Logan had seen enough.
Damn the rules and damn tradition and damn the male chauvinists who had made them. That was Logan’s mate, and he would not stand by and watch her be destroyed.
He burst through the trees in a dark blur of motion, headed straight toward the closest of Honor’s challengers, the gray male she’d left behind, confused. Logan had the element of surprise on his side, and within a fraction of a second, he also had the back of the gray wolf’s neck between his teeth. Biting down powerfully and shaking like a wet dog, he broke the male’s neck with a snap and an echoing growl.
There went the element of surprise.
Actually, it accomplished one more thing; it drew the attention of every single Lupine in the clearing, including Honor’s two attackers. She used their distraction to dodge their concerted attack and put some distance between them.
Logan moved immediately to her side and nuzzled her gently. She answered his whine with a quick swipe of her tongue. She had bled, but her wounds weren’t serious. She would be fine.
But the battle wasn’t over.
A few feet away, the blond wolf began to twitch and grunt, a prelude to him rising on his back legs, growing four and a half feet, and taking the shape of the wolf-man of Hollywood legend. He had shifted into his were form, one that provided him with the basic, guttural power of speech.
“Violator!” the werewolf roared, his voice broken and rasping and unnatural to all but a Lupine ear. “No one but a challenger may enter the battle. Who is this interloper?”
Behind the blond, the other male began to shift as well, taking on the towering seven-foot musculature of a mature werewolf. Logan responded to the threatening gesture in kind. The bullet wound in his shoulder protested loudly, but he ignored it.
“She is my mate,” he snarled, the words hard to form with his face still bearing a pointed muzzle not designed for speech. “Touch her again and die.”
The darker male leaned forward and sniffed. “Silverback! You are no part of this pack. You have no rights here. Leave, or you will be slaughtered like a common trespasser.”
At his side, Honor shifted as well. Maybe she had been feeling left out? Now they all wore their were forms.
“If you attempt to harm my mate, I will tear out your throat, just like I tore out little Greggie’s,” she growled, her lip curling in contempt. “What’s wrong, Richard? Are you not such a big, bad wolf when the odds even out?”
The four of them faced off for a long, tense moment, waiting to see who would make the first move, but it was Hamish’s voice that broke the silence.
“Richard Maloni is correct,” the elder called out from his place atop the oak stump platform. “Only a member of the pack may participate in the Alpha Mating Rite. You have no authority here, Logan Hunter. You must step aside and allow the Rite to continue.”
Logan turned on Hamish with a howl of rage. “I won’t stand by while another male attempts to claim my mate. She is mine!”
Shocked whispers began to rumble through the assembled pack members. Until that moment, they had remained still and silent while they watched the battle rage.
“As beta of the Silverback Clan, you should know that only a member of the pack in question can claim an unmated female alpha.”
“Then I renounce my ties to the Silverback alpha and petition for entry into the White Paw Clan.”
“He can’t do that,” Richard said, his rumbling were voice managing something like triumph. “No lone wolves can join the pack until the matter of the alpha has been settled.”
Honor gave a low growl. “Then let’s settle it,” she said, and took the dark male werewolf to the ground.
Chaos erupted.
The pack, seemingly jolted awake by the news that Honor had mated the inquisitive intruder from the Silverback Clan, now exploded in a cacophony of screams, shouts, and howls, none of which penetrated the fury clouding Honor’s mind. Fighting for her life had been one thing, but now that her mate’s life had been threatened —for the second time in twenty-four hours—Honor knew that threat had to die, and die quickly.
Her move had caught Maloni totally off guard. The battle had stopped for the discussion as if someone had hit the pause button, but he knew the rules just as well as Honor did—there were no breaks in a Mating Rite. Her attack might have been sneaky, but it was in no way illegal. Maloni should have kept his guard up.
She knew the surprise wouldn’t keep him down for long, so she had to make this fast. Even while she was moving through the air, she was lifting her legs so that she impacted him first with her heels against his chest. At the same time, she bent forward and grasped his head between her hands. Using his own momentum against him, she twisted her upper body hard to the side just before they hit the ground. She rolled away just after the sound of the second neck of the night snapping in two filled the clearing.
Honor staggered a little as she got to her feet. She had taken out the third challenger, but she had landed on her injured shoulder, tearing open what the shift to her were form had begun to heal and nearly wrenching the joint out of its socket. She was nearing the end of her strength, but only one challenger remained, and her mate had entered the fray and vowed to protect her. Maybe she really would live through the night.
She knew that Logan would do everything he could to protect her, no matter what the rules of the Mating Rite said. When he had claimed her as his mate, he had made a commitment to her, she realized, and he would honor that before everything else. If he had to tear her pack down to its foundations, he would do it in order to keep her safe. And Logan could do it, too. He was the strongest Lupine that Honor had ever met.
While the pack shifted and murmured around the edge of the clearing, Honor drew her shoulders back and began making her way to her mate’s side. She had started out this night determined to become alpha of the White Paw Clan, but it had just occurred to her that maybe she could become something even better, provided her mate agreed with her plan.
“Cheater!” Darin’s whining accusation interrupted her train of thought. “She attacked another wolf during his weakest moment. She had no honor! I demand an Alpha Challenge, here and now!”
Oh, come on, Honor thought. Was this guy serious?
Hamish shook his head. “You already called for an Alpha Mating Rite, Darin Major. You cannot have both. You can either finish what you have started, or you can show your belly to the female and acknowledge her as your alpha.”
“Actually, I believe that’s my decision,” a new voice said as a tall male figure stepped out of the forest and into the glow of the bonfire light. He had thick, dark hair, a frankly impressive physique, and absolutely no clothes on. The last bit was what marked him as Lupine.
Or a nudist, but in this neck of the woods in the middle of the winter, which sounded more likely?
“Graham!”
Logan said the name as if he’d just been punched in the stomach, which was about how Honor felt when she realized that the stranger in their midst was none other than the alpha of the Silverback Clan.
Logan quickly shifted back into his human form, and Honor followed suit. Into her birthday suit.
“What are you doing here?” Logan asked.
Graham Winters looked at his beta and curled his lip. “Three days. Three days of unreturned phone calls and unanswered voice mails, and you ask me what I’m doing here? I’m checking to make sure you’re not dead, you son of a bitch!” The alpha paused and peered at Logan’s shoulder. “Is that a fucking gunshot wound?”
“Well, yeah, but it’s getting better. A few more shifts, and I bet you won’t even notice it.”
Hamish cleared his throat. “Graham Winters,” he said, making certain his voice carried around the clearing. “Normally you would be welcomed to our territory by the alpha of the White Paw Clan, but I’m afraid you’ve caught us while that matter was being decided.”
“Is that right?” Graham continued to stare at Logan. “And here I thought that who should be alpha of this pack was what I had sent my beta to Connecticut to decide.”
“The right to be alpha is decided by a show of strength,” Darin interjected, reclaiming the attention of those who had frankly forgotten about him. “I’ve challenged Honor Tate to fight me for that right.”
