Chapter 40: Strength and Weakness. Quinton.
“I’m waiting to hear from Thomas. He isn’t answering my phone calls. If he’s ignoring me…” I snarl into the phone.
“Quinton, my pack still isn’t fully recovered from our last battle with Warren. He’s probably still recovering. You said he lost his Beta, right?”
Brady asks me.
“Yeah, but that’s no excuse. I told him we’d get his Beta back, but I can’t do that unless he answers his fucking phone so we can make a plan,” I growl.
“What do you want to do?” Brady asks.
“T’ve sent some warriors over there to encourage him to answer his phone.”
“So, when we attack, we’re getting the lady doctor, right?” he asks.
“Yeah. Alive. We need her,” I say, scrubbing my face with my hand.
“WE need her? I thought I was getting her,” he says. I have to be careful here. If what Brady and Thomas have said is true, then.
“FUCK! I have to go. Fucking Harold is attacking,” he says, hanging up.
I sit back, thinking. I know that Brady will be busy for a couple of hours. I should send warriors to help him, but my bigger issue right now is Warren. He’s too fucking strong. Since my pack is the only one at a hundred percent, I need to keep it that way. Because there’s no way in hell that I’m giving that lady doctor
to Brady. He’s just stupid enough to get stronger and then come after me.
There’s a knock at my door and when I look up, I see my son, Quirin, watching me.
“Hey, son. Come in,” I say, relaxing a bit. There’s nothing and no one that I love more in this world than my son.
“Is everything okay, Dad? I heard you snarling,” he says.
Quirin is the future heir of this pack. He’s only twelve, but I’ve been training him to be a warrior since before he got his wolf two years ago.
And recently, I’ve started training him to think like an Alpha.
I gesture for him to come stand in front of me. “What do you think we should do with a pack that is getting stronger, an Alpha that is getting stronger and is threatening our livelihood?” I ask him.”
“No one threatens our pack,” he growls, in his young wolf’s growl.
“That’s right. No one threatens our pack. What do we do when someone threatens our pack?” I ask him.
“We eliminate them. We protect our pack,” he says confidently.
“That’s right. And what do we do if we find their strength, if say, that strength is a person, a she-wolf?”
I watch as he thinks about that. “We capture her and bring her here?
Force her to make us stronger while making the other Alpha weaker?”
he asks, unsure of his answer.
“That’s right,” I say, pulling him into my lap. “That’s exactly what we do.
So, I’m trying to find a way to get to Alpha Warren and capture his strength. I will take what is making him strong and then I will kill him.
“What about the she-wolf?” he asks me.
“I will make her mine so she can never leave me,” I tell him.
“Quirin, come. Let your father work,” my mate says from the doorway. I look up and see her lips pressed tightly together. She heard what I said, but it doesn’t matter. She gave me what I needed, an heir. For that, I’ll always take care of her. But this lady doctor…she’s the one who will make me strong, powerful, the Alpha of Alphas.
“Go with your mother,” I say gently to my son. He’s the only one who gets this side of me. Not even my mate gets this tone from me. “I’ll see you at warrior training this afternoon?”
“T’ll be there, Dad!” he says excitedly, jumping off my lap and walking toward his mother. I watch proudly as my son holds himself in the tall way of an Alpha. He’s still working on his swagger, but it’s coming.
I look back at my mate who looks away before leading my son from the room.
When they’re gone, I’m about to get back to work when I hear the sound of warriors heading to my office. “Alpha,” my lead warrior says, walking in with the group he took to convince Thomas to answer my call. “Where is he?” I ask.
“He’s dead, Alpha. The entire pack is dead or gone.”
Son of a fucking bitch! I turn, snarling as I swipe everything off my desk, some things smashing into the wal across the room with my anger.
“How long has he been dead,” I growl, not looking at my warriors.
“For most of them, it seemed like it was in the last eight to ten hours, Alpha.”
Now I do look at them. “What do you mean ‘for most of them’?”
“There were several that had been killed earlier. They’re bodies were closer to the borders, probably dead for closer to twelve hours.”
Fucking Thomas. Had he really been so arrogant that he slept through some of his pack members being killed, letting Warren know he was vulnerable? Because it had to be Warren. He’d have killed Thomas’ Beta to make him even weaker. He’d already killed many of his warriors, so Thomas was weakened already.
I stare out the window, seething with my anger. Warren is now strong enough that he’s not just fighting defensively when we attack. He and his pack have somehow gotten strong enough that they’ve just eliminated an entire pack, one I was allied with. I may not have thought very highly of Thomas, but he had warriors, warriors that used to be at my disposal. Now, he’s not only killed Thomas, he’s weakened me. “What about the omegas?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at my warriors.
“We didn’t find any, or very few, Alpha. The safe rooms were empty but those we found dead were primarily warriors.”
Of course they were. I would have killed everyone, made a statement.
But not Warren. He’s taken the weak into his pack, made his pack even larger. And then, an even worse thought hits me.
Thomas loved collecting women from the packs he attacked. He’d never gotten any from Warren’s pack, but from Harold’s…
“Raise the alarm. We’re going to assist Alpha Brady with the attack on his pack. Send out the orders, kill Alpha Harold and all of his warriors.
Take noprisoners,” I command.
“Yes, Alpha!”
I need to kill Harold before Warren gets a hold of him. Because if he has Harold’s pack members and he’s willing to return them to Harold, that will give Harold a reason to ally himself with Warren and I don’t need Warren to become any stronger than he already is.
I walk out of my office, howling the howl of attack, as I leap and race to the front of my warriors, leading the charge to Brady’s pack and the battle against Harold.
Noelle POV.
I thought I would sleep well. I was exhausted and felt safe for the first time in a long time. But rather than being able to sleep, I’m tossing and turning.
Beta Charlie, or Charlie as he wants me to call him, gave me a room next to his on his floor, just like Luna Yara said he would. I’d showered and he’d given me one of his t-shirts to sleep in which smells deliciously of him. But it’s not enough. My wolf, Beatrix, can’t get settled.
‘I want to be closer to him,’ she whines.
T know, Bea, but what am I supposed to do? Knock on his door and ask if I can sleep with him so you’ll settle down?’
‘Yes!’
‘Bea, come on. We barely know him.’
‘He’s our mate, Noelle. He loves us. He wants us close too. I’m guessing his wolf won’t let him sleep either,’ she says, trying to encourage me to go to him.
‘Fine. I’ll go listen at his door. If it sounds like he’s sleeping though…’
‘He won’t’ be. I’m sure of it,’ she says, excitedly.
I get up, walking softly to the door and opening it as quietly as I can.
Then I walk down the hall and I’m just about to put my ear to the door, when it opens.
“Are you okay? Is everything okay? Did you need something?” Charlie asks me. He’s only wearing a pair
of cotton shorts and his incredible physique is on display for me. He has a lot of scars on his body, but that only means that he’s a strong and powerful fighter with a strong wolf who heals him. I feel Beatrix begin purring in my mind.
“I..I couldn’t sleep,” I stutter, looking down.
“Is your wolf keeping you up?” he asks me. I look up at his smiling face.
He shrugs. “Gregor wouldn’t let me sleep either. Do you want to come in?”
I nod and he steps back. When I step into the room, he closes the door.
“I’m not having sex with you,” I blurt out.
He doesn’t bother trying to hide his smile. “Good, because I’m exhausted and I wouldn’t want you trying to
keep me up by begging for my body.”
It’s so utterly ridiculous that I burst out laughing.
“Come on. We both need sleep and now maybe our wolves will let us sleep.”
He helps me into his bed, then goes around crawling in behind me.
When he lays down, he tugs me against him, wrapping his body around mine in a cocoon of warmth and safety.
“For the record,” he murmurs in my ear. “When I do make love to you, it won’t be when I’m tired. It will be when I have the time and energy to worship this body properly, finding every little spot that makes you moan and whimper before sliding inside you and making you mine forever.”
As tired as I am, his words send heat straight to my core. I hear him sniffing the air, and I know he can smell my arousal.
“Good, I’m glad we’re in agreement. Now get some sleep,” he says.
I’m not sure which of us falls asleep that fastest.