“And I already explained to you, boy, that you can’t issue an Alpha Challenge after you already chose to invoke the Alpha Mating Rite. It’s one or the other.” Hamish scowled down at the whiny werewolf. “Either finish the Mating Rite battle, or acknowledge Honor as your alpha.”
“And this is where you came in,” Honor pointed out.
“This is also where I said that as alpha over this entire region, I am actually the one who decides who will be alpha,” Graham said, clearly forcing the words out through clenched teeth. “I’m just waiting for my beta to inform me of his decision in that matter.”
“No, I demand the challenge!”
Fed up at last, Honor threw her hands in the air and rounded on the repetitive troublemaker. “You just don’t get it, do you, Darin? The battle is over, but no one has officially won. Graham Winters is the overalpha of our pack, and he’s going to install the next White Paw alpha. If you don’t like it, feel free to leave, but if you don’t shut up about the damned challenge, I’d be happy to prove to you exactly why that next alpha is not going to be you. Understand?”
Darin surprised all of them, maybe even including himself, by throwing himself straight at Honor.
It wasn’t a fair fight, and unlike Honor’s earlier surprise attack, was completely against the rules. In human form, Honor lacked the weapons to fight back.
So Logan did it for her.
Shifting just the fingers of his right hand, Logan reached out and drew his claws in a bloody line across the werewolf’s abdomen. It was an impressive move, since only the most powerful alpha Lupines had the ability to selectively shift like that. If she hadn’t been busy shifting into her own were form, Honor might have taken a moment to stare in awe.
Darin spun away from the blow that had given Honor just enough time to level the playing field. Acting on pure instinct, she turned into his spin and used her own claws to open up the large arteries in his neck. He bled out into the slushy remains of the challenge circle.
“No! I won’t have it!”
The shrill cry took Honor by surprise, but not nearly as much as the small form of the woman who launched herself into the circle toward Logan, shifting as she went.
By the time she landed atop him, Joey Tate wore her were form, which was nearly six feet as opposed to her normal five feet three inches. Her body had bulked up with muscle and wore a covering of sandy-gray fur. Her face had elongated into a muzzle full of razor-sharp teeth; the claws at the ends of her fingers sliced cleanly through Logan’s skin and into the muscle beneath. He howled in shock, but it was Honor who howled in rage.
Immediately she leaped for her cousin’s back, tearing her off the form of her fallen mate and wrestling the other female to the floor. Joey fought back fiercely, her usually dull green eyes glowing with the fire of madness. She squirmed like a serpent, wriggling out of Honor’s grasp and launching herself once again at Logan.
Honor roared in anger and grabbed her cousin by the ankle, her claws biting deep into the furry limb and drawing enough blood to mat the hair with sticky red fluid. Joey yelped in pain, but she didn’t turn away from her target. She lunged, and if Honor hadn’t pulled her up short by the grip on her ankle, she would have sunk her sharp teeth deeply into Logan’s human throat.
Dragging Joey away, Honor threw her several feet across the clearing and leaped atop her, securing the smaller Lupine’s hands beside her head, her powerful body pinning the woman’s legs as well. Joey might have been spurred on by some rage of her own, but she was really no match for an alpha female, and Honor held her easily.
A moment later, she found herself holding thin air as Joey shifted back into her human form and slipped out of her cousin’s grip to curl up in a fetal position and sob piteously.
“Not supposed to be this way,” she moaned, tugging at her disheveled hair and rocking back and forth. “Darin. Darin should be alpha. Then I’m Luna. I get to make the rules and that slut of a cousin gets to do what I tell her to do. That’s what’s supposed to happen.”
Stunned to her toes, Honor fell back onto her haunches, shifting as she went. She landed buck naked in the trampled slush, her bottom making an embarrassing squish on impact. She was too busy trying to fit the fragments of her reality back together to notice.
“Joey, what are you saying?” she asked. “Are you telling me that you and Darin conspired to take over the pack? What were you going to do? Were you planning to have him challenge me? Because I don’t know if you were watching what just happened here, but what Darin actually did was challenge for the chance to be my mate.”
“NO!” Joey screamed and launched herself at Honor. “No! Darin loves me! Not everyone in the world loves you better than me! Some of them love me better. Darin loves me better. He does!”
Honor just shook her head as Logan plucked Joey out of the air inches from her throat and pinned her hands behind her back. “She’s out of her mind.”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s a safe bet.” Graham watched as Joey dissolved again into tears, collapsing bonelessly in Logan’s firm grip.
“Here, give her to me,” Hamish said gruffly. He stripped off his shirt and quickly fashioned a rope to bind the woman’s wrists.
“I can’t believe we didn’t see it before.” Honor shook her head and let Logan help her to her feet. “I lived in the same house with her. How could I not have realized she was insane?”
“Because you don’t remember her mother.” The look on Hamish’s face spoke of regret and resignation. “Marie was just the same. Sweet as pie one minute, and coming at you with a carving knife the next. When I first heard that Joseph was dead, I honestly thought that she had snapped and killed him. It took five minutes for it to sink in that it had been an accident that killed them both.”
Honor frowned at him. “And you never bothered to tell me about this? Uncle Ham, this pack is my responsibility. I deserved to know if there was a danger they needed to be protected from.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I could never be certain about Josephine. She was better than her mama at hiding it.”
Graham growled, an impatient sound that refused to be ignored. “As touching as this family moment might be, it doesn’t solve the problem of what becomes of this woman. A nonchallenge attack on another Lupine with the intent to kill is a death sentence. But it seems a little cruel to do that to someone not in her right mind.”
“Well, we can’t just put her in an institution, can we?” Logan frowned. “It would be worse than a death sentence. I mean, one full moon, one shift, and she’d either be in a lab somewhere being vivisected, or she’d be killed outright as a monster.”
“Not a human institution, no, but maybe I can talk to Rafe’s mate. When Tess’s grandfather snapped, the Witches’ Council had to find someplace to put him. That means that there must be someplace where she can be confined to keep her from hurting anyone, but where they’d be sympathetic to what she is.”
“So that’s where you’ll send her.”
“
“There’s no question,” Logan said, his deep voice steady and firm. “This is Honor’s pack, and she is more than able to run it as she sees fit.”
Honor nearly fell over sideways. What on earth was the idiot talking about?
Drawing back his shoulders, Logan met her gaze, then shifted his up over her left shoulder in a sign of respect to a dominant Lupine. “And it’s my hope that you will grant your mate the honor of lending you any assistance you might need in the course of your duties.”
If it hadn’t been for Graham’s outraged roar, Honor figured the sound of her jaw dropping would have echoed through the forest like thunder. “You what?”
Logan clenched his jaw and drew a deep breath. “I hope you will grant your mate, grant
“No, I heard you, you idiot. I meant what the hell are you talking about? I’m not going to be running this pack. You’re going to tell the Silverback that I’m not fit to be alpha—which I’m really not, by the way … Okay, so I’m fit, but I’ve realized I don’t really
