstances of Garth’s death. Gage wisely didn’t trust a soul.

While either Flint or I stayed behind with Freya, the other accompanied Gage to the throne room. Probably under Nira’s influence, Garth had become a bit of an egomaniac after banishing Gage and had set up a throne. In the throne room, we took turns with Gage, using our alpha-bark on the wolves who came to bow at his feet, forcing them to tell the truth about where their loyalty lay. We exiled a dozen more wolves in the first five days alone.

Today, it was my turn at Freya’s side again, and I took her limp hand, lacing my fingers between hers.

“Wake up for me, Freya,” I whispered, wishing my alpha-bark could force her to heal.

I waited patiently for a few minutes, watching the life sign monitors. As always, I grew more and more frustrated by the beeping machines. No change.

Not having anything else to do gave me time to carry out Gage’s latest order. With my hand still in Freya’s, I grabbed my phone and called Rowan’s burner phone. The one we weren’t supposed to call except under dire emergency… or to call off the deal. Well, this qualified as both, as far as I was concerned.

He didn’t answer, but I didn’t necessarily expect him to. The job had put Rowan undercover in a pack I held no love for — the Elder Forest pack, the pack my father had joined after my exile from Frost Fang. The shame of my exile had been too much formy father to bear, so he’d left Frost Fang as well and found a pack that would indulge his political power plays.

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