The Sixteenth Moon: A Rejected Mates Romance

Chapter 10 (Revised): Alpha vs. Alpha

***The following chapter has been revised for plot and continuity.***

Without even bothering to knock and show Rueger any respect at all, Peytr Laarsen slammed opened the Alpha's office door and strode in as if he were still the one seated in place of power, and opened his mouth to deride his son.

"What is this I hear about you summoning the Elders to your office like some sort of general marshalling his troops? Those men deserve a little more respect."

Everything his father had done in the last few seconds had been a grave mistake.

Swallowing back his vitriol, Rueger closed the laptop he'd been using to email a few of his shifter contacts throughout the US. Even with the information Jill and Marta had given him, he had little to go on to find his mate, but that wouldn't stop him.

Just like his father wouldn't stop him.

"And why are you asking questions about the consort mating? You act as though you've been wronged by the Elders—by the Ancestors. We've only done right by you—"

Rueger grunted, slamming a fist on the hard wood surface of his desk, immediately silencing his father's lying tongue.

Nausea boiled in his gut as bile tingled in the back of his throat. Fate, he hated what was going to happen, what needed to happen. What needed to be said.

What needed to be rectified so that he could finally—finally!—do the right thing.

Leaning back in his desk chair, Rueger quietly, intently peered at his father, refusing to let the other man see the anger, the bitter turmoil roiling through him. His father, a cold, hard, bitter man, had been a good Alpha. One who could be counted on to always put the Pack first...even at the expense of his own son.

"Who told you?" Rueger asked, remembering his explicit command to keep silent about what happened earlier with the council. "Which one of my council members broke my command to remain silent?"

Peytr bristled, his massive chest pushing out, his face hardening, his eyes narrowing.

"Why do any of them need permission to speak with me about Pack matters? I'm the Al—"

"You are not the Alpha any longer, Father. You haven't been for twenty-three years. You stepped down, handed me the mantle, giving me the authority and power over this Pack. That means that the moment I took on that title, that role, you lost it." Standing, Rueger planted his knuckles on the desk and leaned forward, fighting a grin at the rising anger bloating his father's face. "Now, Peytr Laarsen, who told you about my meeting? I know it wasn't me or Jakob...." He paused, waiting, already certain of the name his father would say.

After a moment, Peytr sneered, "Meiser. That man has been an important part of this back for nearly fifty years. He has only ever been loyal to his Alpha, he does not deserve to be treated like a criminal. He was only telling me what you should have told me before you started your farce of an interrogation."

Rueger grit his teeth, his wolf snapping its jaws viciously. Anger, thick, red, and ugly, scorched through him, immolating bones and blood in its wake.

Growl. Bite him. Make him show his throat...then rip it out. Give it to our mate.

Pushing down his wolf's need for violence, Rueger pinned his gaze on a face that, though Petyr Laarsen was closing in on two hundred, looked no older than fifty-years-old. The face of a man he'd admired for as long as he could remember. The face of a man who'd betray his own flesh and blood.

"Once again, Father, you forget who you're talking to. I am the Alpha of the Great Northeastern Territories. It is my Pack. My council. If Meiser is to be loyal to the Alpha, he should be loyal to me. And I didn't speak with you about the so-called interrogation because it wasn't your time to know."