Authors: Kelley Armstrong
Did that mean Jeremy would be the next Alpha? Not necessarily. An Alpha has the right to back a Pack brother as his successor, but when it came to choosing a new Alpha, the process was more democratic. Everyone in the Pack endorsed a candidate, and the one with the most power behind him won. Right now, Jeremy had only Antonio squarely in his corner. Although Jorge, Nick and I also supported Jeremy’s ascension, we were still considered junior members of the Pack, so our votes carried little weight.
For now, it didn’t matter. Dominic wasn’t going anywhere. When Malcolm "accidentally" swiped the first bite of meat after a Pack deer hunt, Dominic trounced him. The battle was closer than Dominic might have liked, but he still won, proving he still deserved to be Alpha.
That winter I finally hit on a plan to stop mutts from coming to Stonehaven. It wasn’t a simple scheme. It required planning—lots of planning, and lots of research on subjects that weren’t readily available in the local library.
By the time I felt ready to carry out my plan, it was spring. The next problem, though, was that I needed a specific set of circumstances, an uncommon set of circumstances. My requirements for the mutt himself weren’t stringent. I didn’t want one who was too young and inexperienced, or too old and feeble. Other than that, my only stipulation was that he be none too bright. That last one was pretty much a given with any mutt who showed up at Stonehaven. Clever mutts looking to challenge a Pack wolf devised a way to bump into him away from his property, where the drive to defend territory would be weaker. Only the ones who didn’t have the brains to think up a way to corner a Pack wolf off-territory came directly to the source.
Over the next six months, two mutts showed up at Stonehaven. Neither fit my needs, so I killed them quickly, disposed of the bodies and continued to wait. Winter came. Another mutt showed up, but those circumstances didn’t suit my plan either. That time, Jeremy met the mutt first, and had to deal with it himself. I decided then that I couldn’t wait for my set of circumstances to occur naturally. I needed to create them myself.
September came and college began. It took time for me to adjust. Change is never easy for me, and something like this, being inundated with new faces, new schedules, new expectations, threw me off balance, making me edgy and moody. Two weeks into the semester, a teacher scheduled me for a 5:30 PM conference, which totally screwed up my routine. By the time I drove back from Syracuse, it was after seven. I’d meant to grab a sandwich at the cafeteria to tide me over to dinner, but was so eager to get home that I forgot.
I arrived at Stonehaven starving. I parked and bolted for the door, certain dinner would be waiting for me. Instead I found Jeremy engrossed in a new painting. The frozen Shepherd's Pie he’d put into the oven was still frozen because he’d been so distracted by his work that he’d forgotten to turn it on. So I blew up. Accused him of being thoughtless and insensitive to my needs. A shitty thing to say—and laughably untrue—but I was hungry.
I stormed to the kitchen, grabbed the makings of a sandwich, then decided it was too much work to assemble one and wolfed down the components separately. When my stomach was full, I knew I’d been out of line with Jeremy. I also knew that, given my recent mood swings, if I tried to say I was sorry, I was liable to turn the apology into another fight. So I fixed Jeremy a sandwich and dropped it off outside his studio door with a note saying I’d gone for a walk.
Once outside, I debated working off some energy with a run, but was too edgy to Change, so I wandered the forest, mentally working through an essay I needed to write this week. I was in the midst of composing my thesis statement when a movement in the trees ahead made me stop short. It was almost nine now, and dark. Though I had good night vision, with no moon overhead to help, I could only make out the shape of a tall, dark-haired man. As proof of my distracted sense of mind, I never thought to sneak in for a sniff and a closer look. I assumed it was Jeremy and strode forward. When I stepped onto the path, the man wheeled. It wasn’t Jeremy.
"Shit!" he said, jumping as he saw me. "What the hell—" He stopped, nostrils flaring, then blinked as he realized I wasn’t some neighborhood kid trespassing in Stonehaven’s woods. He squinted in the darkness. "Shit. You’re Malcolm’s kid, aren’t you?"
"No," I said. "Jeremy’s in the house, and he’s not coming out so don’t bother—"
"Nah, not Jeremy. The other one. The boy. The one Malcolm’s been bragging about. So his phantom foster son isn’t a phantom after all, huh? I figured it was bullshit, since no one’s ever seen you."
"Nah, they see me. They just don’t live to tell about it."
The mutt snorted and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, good one," he said, but a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes said he wasn’t completely sure I was bluffing.
I sized up the mutt. Jeremy’s age, decent physical condition. Yeah, he’d do. Now I just needed to persuade him to help me set up the circumstances I required.
"You know Nick Sorrentino?" I asked, circling the mutt and making him turn around to keep his eyes on me.
Another snort. "What is this? Small talk? I came here to fight, in case you didn’t figure that out, kiddo."
"Nick Sorrentino," I repeated. "Do you know who he is?"
"Sure. Antonio’s kid."
"He’s a friend of mine."
"Bully for you."
I stopped circling and leaned against a tree, arms crossed. The mutt visibly relaxed.
"Nick’s got this problem," I said. "Maybe you can help me solve it."
"What do I look like? Dear Abby? I can’t solve—"
"Yeah, I think you can. See, here’s Nick’s problem. He’s been a full werewolf for nearly a year now, but he’s never fought a mutt. Never even been close to a fight. Antonio and Dominic won’t let him."
The mutt sniffed. "Coddling the boy, like they do with Jorge. Figures."
"Well, that’s where I’m hoping you can help. Nick wants a fight, and I want to give him one. Chance to fight the Alpha’s grandson? A sweet deal for any mutt."
"You want me to fight Nick instead of you?" The mutt shook his head. "Uh-uh. Even if he’s a Sorrentino, he’s a pup with no notches on his belt. I’m beyond that. But Malcolm’s protégé?" He grinned. "Now that might be a challenge worth winning."
"Sure it would, and I’m not trying to take it from you. Here’s the deal. You want a shot at me, bring a friend for Nick. You do have friends, don’t you?"
"Sure but—"
"I’m sure one of those friends isn’t as experienced as you. He’d be happy for the chance to fight Nick. And he’d owe you one for setting it up."
The mutt paused, then peered at me. "You wouldn’t be trying to get out of a fight, would—"
I pounced and knocked him to the ground, then jammed my forearm against his throat. "Do I look like I’m trying to blow off a fight?"
The mutt gasped. I eased back, but stayed on his chest.
"You’re good," he wheezed.
For a moment, I wondered whether I’d miscalculated and scared him off, but then his eyes gleamed with the prospect of the bragging rights he’d earn by beating me. After all, I was just a kid. A decent fighter for my age, but an inexperienced, cocky pup nonetheless.
"Okay, sure," he said. "I know a couple of guys. Let’s set something up."
So we did.
Legend
"A small fight?" Nick said, trailing down the path after me. "Just a small one."
"Yeah, sure, we’ll just tell them ‘hey, Nick wants a fight, but just a small one, so stop before you kill him please.’"
"You know what I mean."
"No, I don’t," I said. I stopped to readjust my knapsack, then hoisted the hockey bag again.
"I can carry that," Nick said, reaching for the hockey bag.
I grunted a negative and swung it out of his reach. He didn’t need to see what was in there. It certainly wasn’t hockey equipment. This just happened to be the biggest bag I could find at the sporting goods store, and the one that would look least suspicious if someone saw me hauling it around in November.
"There’s no such thing as a small fight," I said. "There are short fights and there are long fights, and either way you can get killed and that’s not on the agenda for today. Telling them you want a fight was a ruse." I caught his look of confusion. "An excuse."
"But I
do
want a fight."
"You’ll get your chance soon enough. No need to go looking for one."
He swerved past me to open the door on the old wooden hunting cabin. I nodded my thanks and walked inside. It was empty, and had been for months, being off-season. Dozens of these cabins dotted the countryside around here. I’d scouted the area last month and found two possibilities. Had one been occupied, I’d have chosen the other. Both were at least a mile from the nearest house, meaning I’d have plenty of time to work, and clean up after my work, without fear of interruption.
"Do you want to go over it again?" I asked.
Nick shook his head.
"Okay, then go on outside and let me set up."
"I could help—"
"No," I said, and shoved him toward the door.
I’d arranged to meet the mutt and his friend at noon. The site was a half-mile from the cabin. Convenient, but not too close.
The next step was difficult. Mentally difficult. I had to cheat. No matter how senselessly violent werewolf fights may seem, they came with set rules of behavior, what human fighters might call "gentleman’s rules." You couldn’t sneak up from behind. You couldn’t take three friends to fight one guy. You couldn’t use weapons. It had to be a fair, one-on-one, open fight. But I couldn’t do this. Not today. Break the rules was the only way to guarantee that my plan would succeed.
Nick and I broke the first rule by jumping the mutts on their way to the fight. We slipped downwind and nabbed them from behind. By catching them off-guard, we were able to knock them down, then gag and tie them. Every part of me cringed at the injustice of this, but I only had to remind myself of the alternative—a lifetime of battling trespassing mutts—and even my wolf-brain agreed that this was for the best. Territory had to be protected and, even if this wasn’t the way a wolf would protect it, it was acceptable under the circumstances.
After we tied them up, I gave them each a half-dose of the sedative I’d swiped from Jeremy’s medical supplies. It was enough to make them too groggy to struggle, but not too groggy to walk to the cabin.
Once at the cabin, Nick took the mutt he’d been supposed to fight, the newcomer, and tied him to a tree. I double-checked the knots, and gave him another partial dose of sedative, to put him to sleep. Then I took my mutt—the one who’d first come to challenge Jeremy—into the cabin.
I never took the gag from his mouth, and never said a word to him. There was nothing to say. He’d trespassed on our property, and he knew that the penalty for that might be death. The death he was about to receive, though, was a punishment far in excess of the crime. Again, that was a problem for me. I knew what had to be done, but I also understood the unfairness of it. All I could do, then, was to make sure he’d suffer no more than he would have if we’d fought. So, when we were in the cabin, I gave him the rest of the sedative dose, plus another half-shot. He was unconscious within minutes. Then I hoisted him onto the plastic-covered table, double checked the room, making sure all the plastic sheeting was still in place, and set to work.
It took two hours. A couple of times, I thought I wouldn’t be able to finish. No, I wasn’t overcome by horror or disgust at the reality of what I’d decided to do. I understand that, from a human point of view, maybe I should have been, but that wasn’t a problem. This was a job that needed to be done, and because I knew the mutt felt nothing, it was no different than working with a corpse. To me, he was already dead. The problem was that I had to keep him alive, and that was a feat that required more medical skill than I possessed. As part of my research, I’d studied field guides for war medicine, so I had some idea how to cauterize the wounds I was inflicting, and keep him from bleeding out, but it wasn’t easy.
Finally, the job was done. I pulled off the raincoat I’d donned, so the blood spatter wouldn’t spook Nick, then headed outside.
By now, the other mutt was awake and struggling.
"Shit, that really did take a long time," Nick said. "What the hell were you doing in there?"
"I had to wait for him to wake up so I could talk to him first," I said. "And now I need to talk to this one. You remember the plan, right? I’m taking him inside and you’re waiting out here."
"Sure, but wouldn’t it be easier—"
"No."
"It’d be safer if there were two of us—"
I grabbed Nick’s arm and pulled him aside, out of earshot of the other mutt. "You’re not going inside, Nick. Not going in. Not looking in. You promised."
"Shit, what did you—?"
"I’m trying to protect our territory. That’s all you need to know."
He glanced at the cabin, then at me. "Yeah. Okay."
I took a knife from my pocket and advanced on the other mutt. His eyes widened at the sight of the knife, but I only cut the ropes holding him to the tree. Then I dragged him to his feet and shoved him toward the cabin. He looked around, as if considering making a break for it, but could barely walk, let alone run. At the door, I glanced back once, to make sure Nick was staying outside, then went in and locked the door behind us.