Page 63 of Hunted

I shook my head and she nodded. That was the difference between my parents. My dad was a hothead. My mother had known all along how I’d gotten that scar. She’d known it had never been a training accident. But she’d also gone through Tracer boot camp herself, knew part of it was challenging up within the ranks to determine your pack position. She might have wanted to kill her brother since the moment it showed up at my throat, but she trusted me to handle it. The moment I said the word, I knew she’d gladly storm the Tracer compound, and my uncle would have a matching scar at his throat by nightfall. You didn’t fuck with Sofia’s children.

“Get out of here,” my father growled. “No more of your goddamn deals. You stay the hell away from my sons.”

I glanced from my mom to West, who was practically glowing in the corner, Topher’s arms around him, his Omega wolf magic pouring off him in waves as he sent calming energy through the room. With a sneer, Guillermo pushed past my father and stalked from the room.

“Dad,” I started, embarrassed when my voice broke, but he cut me off with a slash of his hand.

“You’re past the age of me being able to tell you what to do, River. You’re going to make your own choices.” He held my eyes, and for the first time since I was seventeen, I was tempted to back down under the weight of his Alpha stare. “But think long and hard about what you’re being asked to do. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, done so much I regret that it keeps me up at night. I can’t go back. I can only try to make amends for how I’ve hurt you and your brothers when I wasn’t the father and Alpha I should have been. I would only wish you wouldn’t have to carry that same burden when you’re an old man like me.”

“Yes, sir.” I frowned, seeing West covering his face like he was trying not to cry.

My dad followed Guillermo out, probably to make sure he’d really gone. The sound of the screen door clapping shut was deafening.

“What did he mean?” West’s voice broke the silence. When I looked up, he was glaring like he wanted to burn a hole through my skull. Fuck, I’d been wrong. My brother wasn’t upset. He was shaking with rage. “When he said Cal made a deal, what did he mean?”

I shook my head. “You need to talk to Cal.”

“Bullshit,” West hissed. “You have to talk to Guillermo and tell him to leave Cal alone. He listens to you, more than any of us.”

“Yeah, he really doesn’t.” I traced the scar at my throat, the memory of that night of challenges from four years earlier resurfacing.

I’d gone up against Holden Bates, one of the older Tracers, the fourth in line in the pack. I was nineteen. I was strong and well trained, but my wolf was smaller by at least fifty pounds in terms of raw muscle mass. It was a brutal fight. Powers were allowed. I was a neural manipulator. Holden was a powerful shield. There was no way I was getting into his head. This fight would be about brute wolf strength and cunning, nothing else.

We slowly circled, my wiry black wolf staying low to the ground. Holden shifted into a gray wolf that weighed in at nearly three hundred pounds. He bared his teeth, lunging. He was stronger, bigger. I was faster.

I twisted out of the way, seizing him by the throat. Around us, the pack howled, bloodthirsty and amped up on moon magic. Cage fight challenges were always held at the full moon when we needed to burn off aggression. Snarling, I forced Holden to his knees. Still, he refused to yield to me. I was younger by decades. A mere pup. This defeat would be humiliating no matter who lost and we both knew it.

“Enough.” My uncle’s voice rang out across the fighting circle. Instantly, the wolves around us quieted.

But Holden hadn’t given in, hadn’t ceded to my authority. I was one of the youngest Tracers to come into the pack bearing this much power. In my situation, it was either come out fighting early, and establish my dominant position in the hierarchy, or risk looking weak and have a line of wolves looking to take me out every chance my back was turned.

I tightened my jaws at the gray wolf’s throat.

“I said enough.” I felt the pressure of my uncle’s magic whisper against my mental shields, seeking an opening.

But I was Sofia Montemayor-Caldwell’s son. She’d trained all of her sons herself, day after day spent lined up out at the ranch when we practiced sparring, firearms and other general weaponry training, and how to resist the effects of magic.

Including hers.

Guillermo might have been Alpha of the North American wolves, but the terrible secret neither he or my mother would acknowledge out loud was that had Sofia wanted to, she could have taken the Tracer pack from him by force. Her magic was more powerful, more terrible, more cruel. And if I could withstand her power, I could withstand his.

I heard my uncle’s sharp intake of breath, of realization, in the same moment the wolf I held in my jaws yielded to me, submitting, accepting my place as fourth in the pack. I’d won fair and square. I released Holden, shifting to my human form, only to be pinned to the ground before I could fully reform into my human skin, a silver blade pressed to my throat.

I realized my mistake in an instant. I hadn’t challenged Guillermo. I had no desire to be Alpha of the Tracers. Not at nineteen. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that running a military organization as complex and nuanced as the one responsible for the safety of the werewolves came down to raw power and magic. Maybe one day. Not today, when I still had so much to learn. But I’d still miscalculated in allowing Guillermo to see the full extent of my power. Now he knew I was a threat to him. And no Alpha wolf liked knowing there was a younger, stronger wolf waiting in the wings to take his place.

Around us, the pack stood with their heads bowed, no one daring to breathe. The blade cut into my skin, blood streaming down my neck.

“When I give an order, nephew, it isn’t up for debate.”

I blinked, once again back in the present in Dallas’s kitchen where West was pacing in front of the bar.

“This is killing Cal,” West’s voice was strained. “He leaves for a week every month to go up to Dallas and comes back looking like he’s lost ten pounds. I don’t know what the hell Guillermo is doing to him—"

“Nothing that wasn’t done to the rest of us.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Cal isn’t a Tracer. You and Mom are different and you know it. Cal never wanted to be a soldier. Why would he ever agree to—”

West froze, horror and understanding crossing his features. I said nothing. Topher looked from me to his mate, then swore. Crossing the room to my brother’s side, he wrapped him in a fierce hug as West shook his head. “He wouldn’t. Riv, is this, did Guillermo somehow find out about me, that I’m an Omega wolf?”