Page 172 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

The barrens seemed as good a place as any to make our stand.

Once I’d gotten my bearings after escaping Devin’s temporary camp, I’d realized that he hadn’t been all that far from the barrens after all. Barely forty miles. Likely closer to thirty.

Making him come to us here had other benefits, too.

The benefit of having our own pack land and Dante’s to our back, discouraging an attack from behind.

With the bonus benefit of being the first ones here, giving us time to prepare and preventing him from having the ability to set any sort of trap for us.

He’d have to approach head on, from the east, and we would be ready for him.

I’d spill his blood on the same ground where he’d spilled Sam’s.

An eye for an eye.

Or in this case a heart for a heart.

“We’re ready,” Layla said, handing me a slender flip phone and giving my arm a squeeze before stepping away.

Distantly I could hear Viv and Destiny arguing about her staying out of the fight.

She was one of the weaker few, but would still be an asset if this came to a fight.

Destiny had almost no match for her fiery will, except maybe her mate.

Hopefully, there wouldn’t be a need for any of them to fight and their argument would prove utterly useless. That was my one hope for this bleak morning. That only one life would end by the time the dawn mist lifted and the sun rose to drink up the moisture from the earth.

My gaze flicked to my mates, their steadying presences bolstering my strength.

“Make the call,” Clay urged. “Let’s end this.”

I flicked the burner phone open, tension making my fingers stiff as I flicked through the missed call log, seeing that Devin had already tried to call twenty-six times.

A few more and he might’ve drained the battery to nothing. As it was, there should be just enough juice for this one last call.

I jabbed the button to call, a flash of heat rushing down my back as my untethered fury warred with my need for sound logic.

It didn’t even complete the first ring before the line connected and my jaw clamped tight.

“Where the fuck is she?” Devin hissed down the line, his tone manic. Completely unhinged.

“Right where she should be,” I replied, shocked at the even cadence of my tone.

He paused. “You’ve been a naughty girl, Allie. Eight of my men are dead—”

“And a great many more will die along with them if you don’t listen to me very carefully.”

I had no illusions that Devin cared at all for the members of his pack, but I had something he wanted. I was something he wanted, and I had no doubt that he would put each and every single life under his command in danger to get me.

“You ungrateful cunt—”

“Shut up,” I roared, my voice coming out double with the presence of my wolf. “Now, let’s try this again, shall we? I’m at the barrens with...a few friends.”

The phone chirped, telling me the battery was critically low.

“If you want me,” I spat. “Come and fucking get me.” The line went dead a beat later, cutting off whatever Devin had been about to say as I clapped the phone closed, letting Jared take it from my grasp.

He removed the sim card and battery and tossed the pieces to someone in the line behind us to get rid of.

My body hummed with anticipation, rocked with little tremors as my wolf knocked at the door to my soul. Letting me know that she was there. She was ready.

“You think he’ll come?” Jared asked, hard gaze already set on the other end of the barren field.

“I know he will.”

They emerged just as we thought they would. Not even two hours after I made the call, Devin and his pack slipped through the trees and into the barrens like water from a sieve. But this time, his numbers weren’t overwhelming. They didn’t make my insides quake with unease.

They didn’t matter anymore.

This was a battle between him and me and no others.

His eyes glinted in the light of the rising sun like sharp cut gemstones. Hard and unyielding at first, but then, as he noticed the breadth of my pack with the addition of Dante’s shifters, I had the satisfaction of watching his smug smirk falter.

He recovered quickly, though, lifting his chin as he stepped ahead of his pack, all of them already in their wolf forms, as most of my own were.

“What now, love?” he called across the expanse, and the taunting tone of his voice gave me a moment’s pause. He seemed way too pleased with himself for someone going to their death.

Unable to hold it in for even another second, I curled my hands into fists at my sides and shouted loud enough for all to hear. “Devin Wright, I hereby challenge you for the right to rule your pack.”

Truth be told, I didn’t give a flying fuck about his pack, but I did give all the fucks about tearing him into a thousand pieces. And this was how it needed to be done.

Unnervingly, he smiled at my challenge, lifting a hand to tap a finger against his chin.

“Hmm,” he purred, brows crinkling as my pulse picked up speed. “I think not.”

My lips parted as I looked to my mates for clarification. Their grim faces told me everything I needed to know. Though as a general rule it was never done, an alpha had every right to refuse a challenge from another. But such a refusal meant only one thing.

“I prefer the other option,” he stated, his slippery gaze tracking to my mates with a fiendish gleam.

Did he really still think that if he killed them, I would mate to him? Did he really think that even if I did mate to him that I wouldn’t kill him for the things he’d done?

His ego really knew no fucking bounds.

“I refuse your challenge, Allie Grace,” he declared, lifting his arms high as though he were a priest or a saint. “But I have a counteroffer: return with me now and there will be no fight. Your pack will live. None will be injured, and none will die except for those two.”

A savage growl ricocheted through my chest as he pointed two fingers at my mates, my wolf vibrating with unspent rage as she backed herself into a corner.

My pack had already pledged to stand with me if this came to a fight. They’d reaffirmed that pledge just last night. They were ready and willing, but that didn’t mean I wanted any of them in harm’s way.

“Allie…” Clay’s low growl brought me back to the surface, up out of the darkness and into the light.

I just had to kill him. And quickly. Then the rest of his pack would cease fighting.

I wondered if he still believed that my wolf was bound. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise to show him just how little he knew me.

Instead of answering Devin, I glanced over the pack forming two neat lines behind him.

“We will give no quarter,” I called to them. “If you stand with him, I will not hesitate to cut you down if you get in my way…but if you step away now, you will not be harmed. You have my word.”

The wolves shifted uneasily at their alpha’s back, several tucking tail and several more looking like they may truly back out of the fight.

Devin whirled on them, one scathing look from him rooting those most uncertain back into place. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for them living under his thumb, at least, those of them who weren’t just as fucking psycho as he was.

Forrest snarled at Devin’s right hand, and I locked his wolf’s markings into my memory. The strong bands of rusty brown curving up around his ears, the only lick of color in his black pelt.

When none retreated, I bowed my head to the suffocating ache taking root at my core. I needed to protect my family. No matter the cost.

“Is this your answer?” Devin asked, a muscle in his cheek twitching over a flash of bared teeth. “Are you refusing me?”

He clearly hadn’t anticipated this, I could see his resolve shaking. His hold on that damnable smugness wavering.

I glanced back at my pack, finding nothing but absolute certainty in the set of each face. Vivian let out a guttural snarl, lowering her head for the charge with her mate at her side.

My lungs filled as I released myself to my wolf. When my eyes opened again, I knew they would be aflame with her unbroken spirit.

“So be it.”

I raced ahead of the pack, getting in only two leaping bounds before my wolf exploded out from within, shattering me apart to stitch me back together as something stronger. Our twin tails whipped around our side as we hit the earth, our eyes locked on target.

I had the satisfaction of seeing Devin’s eyes widen in mortified shock before he shifted, bursting into his wolf form. His deep gray coat rippled with the flex of hard muscle beneath as he shook his canine head with a primal snarl, his hot tongue sliding over his bared teeth.

Five others stepped forward, pushing ahead of their alpha, leading the charge and those psychotic green eyes vanished from view, swallowed up by the crush of canine bodies rushing across the barrens.

“No mercy!” I heard Devin call over the din of hundreds of paws pounding against the earth.

I sensed my own pack at my heels and sent up one last silent prayer to keep them all safe as I let my wolf do her worst. But the eyes of the five Devin sent ahead weren’t fixed on me.

They split off. Two to one side and three to the other, distracting me just enough so that another coming with the wave of shifters behind was nearly able to catch me around the throat.

I put her down before she even knew what hit her.

A strangled cry the last sound that would ever leave her mouth.

More of them swarmed, and I knocked them back, the sound of hounds at war filling my ears until there was nothing else.

Jared! I called through the bond, trying to find the telltale streak of white fur in all the chaos while fending off two more attacks. Raking claws found purchase in my thigh, and I roared, launching up on my hind legs despite the pain to come down on my attacker with no mercy.