dark brown hair dusts his squared shoulders, and his head is held high as he places his hands on the railing.
“Ruin Falls,” he calls out, his voice booming, and the wolves all around me are dead silent as though they’re hanging on his every word. “I’ve called you here today because the way of our pack has been violated. As your alpha, I call for a reckoning.”
Tawny brown eyes drop to mine, and horror rushes through me like a tsunami. My heart goes wild inside my chest as though it too is nothing more than a rabid being raging and rioting until it can escape its confines. Dread consumes my every cell as understanding rips through me like a first shift.
The blond male isn’t Tyran, the tyrannical alpha of the Ruin Falls pack. The male who claimed me is. I don’t just belong to this barbaric group of wolves. I’ve been mated by the male who leads them.
Fuck. My. Life.
There’s a collective intake of breath from the pack as I reel with understanding and shock. My feet are backing up before I even realize I’m doing it, but as soon as I do, I force myself to stand still again. The second I’m rooted in place, his eyes move away from me. “Warrik and Reap, step forward.”
My head snaps to the right as I watch the two wolves who filled the bath in the shed come forward. Warrik looks rough, as though he didn’t sleep last night after my run-in with him in the woods. Tyran’s eyes stay locked on the two males as they stop in front of the deck, heads tipped up to look at their alpha. If they had tails right now, they’d be tucked under them as tightly as they could be.
Beneath the sun, the tanned skin of Tyran’s muscled chest makes my mouth water. Right now, with his hands braced on the railing as he looks down at the two wolves beneath him, he looks every bit the formidable alpha leader. I kick myself for not realizing it sooner. He’s strong. So much stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced. No wonder he was able to handle me and my wolf at our most rabid.
“Beta Warrik, you are accused of giving an outsider access to the pack and our territory on the night of our sacred claiming hunt.” Tyran’s grip tightens on the railing, and my stomach tightens right along with it. “Do you deny it?”
Warrik stands tall and proud, hands clasped in front of him as he looks up at Tyran. “No.”
At his answer, voices murmur through the gathered group.
“What was your reasoning?” Tyran asks, his face a stony mask, expression unreadable.
For a split second, Warrik turns, his eyes finding me in the crowd. “She was captured on our land, which means she belonged to our pack the moment we found her. It was moon-blessed that she arrived here on the night of our claiming hunt,” he argues. “She’s wild, and there are males here who deserve a claim. All females in our pack participate in the hunt.”
“She was not yet part of our pack,” Tyran snaps out, voice cracking like a whip. “You could have loosed a spy. A saboteur. Or an even greater threat. But more than that, you acted without your alpha’s permission and without thought for your fellow pack members.”
It’s almost imperceptible, but the shifters standing around me seem to inch away from me at Tyran’s words, distrustful gazes falling on me, though every time I try to meet their eyes, they’ve already turned away.
Tyran moves his attention to the second male. “Delta Reap. You are facing the same reckoning.”
The second male’s eyes widen, and he tears a hand through his ashy brown hair, yanking on it in frustration. “I told him it was a bad idea!” he calls up, shooting an angry look at Warrik that’s filled with blame and accusation.
“But you did nothing to stop it from happening,” Tyran bites out. “You did not report Warrik’s behavior to your superiors.”
At that, Reap goes silent, head hanging down as he stares at the ground. Warrik continues to look straight ahead, though I don’t miss the way his face has seemed to pale. I have no idea what a reckoning involves here, but it’s put fear and dread into these males, and tension is pulsating out of the rest of the gathered pack.
Tyran lifts his gaze to the crowd. “At the moon’s first light, the reckoning begins,” he announces, and the