Chapter Sixteen

The sun burned the early morning chill from the ground as Jason and his men crouched in the underbrush near the roadside, waiting. Mist swirled around their ankles, and the grass was wet with dew.

Jason fingered his rifle and imagined what Austin’s hot, sticky blood would taste like, running down his throat.

He pictured the look on Austin’s face when he was forced to watch Jason and all his men taking turns with Savannah, one after another. Not because he wanted her, but because he knew it would hurt Austin.

Austin was the thorn in Jason’s paw, worrying and irritating and jabbing, for the past year, ever since his father had gotten sick.

After years of kissing his idiot father’s ass, the position of Alpha had finally been in Jason’s reach. He hadn’t even had to death challenge his father to get it, which he’d been on the verge of doing; he’d just had to wait. Sit there by the hospital bed with a fake smile pasted on his face.

And then his mother had told him the news. His father’s death-bed confession. He’d cheated on her with Jessica Bronson…and fathered a son.

A son who was older than him.

Austin motherfucking bitchface Bronson.

He’d sworn his mother to secrecy. And then, not trusting her, he’d put a little too much sleeping medication in her nighttime hot toddy after their father’s funeral.

His poor, grieving mother. Her heart just couldn’t take the loss of her mate. She’d died a day later.

But she’d blabbed to him, so he couldn’t trust that she hadn’t blabbed to somebody else.

That meant Austin had to go.

Jason had waited for years for the position that was his due. The power, the prestige, the girls begging to share his bed, the fear in the eyes of his pack members when he strolled by, lord of all he surveyed.

He wasn’t going to lose his birthright just because his father had a wandering dick.

He’d tried to take Austin out by challenging him at the gathering…and suffered a loss so humiliating that it still made him growl just thinking about it. Clearly, Austin had cheated, knocking his legs out from under him when he was distracted, but everyone had just let Austin get away with that.

But Jason had taken a few lessons from his father’s playbook. He’d played the long game. Taken out that family of hikers, planted evidence to frame Roy. And then manipulated Austin into an impossible situation, using Austin’s weak spot – his pack. Jason didn’t have any weak spots, because he couldn’t care less about anyone other than himself.

Unfortunately, he’d only been able to bring fourteen men with him today. Most of his pack was all about the stupid rules, all about honor among wolves and other outmoded ideals. And he’d had to bribe the men who came with him outrageously.

It set his teeth on edge.

The pack didn’t respect him the way they should. They were already muttering about him behind his back, about how he was a bully, how he had the strength but not the wisdom, how he wasn’t the wolf his father had been.

They hadn’t seen anything yet. He’d been too distracted by this wretched Austin situation.

Well, that ended today. He had the stopsticks set up on the road to blow out Austin’s tires. Austin, Grant, Roy and Savannah would never make it to their meeting with the Truthmaker.

Roy would never get to rat Jason out.

And once Austin was out of the way, he’d show them what true power was. How a true Alpha ruled. He knew who’d been talking about him, and he’d make every last one of them watch while he killed their cubs and violated their mates again and again, and then finally, he’d end them.

Rage roared in his ears as he thought about it.

They don’t respect me.

His own pack.

Some of them were even talking about finding another Alpha – from outside the pack!

Fur rippled over his body. His fingers melted together as his hands formed into paws, and he dropped his rifle on the ground.

Furious, he scrabbled to pick it up. It took him almost a minute to get control of his wolf. That was because his wolf was so powerful. When his wolf wanted out, it was nearly impossible to cage that beast.

When he finally regained his human form, he realized that one of his men was shouting right in his face.

How dare he?

Jason punched the man in the side of the head so hard that the man’s skull cracked beneath his fist.

That was true power!

The man fell to the ground, eyes rolling back in his head.

“Sir!” one of his men cried pleadingly. “Please! We’ve got a problem!”

“What the fuck?” he screamed at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Manny was trying to tell you, sir, but you wouldn’t…” The man saw the look on Jason’s face and cringed, whining submissively.

“What’s the fucking deal? What’s going on?” Spittle flew from Jason’s mouth.

Incompetent assholes.

“Our lookout says that the car stopped right before the stopsticks. Like they knew exactly where they were. The car is just sitting there.”

What? That was impossible! He’d laid the stopsticks down himself, this morning, and nobody would have betrayed him. The only way that Austin could know where the stopsticks were would be if his visions were actually working. And Korbin had made sure that Austin wouldn’t be able to access his true power.

Hadn’t he?

“Sir! Incoming!” one of his other men yelled.

He scented them right before he heard them.

Dozens of wolves.

No, make that at least a hundred.

Some of the scents were unfamiliar, but some of them – fucking hell – it smelled as if his own pack was coming to take him out. And they’d brought reinforcements.

They would only do that if they knew that he’d framed Roy. Knew that he’d been the one to kill the hikers.

His men ran forward, raising their rifles to their shoulders.

He staggered back a few steps, stunned by the magnitude of the betrayal he was facing.

Several of his men glanced back at him. Like they expected him to run out front or something. Sacrifice himself. Be some kind of martyr.

No fucking way.

He shifted, turned, and ran.

And his men dropped their rifles, and they shifted too, the cowardly little bastards. He’d paid them to fight for him! To defend him! How dare they run?

The only good thing about them running was that it meant there were more targets, and it would be harder for the traitors to zero in on him.

Bullets whizzed past his head, and he smelled silver.

It was all over. His reign as Alpha. His life. No pack in the nation would take him in.

And all because of Austin. That wretched, rotten hound, a bastard in every sense of the word.