Page 5 of Never Submit (Bad Wolves #2)

Chapter 5

Noble

“ E yes ahead,” Torin mutters under his breath to me.

He’s telling me to focus on the fucking meeting rather than the murderous urges bubbling inside.

Mathis and Dax are already there, and the former turns to watch our approach. Fuck, we’re late, which already gives them the edge. It might be enough to counteract the fact that they reached out for this meeting with us first. Maybe we’re even? I can’t even think.

Can’t keep my thoughts from tangling together.

I’d rather be smashed by a rampaging hippo. I’d rather have my toenails ripped out one at a time, anything but force myself to be civil with fucking Dax.

The dude needs to be put to sleep before he causes any more damage. For Ren, I’ll do all of that and more.

Standing in the forest clearing, our neutral space between pack territories where our alphas can meet to speak or exact justice, is no picnic either. Not when I’m waiting for Torin to crack the veneer of ice surrounding him .

A bonfire crackles merrily in a ring of stones but the energy is tense and constricting, an inevitable implosion while the four of us hold our breath and wait.

One of them will break first.

I guarantee it.

“Well?” Torin drawls loudly. He holds a hand out to the dancing flames and smirks. “We’re here, but what I don’t understand is why. What do you possibly have to say that can’t be done over the phone?”

“It’s neutral ground, and we’ve used this place before,” the other alpha snaps. “What’s your problem with the forest? Afraid you’ll ruin your Louis Vuitton?”

“More like I’ll need another tetanus shot,” Torin growls back.

It’s difficult to speak as I take in the others. The darkness around us is thick where dusty snowflakes float through the air and shadows swallow the last light.

Torin adjusts the set of his jacket, looking more human than I’ve seen him lately. As though he’s forced his wolf right down into the depths of him along with his feelings.

“Never thought I’d see an alpha terrified of nature.” Mathis sniffs disapprovingly.

Torin grunts and replies, “I never thought I’d see an alpha wear so much plaid. I guess both of us are surprised today.”

And he’s stooping, I see, down to a level where neither of us should be. It’s not good for his image and worse for our position.

The Grey Valley pack sent word ahead of time to set up this meeting. Even though I had been trying to convince Torin to seek Mathis’s help, it seems he beat us to the punch. They need our help. Which means they are in the palm of our hand if we play this right, but Torin isn’t seeing straight. He’s been on edge ever since our conversation.

Ever since Ren came into our lives.

Mathis wants to have a meeting to discuss forward movement. The Grey Valley and Steel Claws don’t do meetings. Not the civil kind. Our kind fight, with teeth and claws and tradition.

The four of us haven’t even talked since our failed trek to the shrine.

I cross my arms over my chest and stare Mathis down as he takes a step toward Torin.

“At least I’m comfortable,” Mathis says with an annoyingly tight smile. “You could stand to pull the stick out of your ass before we start. Might give you a clearer head.”

“Yes, I can see your comfort level.” Torin bares his teeth. “I’ve always suspected Paul Bunyan was your idol, but aren’t you taking the hero worship a bit too far?”

I stare over their heads towards Dax prowling around the clearing, pacing back and forth like one of those pitiful tigers you see at a traveling circus.

Miserable, caged, out of his fucking mind.

He catches me looking and pauses, lifting a brow and licking his lips.

Temper bubbles low in my stomach.

Just give me a reason to react, I dare you .

Torin isn’t having any of this crap, so I keep my thoughts to myself, holding my body in check.

Because fuck him right now. Not literally, but he might as well bend himself over and insert a fire poker right up the old bum hole, if there’s even room.

“I didn’t bring you out here to discuss my wardrobe.”

No one else notices the way Mathis widens his stance, his boots dragging paths through the frozen dirt, and patches of mud crisping the fabric around his knees.

In contrast, Torin is the epitome of commerce in his expensive suit, utterly out of place here.

All this for him. I swallow down a sneer, shaking my head.

I’ve given him everything. Got up and walked away from a life that finally belonged to me, just because he needed me. Now I put myself in Dax’s orbit, for him.

No, I mentally correct. It’s for Ren. It’s all for her.

My only hope is that Mathis wants to get her back, too. I might have more of a chance of convincing him than I did with Torin, my own damn friend.

Alpha, whatever.

“The Moonstone,” Mathis continues when Torin stays purposely silent.

“Yes, I understand from your call. You want to work together to retrieve it.”

The desperate need to roll my eyes is a twitch beneath my skin. An unscratchable itch.

“Is it so crazy?” Mathis bites out.

Torin is calm on the surface. “It’s insane. We’re rivals. We don’t work?—”

“We’ve done it before, even if briefly. So repeating it isn’t going to make it any less real. We’re already here,” I interrupt.

Torin slowly lifts his hands to his hair, pushing back the wisps that have escaped from his back knot. The movement hides the truth. How he’s ready to erupt beneath the layer of ice.

We’ve known each other since we were boys, grew up alongside each other, both training for some kind of high pack status we didn’t want .

Torin always supported my dreams, and more–he had paid for my parents in their nursing home. Things change. Life shifts on a dime.

It’s as inevitable as taxes and just as shitty when you realize it.

Torin stares at a smudge on his cufflink. “Perhaps it would have been better to erase the Grey Valley off the map back when your beta chased Kelee off a cliff.”

Hearing my sister’s name sends ice along my spine.

I had wanted blood. I’d wanted a war, even though Torin was the new alpha and right in the middle of a transition period. He’d refused to attack, claiming he was too weak of an alpha to do it, and we hadn’t spoken for years.

“The best thing we can do is to focus on a future where we collaborate rather than fight,” Mathis replies.

He stands straight, but I see his hackles lift. Dax snarls out a warning.

“I already have. I’m simply wondering what your angle is.” Torin drums his fingers on his thigh before slowly throwing his shoulders back. “You know I would never willingly help you find the Moonstone only to give it up. If we do get it back from our enemy, then I’m not going to just hand it over to you. So why do you need us?”

The unspoken name clangs between us even in the silence: Ren .

She’s the angle.

The one neither of us is willing to talk about, not since I told Torin about our mating bond and he lost his goddamn mind. There are feelings there, unspoken, bubbling beneath the surface, and they seem to piss him off more than anything else.

Bitterness rises up to choke me. I never thought that someone who claimed to be my best friend could be jealous of me.

“Perhaps there are more important things to focus on than a war that never happened and an artifact we both want.” My vocal cords constrict, my mouth going dry.

I’m only here because of my duty to Torin. Every other piece of me wants to go back out to follow the energy connection to my mate.

“Eager to find her, but I’m the one out there doin’ all the work,” Dax says, speaking at last.

I focus on him. “Excuse me?”

“What the hell are you doing to locate Red? Not a damn thing.”

Dax’s eyes light with a feral glee at my approach, and I swear he’s salivating, already a half second from shifting. My fingers claw at my sides.

I’m gonna tear you apart, asshole.

Torin stops me with a harsh command, thrusting his arm out despite the feet separating us.

“Look.” Mathis is the first to break. His expression remains hard, his eyes like two pieces of coal and his mouth a thin line. “Cards on the table. Ren and the Moonstone are our top priority. Dax has been tracking her, but we haven’t had any luck and the seriousness of the threat is growing. Andras has targeted my pack. We are losing people almost daily. We need help.”

“Will it make you feel better if I agree to this?” Torin sounds smug.

He slides his hands into the pockets of his coat as I move into position at his side again, chastised and furious. Inclined to step in if necessary.

And judging by the look Dax wears? It might be fucking necessary .

“None of this makes me feel better,” Mathis argues. “Do you think I’d give a rat’s ass about you if I had a choice? No. I’m out of options.”

I shiver but it has nothing to do with the chill in the air and everything to do with the mate bond and how every single one of us here wants to get her back. Not just me.

“I’m not sure what you think we know, but we’re running blind here.” I take a risk in speaking before Torin and earn a warning glare from my alpha. “And we have much more of a reason to find Ren than you do.”

“Eyes on the prize there, huh, Nobie ?” Dax says with his eyes narrowed on me. Firelight glints in the black depths.

“Of course. And don’t you worry, I plan to be the one to get her back, too,” I snap back to him.

Mathis sighs.

He might have found Dax in the woods, but a tragic backstory isn’t going to make me lower my guard, like it did for the alpha of the Grey Valley pack. I don’t care how many good memories they have together.

Dax is my enemy.

He killed my sister with his fucking power play bullshit.

“I’m a better tracker,” Dax grunts, more wolf than man. “I’m the best we’ve got. And I’m coming up blank. So Mathis thinks we need your help.”

As much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. And unlike Torin, I can push aside my own damn pride. I’ll use him as a means to an end if his skills with tracking can find Ren.

I’m glaring daggers through him but each one bounces off. I’m not sure if he simply doesn’t care, or if he’s oblivious, lost in the fantasy in his head where he’s the hero and not the villain.

“What’s that face? Poor sad little Noble. Is he the only one of us here who hasn’t had his cock in the woman?” Dax laughs. It’s not a nice sound. “No wonder he’s so desperate to find her and break off a piece.”

Torin’s voice darkens. “Control your animal or else I’ll have the pleasure.”

Mathis nods, his hands clenched at his sides before he turns to Dax and barks out a warning.

“I might not have fucked her, but I’m the only one of us with a mate bond,” I reply.

Torin sucks in a breath then growls, but Mathis and Dax are still. Silent.

They must have suspected, at the very least, but it takes Dax a second to actually understand me. Emotions play across his face before his eyes go stormy.

Murderous.

Without warning, Dax releases a hiss of air like a popped balloon and launches himself at me.

I stop him dead in his tracks before he has a chance to land a hit, reacting with a right hook to his gut. Watching in glee as Dax doubles over before I kick him in the knee to get him back a step.

There’s a reason that Mathis unleashes Dax when it comes time for punishment. The big bastard doesn’t back down.

I’ve fought him several times and even though we both left bruised and bloody, neither of us has broken any bones.

No time like the present.

His scarred knuckles drive right into the side of my face and split my lip. “You motherfucker! You had no right!”

“I have every right!”

Pain blossoms across my cheek, and I clamp my palm against his throat, loving the sight of Dax starting to choke.

Torin straightens and watches the two of us try to beat the shit out of each other. He looks like he doesn’t care if we have a little fun, but I know him. He’s seething. Tensed, watching us.

Mathis is the killjoy who steps in right as I kick Dax in his fucking balls. He yelps and the hit is the only thing that keeps him from fighting back when Mathis pulls him away.

I snort at that.

“If we’re done acting like children now,” Torin says in the sudden silence, “then I will let you know that the crystal disappeared with Ren, and since Andras has her, he now has it in his possession. He must be planning something big.”

Sweat drips down Dax’s face once he’s done destroying several saplings around us, and finally he returns to Mathis’s side, breathing heavily.

“Are you seriously more concerned for the crystal than for your beta’s mate?” Mathis seems to take the news in stride.

I keep my lips zipped, lungs working like bellows. Blood drips from my mouth, and I spit and send it spraying across the snow-dusted ground.

“I don’t care about the girl. It’s the stone I want,” Torin replies. “The same way you want the stone.”

“It’s better for us to focus on the stone, I agree. It is the only weapon capable of stopping Andras and his tidal wave of destruction,” Mathis grumbles.

It shocks me to hear him agree. Weird for him and Torin to be of the same mind.

Something about this meeting is different.

The quality of our interactions has changed, even when I swipe my hand against my face and it comes away smeared in blood.

What’s one more scar ?

“You two might not care about what happens to Ren but I do.” I huff out a breath. “She is the most important thing to me. And I don’t give a fuck what anyone says. I’m searching for her .”

Torin’s face is locked in a no-blink contest with me, like he’s waiting for me to argue with him.

But I only look at the others and wait for them to speak. Only to realize Dax is gone.

Somewhere along the line, he disappeared, sneaking out.

Fucking prick .

Trust him to take off rather than do his job. That guy’s always doing whatever he wants, not obeying rules. Well, screw him.

“As I said before, Andras has set his sights on my pack, and I’m not willing to sit around and wait for him to destroy us completely,” Mathis says simply. It’s a small display of vulnerability and one that alphas don’t normally admit to each other. Which means things are really bad right now.

Torin leans back with a smirk curling his lips. “Should have thought twice before you let that crystal out of your sight, then. We’ll think about it and get back to you.”

He snaps his fingers and gestures behind him. The argument is done, and he’s not willing to wait around and allow Mathis the last word.

Like an obedient fucking asshole, I trail Torin out

He’s quiet on our way down to our black SUV. Several of his deltas fall in behind him, searching the briar-clogged paths and the line of the forest for any perceived threat.

I have to remind myself that so many deltas and bodyguards are necessary. We’d barely made it off the mountain before. As it was, we’d come back with more injuries than we would have thought for a simple scuffle. But there was nothing simple about it.

Andras had planned the entire thing, and only the tenuous bond of energy still flickering between me and Ren keeps me from thinking she had anything to do with the ambush. She was the reason the four of us went to the shrine. No one else knew about the trek.

How did Andras find out?

How did he find us?

Torin settles in the backseat while I take the passenger side, clicking the seatbelt home. “I’m sorry.” He’s so quiet I barely hear the words.

“For what?” Now I sound like a bitch, and my lip stings when I move it.

I’m too pissed off to keep my voice from echoing the feelings.

“You’re really going to make me say it?” he asks.

I straighten and pause. “You bet your ass.” An apology is a long time coming.

“For being cruel to you when it comes to your mate bond.” He sounds like he’d rather eat dirt than say those words. “I can…I can’t imagine how it feels.”

I want to needle him, the way I’ve always done. Like when he got engaged to Catarina, and I used to tease him about how she looked like she was always smelling something bad, despite the skintight dresses and the makeup.

It’s not my place to question him, though. Not my place to make any of the important decisions for him. It’s his, and it’s a burden I wouldn't want to shoulder anyway.

“Keep it in mind the next time you want to throw a tantrum,” I say at last. “Because I’m not always going to fall in line easily.”

“I don’t expect you to,” he says gruffly. “That’s why you’re my friend. You’re the only one who’s honest with me.”

I’ve got to change the subject. “What do you think? About them needing help?”

Torin pauses, groaning in the back of his throat, before he says, “I think it might be the only chance we’ve got to truly get the upper hand on Mathis, and we’d be foolish not to take it.”

“A double cross?” I clarify.

“A means to an end until we get what we want.” When I glance at him in the rearview mirror, he has his head tipped back and his eyes closed. “We’re going to play games with the devil. And see which one of us comes out with the Moonstone at the end.”