“Nope.” And he’s doing double reps for asking.
While we’re doing sets, Tye and Alfie come back from patrol. Ivo and Finn must have relieved them early. Definitely Ivo who made that call. Finn’s a lazy shit. Thinks ‘cause he kisses Lochlan’s ass, he’s special.
He’s special ‘cause he’s currently top ranked in the circuit for cruiserweight. When his laziness inevitably costs him the title, he’s back to mopping the ring and stacking towels with the rest of B-roster.
I slap Gael’s ass. “Good work. Hit the showers.” Gael’s relief is visible. Dude needs to work on his game face. “Fallon. You’re up.”
I rack my weights and wave the pup over to the ring. He comes. Reluctantly. Scared as a rabbit as my grandad used to say. Kid needs to work on his game face, too. He’s eighteen now. By his age, my father had been entering me in the New Moon fights for years.
I start today’s lesson with an uppercut to the jaw. It’ll be harder for the others to tell he’s a pussy if his face is swollen.
Fallon’s got potential, natural talent for days, but no strategy. He goes for the duck every time. I wait for his head to go down and nail him with a hook around each time he does it, and he still can’t figure out what he’s doing wrong.
It’d be entertaining if it wasn’t gonna get him mauled in the ring.
At least Una Hayes has the excuse of inexperience. She sprinted right into Haisley’s open mouth. Fuckin’ delivery service. I had to fight my wolf hard not to intervene. He must’ve thought a pup was being attacked.
The whole thing still doesn’t sit entirely right with me, but if you’re big enough to go after a packmate, you’re big enough to take your beating. I wasn’t gonna let Haisley kill her or anything. For a second there, I almost tagged in, it was so hard to watch. I would’ve never lived it down, intervening in a female fight.
I have to talk to Abertha. If Una’s not all there in the head, exceptions need to be made for her. We don’t hurt females, young, or the defective anymore. I ended that shit.
Not everyone likes the new world order, but everyone is free to challenge me if they want to go back to the old ways. I only had to put a few males in the ground before the rest decided they could acclimate to change. Fear is a powerful motivator.
Speaking of—Fallon’s getting too complacent. He’s clinching so much, he should’ve bought me dinner beforehand. I throw a flurry into his gut, alternating with some pity pat shots to his thick head, and when he gets nice and disoriented, I drive an uppercut into his ribs and smile at the nice, clean crack.
He groans piteously as he taps my shoulder. “Enough, Alpha.”
I follow up with a sharp jab for good measure. I say when it’s enough. It’ll be enough when he learns he’s not safe in the ring and hugging is for the bitch he’s banging.
“Stop clinching.” I jab him again, right in the broken rib, and he yelps. “Stop ducking.”
I meant for it to be a quick lesson, but I guess my wolf’s got the taste of blood. I have my fist drawn back again when Tye grabs my forearm. When I snarl, Tye immediately drops his hold and shows his neck.
I growl from the chest. My wolf flashes his fangs. Tye lowers his gaze to the ground.
My heart pounds for no reason. Fallon Campbell isn’t a challenge. He’s hardly more of a workout than the bag most days. And Tye is my beta, my right hand. I don’t need his submission. I need him to check my ass when I lose it.
But out of nowhere, aggression is rolling off me like it’s fight night. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end. It’s not a full moon, not even close. I take a few breaths, bounce on my toes, and throw a few punches into the air. I’m unsettled. Is there a threat I’m sensing?
“You didn’t smell anything when you were out, did you?” I ask Tye. He’s lounging against the ropes, the fraught moment passed.
“Nope.”
“No tracks?”
“None.”
“No signs?” I push, a dog with a bone.
“A woodchuck took a dump near the old dens. Is that what you want to know?”
“You can tap gloves with me anytime, pretty boy.” I bare my fangs and lick the tip of the incisor.
Tye raises his hands. “You saw me last night. I almost let Lochlan Byrne pin me.”
“Yeah, what was that?” Tye should’ve finished off that upstart in one round. I’d forgotten about it in all the drama afterwards.
Tye shrugs. “Too much turkey and gravy? Fuck if I know. It was a strange night.”
“That it was.” I duck between the ropes and slap his back. “Sauna?”
He nods, and we make our way to the locker room. I kept most things the same when I became alpha, but I did have the old gym restored and the facilities updated. We’ve got a sauna and hot tub now, and I had a ring built in the middle of the basketball court. When you can leap ten feet from flat-footed, dunking isn’t really a thrill.
Before I was born, this camp used to be a nature retreat for school children, church groups, and the like. In the 80s, there were budget cuts, and the county was forced to sell the lodge, a dozen cabins, and fifty acres, including the river, ponds, a tract of virgin forest, and a cross section of Quarry Pack’s claimed territory.
Earning the money to buy our land from the government was my father’s greatest accomplishment. And it made our males what we are now—prizefighters mostly, bounty hunters and hired muscle on the side. It could be worse. We could wear suits and sniff human ass all day like Moon Lake Pack.
It’s an impossible balance—the old ways and the new, the human world and our own. There is no balance, really. It’s not unlike Una Hayes’ gait—steady only because we keep it movin’.
There are only a few in the pack who realize how tenuous our hold on all of this is. Humans are weak, venal, and undisciplined—and they outnumber us by billions. That’s an unstoppable force. They’ve been content to profit off us where they can—bet on our fights, sell souvenirs to the lookie-loos—but how long before they eye our territories?
Our DNA?
Humans are never content to coexist. I see Moon Lake, and I think Man has already conquered us. Wolves in suits. Humans must know they don’t need to do much but let their ways infect our minds. We’ll corrupt ourselves.
I strip, drop my sweats on a bench, and pad out the back of the locker room to the free-standing sauna. The door creaks on its hinges, and I inhale the cedar, sinking down on a hot, dry bench, not bothering with a towel.
Rowan Bell kneels by the fire, ladling water over stones. She casts me a sly look from under her thick lashes and arches her back so her perky tits nearly fall out of her tube top. I close my eyes and tilt my head back to lean against the wood paneled walls.