“Your numbers are growing. Two babies, one new wolf. Stone River is already the largest pack.”
Wolf knew what this meant, his innate grasp of the intricacies of Were politics putting mine to shame. More babies, Wolf said, meant more wolves. More wolves meant a bigger pack. A stronger pack.
A stronger alpha.
I got the message loud and clear: in the wild, math was simple. The strongest alpha was only as strong as the force of his pack. And right now, Stone River was the biggest pack.
Alpha. One alpha. One pack.
Wolf growled the words, and I absorbed them. To werewolves, dominance was everything. The most dominant wolf had all of the power. The strongest wolf was meant to dominate them all.
Unite the packs. Unite the power.
That was the siren’s call that set each and every alpha on edge when the Senate was called. They needed to challenge each other. One of them needed to dominate, the others needed to submit. Wolf’s instincts gave way to my explicit knowledge of the situation, and I did the math.
Callum had the biggest pack. Callum had a knack for seeing the future. I would have bet my life that Callum was older and stronger and more everything than any other person in that room.
Callum was the biggest threat, and the fact that his pack was growing faster than the others did nothing to assuage the others’ fears, their instinctual suspicions that if Callum had wanted to, he could have been their alpha, too. The realization startled me, but it didn’t surprise me. It took me off guard, but it made perfect sense. Callum was experienced. He was powerful. He was smart.
He was Callum.
“Five births, and two of them yours.” Shay again. I hated him, but appreciated his enunciation, because the rest of the alphas’ voices blended together in a blur.
“… no births …”
“Only one …”
The other alphas didn’t like the idea of Callum’s pack growing while theirs shrank. They had to have known, the way Wolf did just being in the room with them, that if Callum tired of democracy, the entire North American continent could be his.
“… Rabid …”
At that word, Chase’s wolf ears literally perked up. Even with his mind jumbled, he recognized it.
This was why we were here. Why we were listening.
“Answer … not that simple …”
“—prerogative—”
I could only catch bits and pieces of words, but even that shocked me because they weren’t the words I’d expected to hear. The alphas should have been talking about strategies for hunting the Rabid. They should have been sharing what they knew of his potential location. They shouldn’t have been saying …
“… unless … we need …”
“… turn … blind eye—”
Blind eye? Blind eye? They couldn’t have just said those words in a discussion about a rabid wolf. They couldn’t have.
The men in this room were a twig’s snap away from attacking each other in one giant dominance struggle. This Rabid had killed in their territories. His very existence was a challenge, and alphas didn’t abide challenges.
Alphas were strong. They kept their packs safe. They eliminated threats.
“—in exchange … desirable …”
“So we barter with murderers now?” Callum’s voice carried, for the opposite reason as Shay’s. He had nothing to prove.
It was power, not volume, that carried his words to my ears, and Wolf crouched, belly brushing the ground at the sound of the tone.
Callum wasn’t Chase’s alpha the way he used to be. But even now, that tone, that power—
There was an instinct to obey. To fold. To give in to the power of his words.
But Shay didn’t. “Is that your final word on the matter, Callum?”
“It is.”
For a moment there was silence, and then Shay spoke up again. “And what are you going to do about it?”
Nobody spoke to Callum like that. Not the other alphas. Not his own wolves. Not even me … most of the time anyway.
Shay wasn’t challenging Callum. Not exactly. He was daring Callum to challenge the rest of them. To force his will on them. To prove he could.
To do it.
One pack. One alpha.
“Are we a democracy or aren’t we?” Shay threw down the gauntlet. “Do we vote or do you decide?”
Vote on what? Decide what? To barter? To turn a blind eye?
Challenge them, I screamed silently at Callum. Do it. Take them. Take it all.
He could have. Every part of me, every memory, every instinct I had said that Callum could stop this. He could make them understand.
He could make them submit.
But he didn’t. “We’re a democracy,” Callum said, his tone never changing, his surety never called into question.