I Moved On, Why Don't You

Pretenses

Devlin's pov

"Hit him again."

I kept my dark gaze on my sire as the wolves surrounding me continued their mercilessness beating, my teeth clenched to hold back any pained groans.

"This can all come to an end, all you have to do is reject that little whore you picked up and mate Sheila in front of the pack."

Smiling grimly, I spoke for the first time in three days.

"So you can continue to run this pack behind the scenes? I refuse. I will never be your puppet and I will never give up the mate I spent the last five years looking for. This pack can destroy itself for all I care."

Turning to the other wolves in the room, my sire quickly dismissed them.

"Why do you insist on fighting me? We both know it's only a matter of time before I get what I want."

"Not this time. If you want Sheila to be Luna of this pack, you're going to have to mate her yourself."

Shaking his head as if talking to a stubborn child, my sire made his way over to me and unchained my wrists.

"Very well. I accept your challenge. If you defeat me, I let you and your mate go. If you lose, you mate Sheila and your mate and those pups are mine to do with as I see fit."

My lips lifted in a cold smile, he was pushing his luck with me and he knew it.

"If you're planning to  touch my mate or my pups, I'll have to forget that you're my sire and rip you to shreds here and now."

"You think you'd be allowed to walk away if you kill me? This pack worships me like a god, they'll take you and everyone with you down if anything happens to me."

"Even Henry?"

His eyes widened in surprise and he took a step away from me.

"You thought I didn't know? I saw the way you looked at him before I left and how he tried to avoid you. That poor kid did everything he could to make you leave him alone. Did you threaten him to hold him here?"

A sickening smirk slid across my sire's face and he crossed his arms confidently across his chest.

"I don't have to, I have something of his that will insure that he will never leave this pack . . . after all, I can't have my pet running away from me, now can I?"

"He already told me what Sheila did to my mate, he doesn't have any family but her."

"Sheila? You still think we're talking about her?"

"Then who . . . her son, he refuses to leave to protect her son."

"And here I thought you had intelligence. Sheila is sterile, the pup I allowed her to claim belongs to my mate and I."

"So you threw my mother away after she bore you another  pup? How cruel."

I had to hold back an amused laugh when he glared at me impatiently, realizing my baiting had worked.

"That woman couldn't even compare to my mate. My mate is so beautifully sensual, so wonderfully defiant and so perfectly deadly . . . he's the only fit to stand by my side."

"So you stole Henry's pup and gave him to the one person who would abuse the power you handed over to them just to hold him to you. You really are insane."

"I would watch what you say if I were you, your mate is nowhere near safe right now, even if he survived his encounter with Henry's little friend."