“You will see now why the ulva are demonised as ‘nix,’ seen as rapacious females unable to be satisfied by one man. Breaker of bonds. Underminer of strong packs.”
Greta’s voice grew louder, more sonorous, carrying with it the weight of ages. Because this time when Margaret attacked, I didn’t have a chance in the world.
“Get your hands up!” Zack shouted, but it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. I thought this was why Margaret never brought any more of her mates with her when she came to train, because god-fucking-damn.
She hit me like a freight train, twice as fast and what felt like twice as hard. My defences were cut through like wet paper as she slammed a fist into one shoulder then the next. I went sailing back, dimly hearing my mates’ cries, but there wasn’t much I could do. She followed me at lightning speed as I went crashing down, and when I fell heavily onto the mat, she was already there, her hand around my throat. I could feel it, a terrible power throbbing through her, through her fingers as she stood, staring down at me with silver eyes, waiting for me to tap out. My hand moved sluggishly, but I tapped the ground.
Margaret was slow to react, and it seemed to take a real act of will to pull herself back, something I’d never expected to see. She always seemed so contained when we sparred. Finally, she nodded and then stepped away.
“What the fuck was that?” Zack snapped, sliding down onto the ground next to me, not satisfied until he’d looked me over. I shook his persistent hands off, struggling to get into a seated position.
“Yeah, what was that?” I asked.
“Margaret, a less physical demonstration?” Greta asked.
The woman nodded and then went through the same process of focussing, but this time, I saw her guys cluster around her, and when her eyes glowed silver, so did theirs. Like some kind of synchronised light show, the glow pulsed in each and every face, and then Margaret broke away.
I knew she was a master fighter, that she was graceful and balletic as well as bloody deadly, but I saw now any thoughts I had about comparing myself to her were dumb. She moved like white lightning, through a well choreographed series of strikes and hits, almost too fast to follow. A virtual blur, she pummelled and took down a thousand invisible enemies before coming to a neat stop. Despite this dazzling display, she wasn’t even breathing heavily when she stood still, just took the lot of our gobsmacked expressions in and then nodded to Greta.
“Ulva is power,” Greta said. “She draws all available, potentially compatible mates to her during her call, and when she settles on her pack…” She tipped a head to Margaret, who now returned to her pack, hands reaching for her. “She becomes twice, three times, many times stronger. The denial of the Father is as much this.”
Her eyes held mine, a grimness there making me want to look away but not able to.
“A removal of an ulva’s power base. Instead, she is hamstrung and kept in odd circumstances. Forced into situations that contradict her nature, becoming little more than a means to validate singular masculine power.” Her gaze softened, as if she saw me and all the women in my family and what they had become. “Rejecting the Father rejects the true power of any pack. Thank you, Margaret, gentlemen.”
The group all nodded in response and then took their place on the closest bench before Greta turned to me.
“And now, we work on trying to tap into the power of your pack.”
The older women who had been seated got to their feet, forming a loose ring around me and my guys. Our eyes shifted, trying to get a read on them and what they were going to do. Greta stepped forward, obviously the leader in this.
“Each of you possesses a power. You know this when you take fur, when you exert dominance. Something invisible and inexplicable inside you allows you to do things no human could. Shifters now navigate the world using that personal power. Some climb to the heady heights of alpha, some do little other than scrub around in the dirt, some are so divorced from their power, they can’t even shift.”
Her lips thinned down to a line.
“It is this power you will need to tap into to use that of an ulva. You already have in your interactions with the Father, from what my grandson told me. Unwittingly, you have stumbled upon this, but when you touched the divine, the power that takes you beyond yourself has connected the lot of you to him. Now we need to be more deliberate with things. You will connect with each member of your pack, just one by one. My enclave will contain your power, ground it, send anything excess into the land beneath us, not to the Father. That’s all you will do here, practice reaching out and connecting deliberately, then controlling what you tap into.”
“And how do we do that?” Lorcan asked with a wary frown. I watched him shift his weight from one foot to the other.
“A volunteer?” she replied with a smile. “Excellent.” She held out a hand to him, which he took after a couple of heartbeats, then offered the other to me. Her skin felt warm, dry, well callused, but she drew my attention back to my mate. It seemed to take some effort for him to meet my eyes, but when they did, they locked on tight. A long sigh escaped him as he stared, eyebrows slightly creased, tension in his jaw. “You hunger for her,” Greta said softly.
“We all do,” he replied, breaking our gaze.
“No, you hunger for her. More than the others, more than
