A/N: I couldn't attach both images of what I pictured for the cave and the stairs, so here is the cave itself and the stairs picture is posted in the previous installment!
-Undaunted
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Chapter 15: Unleashed
River
My head is spinning like a fucking merry-go-round.
This fucker—Alpha Xander—is here to find his mate? Someone in my pack is destined to be his mate?
I can't believe it to be true, yet it answers nearly all the questions behind why he has done what he's done.
There's nothing an alpha wouldn't do if it meant being with his mate.
My eyes flash over to look at Holly as the thought registers with me. She still clutches that sharp stone, her eyes fixed on our captive, as hard and cold as glass.
There is so much I am beginning to understand about what it means to have a mate. To find them, to forge the bond that you were somehow always destined to.
As the sun continues its steady descent, we glean a few answers from the stocky werewolf: most notably that the ambush we experienced in the Eastern Woods was a fluke.
The group Xander sent out was there only to scout our boundaries, but the amber orange she-wolf I recall from the clearing—Lydia, she was called— got too ambitious and called for the ambush, even though those weren't her orders from Xander.
The attack was meant to be a warning, in her mind, but instead it's given us this inside knowledge.
We know what and who we are going up against, now: a pack that favors the most primal part of themselves, and who all but refuse to live in human forms.
That's surely a reason why they are so territorial and blood-hungry...The human parts of themselves are muted, shoved down and oppressed.
"We've got the information we wanted, River." My dad says to me as I see our captive getting sicker and sicker from the wolfsbane taking effect.
We're now standing together, huddled off to the side: my dad, me, Holly and Drake.
"So this psycho Xander has a fucking mate here?" Drake seethes. I knew he wouldn't be impressed at this news. Not that any of us are, but Drake has an incredible sense or loyalty to our pack, and will defend it from any threats presented. "Why can't we just hand her over then? No fighting even has to happen, they can just move along on their merry way."
"You heard what he said, didn't you?" Holly asks him, her tone sharp as her gaze flashes to him with annoyance. "That's only part of why they are here. They also don't happen to agree with our way of living. They want to destroy packs that still allow their human sides to exist. They're not going to leave just because you decide to ship some poor unsuspecting woman off into the arms of some animalistic Alpha." She shakes her head as if truly stunned by Drake's lack of foresight.
"Well, it'll get him off our backs for now!" he retorts in a hushed voice. "I say we do it: make a deal. We give Xander the girl; he leaves us be."
"That wouldn't work." Holly shakes her head. "The minute he gets her he would just go ahead and attack us anyway—you heard him: they have the numbers to make it happen."
"But at least we would be giving him something to lose!" Drake insists.
"This pack is something to lose, do you not—" Holly starts her counter-argument, but I jump in before she can finish it.
YOU ARE READING
The Shadow Alpha
Werewolf"River, I...I didn't realize..." I say, and before I can form the rest of my sentence, he strides towards me. I immediately step away and feel the rough bark of one of the nearby trees press into my back. One of his hands grips my jaw, so firm that...
