Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) (15 page)

“
S-sir?”

“
WHAT?”

Rafe cringed again, and something in Noah just
wanted to kill the weak fucker, but then, he’d been the only one
who’d stayed behind. Why punish that?

“
I tried to tell
them to wait and ask, but they were afraid you’d say no. Shira
meant a lot to the pack. She kept us together and out of trouble
for a long time.”

“
If they liked
her so much, why did they all so quickly jump to follow
me?”

“
No one else in
this group is much of a leader. And we need a strong leader to
survive out here.”

If only they knew how long he’d
been kept in that cell. They wouldn’t be turning to him to save
them all. There was only so far brute strength could take him. And
the half-faded, barely there memories of how his dad ran things
weren’t going to help him now, anyway. His dad had run an
established pack for decades. This wasn’t the same situation at
all. He had no idea how to gain their trust
and
respect.

One or the other would have been easier, but to put
the fear of God in them while also gaining their trust and loyalty
wasn’t the most realistic task he’d ever been assigned.

Sydney squeezed his hand. And that
was yet
another
issue. If he came off weak, someone might try to hurt her,
even with his mark.

Wolves began running in through the revolving doors
and shifting back to their human forms. Noah let go of Sydney’s
hand and crossed his arms over his chest. He let out a low
growl.

“
Who is
responsible for this?”

The pack members looked at the ground.

“
Should I just
start killing until one of you talks?”

Sydney let out a shocked gasp. Noah rounded on her
and glared. He wished he could make her understand, but she had to
stand with him now. Thankfully she closed her mouth and masked
whatever emotions she was working through. He couldn’t reassure
her. Every eye was on him, determining if he was fit to lead,
determining if they could trust him. He wondered if this rebellion
wasn’t a test, rather than an actual rebellion. After all, what
were their other options right now?

If he and Sydney just left them, what would they do?
There was no one else to lead. The pack would fall apart and they’d
fall prey to the vampires lurking in the area. Possibly some of
them would be taken by the magic users into the city. If they
scattered and tried to get farther from the city, they’d just run
into unfamiliar territory. They wouldn’t survive without each other
and an alpha. Of course it was a test.

“
Rafe, shut that
shit off.” Noah pointed up at the speakers still pounding out the
metal.

The wolf that had stayed behind scrambled to obey
the order.

“
WHO is
responsible?” His voice echoed off the walls.

He didn’t have to bluff. If these wolves were going
to pose a threat or problem for him or Sydney, he had no qualms
about taking them out. And judging from the fear in the room, they
wouldn’t be able to organize well enough to overtake him. They’d
hesitate. And that would be enough. From the looks on their faces,
they all knew he wasn’t just putting on a show.

One of the wolves stepped out of the pack.

“
It was me.
Shira was my sister.”

Noah shouldn’t have been surprised that it was a
female wolf. Between his mother and Shira, it wasn’t as if the idea
was all that shocking. But from what he’d gleaned, statistically
male wolves tended to be stronger, and they also tended to cause
more trouble.

“
Livia!” one of
the other wolves snapped.

“
He’d kill me
when he found out, anyway. Isn’t it better to keep the rest of you
safe?”

Traditionally when a new alpha came in, they didn’t
just take out the former alpha, but any close blood relations that
might cause problems in the new structure. Given what she’d already
done, it wasn’t crazy for her to think she was about to die. But if
he killed her, he’d look like a monster. He might have their fear,
but he’d never gain their trust.

“
Come
here.”

She stepped away from the group
and approached him. Noah allowed himself to shift just enough for
his claws to come out. The room went absolutely silent. Even Sydney
didn’t make a sound. Livia squeezed her eyes shut and cringed.
Instead of slitting her throat like another alpha would have, his
claws sliced through her shoulder, leaving a trail of blood and
torn flesh behind.

Noah watched as the blood slowed,
but she didn’t heal. His suspicions about this pack were right.
Acting collectively as a pack, they were fine, but none of them
alone or even in small groups could challenge him. Livia wouldn’t
heal properly until she’d had something to eat. Even then, it might
take a day or two.

“
You will never
defy me like that again. Is that understood?”

“
Y-yes,
sir.”

“
I would have
let you bury her if you’d asked.”

Noah turned back to the group and gestured to his
mate. “If any of you don’t know, I’m Noah. Sydney and I are your
new alphas. You are not lone wolves. You don’t take a piss without
one of us knowing about it from now on. Are we clear?”

All throughout the large lobby, werewolves dropped
to one knee and bared their throats. Except a small cluster at the
back. He wasn’t surprised he didn’t have one hundred percent
support. Especially after marking a vampire. Noah wasn’t sure if
the group had noticed the mark Sydney had left on him, but it was
none of their business.

“
No,” one of the
wolves in the back said, still standing, his arms crossed over his
chest. “I’m not answering to a
vampire
. I’ve had to do a lot of
things in my life for survival, but that’s not going to be one of
them.”

Before Noah could say anything else, Sydney had
blurred across the floor and shoved the wolf back hard. He landed
with a loud crack as his tailbone hit the ground.

“
Yes. You will,”
she said, growling for emphasis.

Noah couldn’t be prouder. She understood things. But
then, she’d been raised by the vampire king who, from the stories
that had circulated in the exercise yard over the years, still made
quite an impression on people. She was her father’s daughter, and
she knew the game they had to play now.

The small cluster of hold outs dropped to one knee
and bared their throats. Slowly the male who had spoken up joined
them.

“
Any further
questions?” Noah asked as Sydney calmly made her way back to his
side. He nodded his approval at her.

When no one made a sound he asked, “Did you hunt
without me?”

Heads shook quickly.

“
Good. Let’s go.
Livia, stay here. We’ll bring you something
back.”

She nodded.

The rest shifted to wolf form, and Noah led them out
into the night.

***

Sydney watched her mate lead the
pack outside. It was just her and Shira’s sister now. The girl was
scared of her. She couldn’t have been much more than nineteen.
Still, it was surreal to Sydney that anyone should be scared of
her. She’d always been the weak one that had to fear everybody
else. The only reason she hadn’t spent a lot of her life huddled in
a corner was because her father had made it abundantly clear that
if any harm came to her they would suffer a slow and painful death.
And he’d acted on the threat more than once when she’d gotten minor
injuries over the years.

A large animal pelt lay on the
floor in front of a few chairs. Sydney picked it up and wrapped it
around Livia. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Where do you keep your
first aid?” She was sure her blood would heal others now, but she
wouldn’t cross her mate or undermine him when he was trying to
solidify his alpha status with the pack.

The girl relaxed a fraction and led Sydney to a
small room off to the side. Sydney cleaned the girl’s wounds and
bandaged her up, trying not to be squeamish about the fact that her
mate had just done that.

“
He could have
killed me. It would have been completely normal,” Livia
said.

Sydney was rusty on how packs functioned, but deep
down she knew that was right. Especially with this girl being
Shira’s sister. As brutal as it looked, that had been mercy. And
from the expressions she’d seen on the faces of the pack, they had
all read the signal loud and clear. Noah wasn’t going to be pushed
around, but he’d give them a chance to follow him.

“
When you guys
were being shown to your room last night, I told Shira she
shouldn’t have brought you here, but she wouldn’t listen. She said
Noah was too strong. She thought if she’d challenged him in the
desert that he would have taken her out and taken the pack then and
there. She said he hadn’t marked you, and she was going to try to
get him to mark her instead to get rid of you.”

Sydney’s hand went to her throat to touch the
vicious-looking mark Noah had left there. “She wouldn’t have had a
chance. I’ve known Noah since we were children. We’ve always been
destined for one another.”

Sydney knew Shira couldn’t have competed with a true
mate no matter what her strategy was. Shira must not have believed
it was true. It wasn’t hard to see why. With Noah being strong
enough to lead a pack, the idea that his true mate would be some
weak little barely-a-vampire would be laughable to almost anyone.
It had seemed unlikely even to Sydney until she’d felt the first
effects of his blood.

Chapter Eight

Noah shifted back to his human form as he reached
the shelter of the train station lobby. He’d have to maintain these
displays of power for a while to remind them. He didn’t want to
have to do something truly vicious to keep himself and Sydney safe.
He liked the pack and felt bad he’d taken their leader from
them.

The pack had accepted him as their new leader so
quickly, it reminded Noah what a fraud he was. Another wolf
wouldn’t have been so surprised. He kept looking for duplicity but
couldn’t find it in anyone.

He didn’t understand packs, not really. He’d lived
isolated, watching other wolves through glass, having brief
conversations or mostly overhearing brief conversations among
others in the exercise yard. There had been nothing of substance.
No cohesion. No hierarchy.

There had been times when a wolf
had tried to form a mini-pack during recreation hours in the yard,
but the guards would quickly shut it down, isolating the would-be
leader from others immediately with no hope of ever rejoining the
group. It was a warning to the others about organizing. Most of
them went mad with
no
interaction with others. Even the smallest
interaction was better than nothing.

Noah might have been one of those would-be
pseudo-alphas driven mad by total isolation, if not for the fact
that he’d been taken so young. As a child, he couldn’t lead
anything, so he’d stayed out of everybody’s way and observed the
structure of how everyone had fit together at the facility. It had
an organization to it, but it wasn’t the same as how a pack worked.
Not exactly.

Now he found himself surrounded by
pack, wolves he had thought would be more a means to an end to
safely get him to his family, but who now might become a second
family. They’d bonded out in the desert. It felt natural and right.
Running free and hunting was exhilarating. He’d barely been able to
contain his excitement. All the new and exciting smells. The hunt,
the kill. How had he survived at all without any of
that?

Maybe it was unfair to judge them for submitting to
his leadership so easily when he found just being with them out
there in the wildness had melted much of his anti-social wall. He’d
still need a lot of space and time to himself away from others, but
they didn’t make him uncomfortable like they had the first
night.

One of the other wolves struggled just outside the
door to reclaim his form. It was a wolf named Milo. Out in the
desert, Noah had thought Milo might make a good second-in-command
for the pack. His instincts were proving right on that score.

“
Noah?” the wolf
hesitated, testing the appropriateness of first names. But if Noah
wanted this pack to trust him, he couldn’t run things like an army
all the time. There was a time for titles and a time for
names.

“
Yeah?”

“
I thought you
might want to see the transportation we’re using when we leave.”
Milo tossed some sweatpants to him, and he put them
on.

Noah followed him to the back of the train station.
Behind two sets of tracks and one ancient train were several dozen
motorcycles. He watched as Milo straddled one and cranked it
up.

“
Want to go for
a ride?” The beta tossed him some keys. “That’s Shira’s
bike.”

It looked much the same as the others. They were all
black and silver.

“
Sure.” He
wasn’t at all sure. “I’ve never ridden one before,
though.”