Page 34 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 33

The Stronger Mate

FLOR

M y heart was still beating, but I wasn’t sure how. It felt like someone had torn it out when Mama had died, and stomped it flat. The bonds that connected me to my mates, even muted, were all that was keeping me on my feet right now. Well, that and Brand’s strong arm. He was trying his best to take some of my pain away, but there was nothing that would do that, nothing except time.

And maybe killing a few of these toadfuckers before the moon set.

“Stole your position?” Aidan’s calm reply had me jolting to attention. Flanked by two tall Enforcers, the red-haired Alpha was staring down Bradley Hillier like he was no more threatening than a bug on his windshield.

I was worried that if they fought, he might wipe Bradley out just as fast as a bug. Glen’s dad was wrecked, weak not only from the past few weeks of starvation and silver exposure in the lower levels, but the previous ones spent in a coma at Northern. It was brave of him to challenge Aidan, but foolish. He might win, but it was by no means a sure thing.

“No, Bradley, I’ll do it,” Brand said, at the same moment Finn replied, “I’ll challenge him.”

Aidan’s face began to turn red as he focused on Finn’s words. “You already betrayed your pack once, boy. I was merciful and let you live. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Bradley faced Brand and spoke earnestly. “We both know you’re not some power-hungry Alpha, but Aidan’s done a good job riling up the crowd. If you win, there’s no way they’ll see it as anything other than the world’s strongest Alpha trying for more power.” Bradley’s lips tipped up. “The world’s most honorable Alpha, as well. I… am proud to know you.”

I didn’t like that pause. Like he’d been about to say, I was proud to know you.

Finn interrupted. “Bradley, no. Let me challenge him. I deserve to give him back some of what he gave me.”

“No, Finnick. It’s my place to fight him.” Bradley’s voice rose, before he pressed a kiss to his mate’s hair and stepped away. Margarette’s expression was grim, her eyes haunted as she watched him walk into the center of the ring. “Aidan stole my position while I was recovering from illness and injury. He used that role to accuse me and my mate of being traitors to our own pack, in an effort to hold onto that power.”

Aidan scoffed. “Or so you’d like to believe. Do you deny what you did, Bradley? Do you deny slaughtering a large number of your highest ranked Enforcers, executing them when they only followed your leadership, your pack laws?”

Bradley stiffened. “I don’t deny killing them. And I don’t deny that the rules we had in place not only caused suffering to our unranked, our most vulnerable, but created an environment where the most reprehensible urges of many of my Enforcers were given the chance to be expressed, and harm our pack.”

Aidan blinked in shock. “You admit you don’t deserve to be Alpha of Northern? Then how can you pretend to be fit to challenge me as the Head of the North American Council?”

Bradley’s voice cracked as he replied, “I may not be worthy of any role. My Heir is Patrick Hillier, and I believe he will far surpass me as Alpha of Northern.”

Aidan’s face went comically red, and Brand smiled. “Nice one, Alpha Hillier.” When I shot him a questioning look, he leaned down and murmured, “Bradley just named his Heir in the Council ring, before witnesses. Pretty sure Aidan was hoping to vacate the position without an Heir and place one of his shitheads in the spot.” Finn nodded in agreement.

“I may not be worthy,” Bradley repeated, lifting his chin. “But you definitely aren’t, Aidan. I challenge you now as Alpha of the North American Council. How shall we fi—” Before he could finish, Aidan had already attacked, leaping forward and delivering a brutal roundhouse kick to Bradley’s chest.

Margarette cursed as her mate skidded across the dirt, a cloud of dust rising up from his fall. I nudged Brand, and we slowly worked our way closer to her as the fight went on. If this went to shit—and from the first few exchanges of blows, it was going very wrong for Bradley—she would need us close.

Aidan and Bradley fought without speaking, and even though I didn’t want to see anything to admire in the elder McDonnell, his fighting style was impossible not to appreciate. Every move was efficient, every response to an attack measured and calculated to use the least energy. He caught Bradley’s fist and turned, pulling the Northern Alpha in a circle and rotating his right arm. There was a sickening crunch, and Bradley cried out, the first sound besides heavy breathing and grunts either had made.

He broke away, his right arm dangling loose at his side, the shoulder dislocated, or something in the joint broken. He didn’t have time for it to heal, and I wasn’t sure it would anyway. It was our connection to the moon—or an Alpha’s connection to his pack—that gave us our quick healing. The moon’s power was shut off somehow, and there was only one other Northern pack member for him to draw strength in the closed circle from.

I glanced up at Margarette, who had moved a few steps away from Mama’s body, and was staring intently at her mate, probably trying to channel into him whatever power she had left after their imprisonment. I was pretty sure it wasn’t working.

Before I could check to see if Luke’s cuts had healed from his fight— don’t think about Mama, I reminded myself as my wolf whimpered. Don’t think about it now, we can grieve later —Aidan had attacked again. Bradley was thrown across the ring entirely, and I knew Aidan had to be pulling on his pack’s power to strengthen his blows. This time, though, Bradley landed at Brand’s feet, lying only a few feet away from Margarette and me.

No one approached Brand, not even Aidan, for a moment, as Margarette dropped to her knees and crawled toward her mate, cupping his battered face in her hands. He didn’t have the strength to do more than lift one hand. “I’m sorry, my love,” he rasped.

“No,” she half-shouted, pressing her forehead to his bloody one before staring into his face, wild-eyed. “No, Bradley, no . You can’t?—”

He pressed two fingers against her lips, and smiled somehow. “My love, I need you… to promise me…” He coughed, and a dribble of blood fell from his mouth to the ground. He gasped a few more times, trying to speak, but the only sounds that emerged were those of his lungs wheezing. Had a lung collapsed? He groaned in pain. Behind him, Aidan slunk closer, and Brand snarled a warning.

Finally, Bradley drew a small breath and whispered, his voice as quiet as leaves falling, “Love, promise me… you’ll go on. Fight on. For Patrick. For our pack. We… have so much… to make right.”

She pressed kisses against his mouth, then his cheeks, his eyes, everywhere she could reach. Frantic, as if she could create a shield formed from her love, to carry back into the battle. To protect him, when she couldn’t. “No, Bradley, you have to live. I can’t go on without you.”

He smiled again, though his eyes were already clouding. “My love, you can. You were… always the stronger… of us. You made me… a better?—”

His head fell, but before I could tell if he’d died, Aidan was there, dragging him back into the ring by one leg. Brand dropped to one knee, holding Margarette back when she tried to throw herself over her mate.

It seemed cruel, but I saw why he’d intervened. All around us, Enforcers had their guns in hand, barrels pointing at her. They would love the excuse to kill her for interfering with the Alpha challenge.

Though the challenge was already over.

In a second, Aidan had Bradley on the ground in the center of the ring again, the bad arm twisted farther behind his back, tearing it so thoroughly, I was almost sure nothing but skin was holding it on.

“Bradley!” Margarette screamed, trying to crawl toward him, intent on reaching her mate even if it meant she pulled her own arm off to get away from Brand. I dropped next to her, taking that arm, both arms, and wrapping my own around her. If she interrupted now, she would die, too.

“You have to stay strong, Margarette. You need?—”

She snarled up at me, her eyes bloodshot, her wolf ascendant. “Why? Why do I need to be strong?”

I wanted to tell her all the reasons. Because she was my mate’s mother, and losing her would mean he’d lost both of his parents in one hour.

Because I’d just had that happen to me, and I didn’t know if I could bear to feel that pain again, through my bond with Glen, and in my own breaking heart.

Because she was the first woman who’d ever approved of me. Who’d thought my fighting and training was commendable, and not some sort of failing.

Because she had a pack that at least for a while would have no Alpha, and the women and girls there didn’t deserve what would happen to them if Aidan and his pack were allowed to hold onto their rule.

Because even after all the shit we’d gone through, I loved her, and I couldn’t lose the only other woman I thought of as a mother tonight. I needed her. Our world needed her.

None of that would convince her wolf. But I knew what would.

I bared my own teeth, allowing my wolf’s growl to fill my voice. “Because I don’t know if I can kill them all without your help.”

Her eyes lit up with a fire deep within, her decision made. “I’ll stay. I’ll stay until every last one is dead.”

I held her hands as tight as I could as Bradley’s final whimper reached our ears. Then a howl went up from the ring, followed by an answering one from the wolves in the crowd, then a few scattered half-hearted human cheers.

“He’s dead,” Brand breathed. “May the moon light his journey to the other side. May he run with his pack from now until we join him in the skies.”

I grunted as Margarette crumpled in my arms. Had she fainted? She was still alive; I could see her breath in the frigid air, her pulse moving under her skin.

“The moon’s justice has been served!” Aidan’s voice was a crow of victory.

I was on my feet, my steak knife in my hand, before I knew what was happening, the familiar, uncomfortable buzzing in my head that had started at Southern long ago filling my senses. I would kill him. I would cut off his head and?—

“Flor.” Brand’s voice was as filled with despair as I’d ever heard. I blinked, noticing his hands were on my arms now, holding me like I’d just held Margarette, keeping me from throwing myself toward Aidan.

Aidan, the snake, had won. He stood, his teeth bared in a maniacal grin, with one foot on top of Bradley’s neck, and a fist in the air, like he’d achieved some great victory, rather than defeating an opponent who he’d tortured and starved beforehand. He called out to someone, asking for… a sword? Why? Bradley was dead.

His laughter split the night as he lifted a sword—it had to be silver, from the stench that wafted from it on the wind. He was going to… cut off Bradley’s head? That was the death reserved for shifters who died without honor, who betrayed their pack, or dishonored the moon.

And this fucker thought he was going to do that to Bradley? To Margarette and Glen?

A rage began building inside me that didn’t resemble the fuzzy madness that I’d felt in battle, and I pressed one hand to my chest.

But the rage wasn’t coming from me, or not just from me. It was Brand, and Luke, and Finn, their emotions echoing through me. Growing in silence, only requiring one breath of wind to fan the flames of rage into a firestorm so destructive, no one would survive it.

Aidan could not be allowed to do this, but how could I stop him?

Del’s voice echoed softly in my mind. Surprising your enemy won’t give you a lot of time. But it might give you enough.

I couldn’t move, not with all those guns on me. But maybe. I took a chance, throwing back my head, and let loose a howl of equal parts pain and threat. It worked. The sound was high and haunting, a wolf’s promise of death made with a human throat, and Aidan’s arm wobbled just long enough.

Then another voice split the night. “I challenge you, Aidan McDonnell!”