Page 8 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I shouldn’t have yelled at her.

I shouldn’t have expected a young girl from Arbor to understand or accept that she’d been fed ignorant bullshit about witches from birth.

It shouldn’t have bothered me the way it did, and yet I hadn’t been able to keep my emotions in check.

For all the time I spent around my own Pack, none of them were my friends.

They couldn’t be if I wanted to keep my status and my life.

I hadn’t had siblings or a particularly close relationship with my parents when they were alive.

It simply wasn’t how we operated on Ensign.

It was only when Caleb Thorne came to Ensign for his Heir’s Tour and decided that we were going to be friends—and that I was going to be friends with his other friends, whether I liked it or not—that I even realized there had been a void inside me.

In my darker moments, I wondered if I would have ended up like any other Ensign Alpha—caring for nothing but power—if I’d never met them.

I might be the eldest among them, but it was their influence that shaped me, not the other way around.

Seeing how they ran their islands put my own into stark perspective, and they’d inspired me to make changes to Ensign life, even if I could only risk small ones without having half the island challenge me for my position.

My friends were more important to me than they could ever know, and I would defend them until my dying breath.

The same went for their mates. Alyssa and Julia had both been through too much for me to sit back and hear anyone—even a girl who didn’t know what she was talking about—call them unnatural.

If Rosie was going to stay here, she was going to have to learn that witches were people just the same as her.

No matter what apparent insanity she inspired in me, I wouldn’t make my home a place where my friends felt unwelcome.

I would talk to Rosie properly when I returned that evening.

I’d pick her up some more appropriate clothes and sit her down and gently explain that she’d been fed a bunch of lies.

I’d tell her it wasn’t her fault, that she didn’t know better, and that I was sorry for blowing up at her.

In the meantime, I had some steam to let off; the Ensign males were in for a world of hurt.

Usually, I had to contend with at least a little anxiety ahead of every day’s training: the Ensign Alpha only remained in his position for as long as he was the strongest male in the Pack.

The moment I slipped, the moment I lost a fight, I would be facing the threat of deposition.

If I were any other Alpha, I might look forward to it: Sam would no doubt live out the rest of his days on Telaxis in comfort, with the eternal respect of his Pack.

For me, deposition meant death, and any morning might be my last. Any slip would cost me my rank and my life.

There was no room for anxiety that morning; my blood was hot with frustration, my muscles coiled and ready for action.

The door of the training center clattered open as I entered, and every eye in the place was on me.

I was late—not that anyone was going to point that out—and the First Division had been warming up with weights and cardio.

“Drop it. Come in,” I barked, and they scrambled to put down bars, dumbbells, and jump-ropes, rushing to gather around the boxing ring that dominated the space.

At least, most of them did. Two hung back, putting their equipment away with unhurried ease.

I should have expected this from them, but I thought my foul mood would be clear enough to put their egos on ice for at least one morning.

Tanner and Chance were in their mid-twenties, which meant they were old enough to have developed an ego and young enough to be stupid about it.

Both were strong, good fighters who were always willing to test out new developments and work with the weapon developers, but over the last few months, they seemed to love nothing more than testing their boundaries.

Tanner might even be angling for a challenge, but I knew I could put him down if I needed to.

“That means you as well,” I snapped at the pair of them, but Chance only grinned as the pair sauntered over.

“What are you in such a mood for, Alpha?” he asked, like we were buddies meeting for brunch. Before I could snarl another order at him, Tanner decided to contribute to the conversation.

“I saw that girl you brought home from Telaxis,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “With tits like that, I know she’s not a bad fuck.”

The air went out of the room as every other male tensed. Comments like that about another shifter’s female didn’t fly unless you wanted to fight, and I was going to give Tanner exactly what he’d asked for.

“Sounds like someone’s volunteering to go first.”

The color drained from his face, belying the casual shrug with which he responded.

“Bring it,” he said, as if he didn’t know exactly what was in store for him.

I might keep my temper on a short leash most of the time, but I’d let it loose on enough occasions that every male on the island knew what to expect: training was going to be bloody, and whoever went first would probably end up in the med building for the rest of the day.

Even Tanner wasn’t cocky enough to think he’d escape that fate.

“We’ll be doing one-on-ones today,” I announced as Tanner stepped into the ring. “Since Tanner’s feeling brave this morning, he’ll go first, then Chase, then we’ll see who’s feeling brave.”

I turned to Tanner, who was rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck, trying not to look like he was about to piss himself.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Always am,” replied Tanner.

The moment the words left his mouth, I was on him, his cheekbone crunching beneath my knuckles before he knew what was coming.

I didn’t stop there, landing a quick jab to his stomach as his hands sprang up to his face.

He doubled over, winded, and I took a few seconds to ask the surrounding fighters,

“What was Tanner’s first mistake?”

“No honor on the battlefield,” someone called from the back.

“No honor on the battlefield,” I confirmed. “No one’s going to wait for you. They see a chance, they’ll go for the throat.”

Tanner responded exactly as I predicted: by coming at me from behind.

I might have been looking out toward the others, but all my other senses were trained on Tanner behind me.

I heard his exhale as he stood up straight, felt the vibrations of his feet hitting the floor, and the slight shift of the air.

Twisting around, I grabbed his outstretched arm and twisted it hard.

Something gave a wet crack, and Tanner screamed at the same time.

A collective hiss came from the assembled fighters.

“What was Tanner’s second mistake?” I bellowed over the noise.

“Left himself open.” That was Trent. He was a good kid, and he was right.

“Attacking recklessly gives your opponent an advantage,” I said. Tanner was still on his feet, leaning over to cradle his left arm.

“You still going?” I asked him, and he gritted his teeth.

“Yeah,” he said. Idiot.

“Alright.” My right hook found his jaw. Blood sprayed onto the floor of the ring, hitting a young fighter who was leaning against the ropes. “Tanner’s third mistake, anyone?”

“Not protecting his injured side,” answered Damien, one of my Betas, looking amused from where he was leaning on one of the corner posts.

“Correct. Tanner, you’re out. Stay here and watch the others—maybe you’ll learn something—and then you can go to the med building.”

Tanner nodded weakly, struggling to keep his balance as he ducked down to pass between the ropes. No one helped him. On any other day, he’d have been helped down like a hero for staying upright through that beating, but no one wanted to risk my ire.

“Chase, you’re up,” I announced. To his credit, Chase didn’t hesitate before jumping over the ropes and into the ring.

“You learn from Tanner’s mistakes?” I asked him, and he nodded.

“Good.”

I lost count of the fights pretty quickly after that.

Rather than being satisfying, my easy victory over Tanner left me chomping at the bit, needing something to really sink my teeth into.

Chase was no better: he was out cold in under a minute, without me ever needing to shift.

After that, a few of the old hands tried their luck.

They were better. It was easy to get lost in the rhythm of swing, dodge, kick, and duck, man and wolf becoming one as I shifted for a bite before returning to human form.

Every shift was a risk, and when someone finally got me back, the adrenaline coursed through me like a drug.

This was what I was born for. The rush and the thrill and the sting of every blow only pumped me up harder, higher—I was so concentrated on what came next and how my opponent moved that every thought of the morning’s argument and my problematic young wife melted from my mind.

I was no longer a creature of thought, only instinct that drove me to keep going, keep winning, keep showing this Pack that I was strong, that I deserved to be their leader.

I barely even registered when someone called out to me from the door.

“Alpha.”

I landed a knee to the stomach.

“Alpha!”

An elbow to the back of the neck.

“Alpha!”

Knee to the nose, and my latest opponent—a Beta wannabe who was never going to make rank at this rate—slumped to the floor.

“What?” I snapped.

It took a long few seconds for the haze in my mind to clear enough to process what I was seeing: one of my Betas, Cole, was standing in the doorway, looking deeply relieved he was on patrol duty that morning, but I barely spared him a glance.

Rosie stood next to him, held in place by a firm hand around her upper arm, clutching a box in her hands.

She looked nothing short of terrified, her eyes darting from one injured fighter to another, taking in their bloodied mouths and knuckles, the bruising already showing on their ribs and stomachs and, in Tanner’s case, all across his shoulder and down toward his elbow.

“I found her wandering through the male dormitories,” said Cole, and my stomach lurched.

If anyone but him had found her—I couldn’t stand to think about it.

She was wearing her dress from the previous day, its skirt short, its neckline scooped low, and there wasn’t a male Ensign who could have ignored her.

It was my fault she was here. I hadn’t told her that females shouldn’t travel alone on Ensign, hadn’t even considered she might try to leave the house.

Fuck—she looked so frightened, but there was nothing I could do to comfort her now.

Every eye—or at least the ones that weren’t swollen shut—was on me; kindness would be seen as weakness. Any tenderness would make her a target.

“What are you doing here?” I asked bluntly, wiping away a trickle of blood as it ran out of my nose. Rosie said nothing, her eyes once again trained on the floor.

“I’m talking to you, Rosie.” My tone was hard and irritated, making her flinch at the sound of it, but I couldn’t treat her differently than I would any other interruption.

“I—I—” she stammered, “You didn’t take anything with you when you left this morning, so I—I brought you a lunch. Um—and there are some cookies in there, too.”

Her pretty blue eyes were swimming with tears, and I wanted to go to her, to ask her if she was alright, to apologize for losing my temper, to thank her for bringing me food.

I had no doubt that whatever was in that box would be delicious, but I couldn’t take it from her.

If there was any gentleness on Ensign, it happened behind closed doors.

“So you thought you’d just go on a little jaunt through the male dormitories?” I sneered, hating myself with every word. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed, or worse. Cole, take her back to the house.”

I did my best not to look at her as Cole nodded and tugged her back toward the door, but the soft sound of her sobbing in the silence was enough to break my heart.