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Todos os capítulos de The Tyrant alpha: Capítulo 431 - Capítulo 440

486 Capítulos

429

No. I don’t even need to ask her. She’s fascinated by him. Even now, she’s mimicking his side stretches, even though it doesn’t work at all with her sausage-shaped body. If I want to run, I have to take back our skin, and then I’ll be naked and slow. I won’t get far if he comes after me.Maybe he wouldn’t. He seems fond of my wolf, but he hates me. His contempt burned in his eyes at the river. He didn’t try to hide it. He wanted me to know how he felt. I don’t need to dig the bond out of the deep hole I buried it in to confirm it and feel his hatred in my insides.I don’t care. It’s good that he hates me. I don’t want any of this. I want my morning tea, my toast and jam, and my bathroom. I’m so dirty. My fur is stiff, and I do not want to know what’s in it.I don’t want to go to the Last Pack. Everyone says they live in dens like our ancestors, like animals, with no laws but strength and no justice except claws and fangs. At least that’s what the instructors said at Moon Lake Academy.

430

Inside, there’s a barrel packed tight with tools, clothes, and other supplies, including matches wrapped in oil cloth. Justus builds a fire, and my wolf naps beside it as he hunts down the plump, juicy bird he also promised. He plucks its feathers—and plucks off its head—before he returns, so my wolf is happy to snarf it down after a cursory browning over the flames. Apparently, she’s not too fussy about whether her meat is cooked through.She shows no concern that she’s leaving none for Justus, but it makes me deeply uneasy. At the lodge, we serve the males first. They cause less trouble when their mouths and hands are full.Justus doesn’t seem to mind that my wolf is saving none for him. He watches her eat, arms folded, mouth lazily curved as he sits, resting against a tree trunk.My wolf is pleased to let him watch her eat. I don’t understand that at all. I can’t eat if someone is watching me.After the meal, my wolf lets Justus carry her again, and she snoozes in the mid-day sunsh

431

I don’t see how it could possibly be man-made, but I also don’t see how nature could make a place so clearly designed as shelter. It’s a place out of time. Even the colors are enchanted. Every brown and green and white is bold—the brownest brown, the greenest green.As my gaze darts around the clearing, searching for threats and escape routes, I pick out at least a dozen low, sloped entranceways among the rocks. Those must be the dens. Glowing almond-shaped eyes blink from the shadows, visible from hundreds of yards away.Closer, and more terrifying, dozens of males have risen to their feet, looming beside rough-hewn stools, wooden crates, and overturned rusted buckets, glaring at me in spiky silence, poised to attack. I know that stance. I’ve seen it a hundred times in front of Killian’s dais after dinner when he calls the males to fight.Don’t move. Don’t breathe.My wolf presses closer to Justus’s side, searching for the feel of his low rumble. It soothes her. She trusts him to pro

432

In the illustrations, ferals are always slavering or lunging or swiping at a cowering female with their claws. These males aren’t acting like that at all, but they definitely aren’t like Quarry Pack or Moon Lake males, either. I don’t know quite how to describe it except that they don’t stand like a pack at all.Back home, when the males gather, they face the leader, usually Killian, and stand according to rank, higher in the front, lower in the back. This group is all over the place.One lanky male is eating a drumstick. Toward the back, two younger males bump into each other, riling up the others nearby, trying to egg someone into a fight. A few elders have crouched to watch the proceedings from under the shade of an elm. Periodically, they bark when the others block their view.There is a great deal of scratching among the furrier ones. A few who are fully shifted have padded to the front and plopped on their sides to watch. This pack isn’t waiting for orders; they’re waiting to be

433

Can the pups shift back and forth to human babies, or are they stuck as wolves until puberty? Somehow my curiosity allows me to relax enough to venture a little closer to the boundary between my wolf and me. The pups don’t seem traumatized. One lies on her side, dozing off. Her belly is pure white. It looks so soft.Another pup snuffles around the feet and legs of the males around him, yipping and nipping and head-butting at random until he gets a pat on his flank or a scratch behind his ears.The third pup—the littlest one, a mix of her mother’s black and her father’s gray—seems as captivated by me as I am by her. She keeps padding toward me. The first few times, her dam yipped at her to come back, but when she just kept approaching, her dam gave a rumble, warning her to behave, and let her come.She trots straight to me. Inside my wolf, I reach for her. It’s a reflex. I’ve done it before I realize what I’m doing, and as soon as it registers, I drop my arms to my sides.I don’t get c

434

Diantha rolls her eyes. “That’s not your call, is it?”It is his call, though, right? Males decide where their females can go and what they can do. Even now that Una and Killian are mated, the males allow us to sell our wares in Chapel Bell.“Do you want to come with us, Annie? We won’t let any of them near you.” Diantha turns her nose up at the males who have been subtly gathering closer to her. Immediately, they cast each other accusatory looks, projecting as much innocence as long-haired, tattooed, half-shifted males can.“She’s his mate.” Alroy straightens, lifting his chest and hiking his chin so he can glower at Diantha. Standing tall, he almost seems like a different male. “You stay out of it.”Diantha’s face gets shrewd and bloodthirsty, like a raccoon about to steal a dog’s dinner.“Where’s my granddam’s black bear pelt, eh, Alroy?” she asks in a singsong, projecting her voice so even the folks at the back can hear. “Oh yes, I remember. You traded it to Quarry Pack for three

435

The entire pack is showing neck, and they’re chastened—and wary—but they aren’t afraid.I don’t understand.Justus blows out his cheeks, clenches his teeth and glares beseechingly up at the sky for a moment, and then points at Alroy’s wolf and says, “You watch how you talk to females. I’ll skin you and trade your pelt to Quarry Pack. Try me. See if I won’t!” He bellows the final words.Alroy’s wolf whines and tucks his snout into his shoulder.Then Justus turns to Diantha. “You—” he snaps, then stops himself and starts again with a deliberately, teeth-grindingly even voice. “Mind your own business. Please.” He surveys his pack and announces, “This is Annie. She’s my mate. That’s all. No need for all of this. Go on about your day now.”“Yes, Alpha,” the pack mutters.He growls. “I’m not the alpha.” He strides forward, picks up my wolf and the little gray pup, and tucks one of us under each arm. “You don’t need an alpha to tell you what to do. You need common sense, so some of you are o

436

From this height, I can also trace the curving dirt paths that run between and among all the various areas of activity. Exactly like the males’ maze of swirl tattoos.The fur along my spine bristles. There is magic here. It tickles my nose like it does in Abertha’s cottage.If it were this time of day at Quarry Pack, no one would be outside. I’d be in the lodge’s kitchen, prepping dinner with Mari, Kennedy, and Old Noreen—and the Z-roster males still under punishment from backing the traitors. The other males would be training in the gym, and the females would be working at the laundry or the commissary or in their cabins, tending their pups. No matter what exactly they were doing, they’d be busy.Not so here. Some of the Last Pack folks are working on something, but most are lounging or chatting or napping or roughhousing. There’s lots of roughhousing.No patrol. No guards. Nowhere to hide but these dens. These traps.The voice is back, and no surprise, she has concerns. My nerves tw

437

My wolf yips to be let down, but Justus lifts her a little closer and bends his head to talk into her ear. “The pup is Griff. He’s Elspeth’s oldest. He does take his good ol’ time, but he can be relied upon not to nibble the beef on his way back with it.”Justus points my wolf at the older male who started chopping carrots. “That’s Tarquin. If no one else makes a move to get dinner together, he’ll do it once he gets hungry, but he only ever makes stew.”So the males cook in this pack? None of the females are helping. As far as I can tell, they’re all still lounging under their canopy.“The male with the black and white ears is Pierce. The skinny one thieving meat is Colm.”I watch Colm, who is tall and lanky as a beanpole, carve a haunch into bite-size pieces, pausing every so often when no one’s watching to toss a hunk into the air, snap it up with his teeth, and scarf it down.Why is Justus telling me their names?It feels like the first day of school at Moon Lake Academy when the h

438

His eyes are so somber.Behind him, the sun has sunk, its last rays backlighting him, falling across the center of the den, and illuminating the faded colors in the worn rug, so clean despite the packed earth floor. He must shake it out a lot.The sun picks out gold streaks in his long brown hair. It’s not groomed, per se. He clearly hasn’t done more than run his fingers through it, but it isn’t hopelessly matted like it was when his people tried to trade the Byrnes for us.Come to think of it, none of the males in the camp are as unkempt as that crew. Last Pack males don’t look nearly as recently showered as Quarry Pack males do, but they’re not dirty dirty. I guess they look like folks who live in dens, bathe in a stream, and spend most of their time naked and outdoors.“Where’d you go, sweetling?” Justus asks, a brief, soft twinkle in his eyes. “Won’t you come out?”How did he know I drifted off?I’m so curious, and I’m not used to it. I don’t usually have the bandwidth to have que

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