The fight probably only lasted a minute, but there was so much happening I couldn’t follow it. Damian tugged me out to a safe distance and I noticed Felix’s mate doing the same. The Mercy Hills Mate just watched with his arms crossed over his chest, his face stony.

By the end of it, the two warriors were rolling around on the ground, taking it in turns to try to break knuckles on bone, legs scrabbling in the dirt for leverage. It was very quiet for such a display of violence, not much more than grunts and harsh breathing in among the meaty thunks of fists meeting flesh.

What ended it was the Alpha getting a knee under himself and tossing Oscar in a curving, slamming arc over his shoulder to skid and bounce a couple of feet toward Oscar’s SUV. But instead of following up on his advantage, he just sat there in the dust, forearms braced on bent knees like he was posing for a movie poster.

The Mate’s voice rang out. “Got it out of your systems now? Both of you?”

“No,” the Alpha said indifferently. “But it doesn’t matter.”

Oscar pushed himself up until he was sitting mostly straight and laughed. “You haven’t lost a thing, Sarge.”

“Shut the fuck up,” the Alpha told him, but it almost sounded like a formality the way he said it. Like he’d done what he’d planned to do and now didn’t give a shit about what came after. “You look after them, or you’ll think the zcerneb are fluffy puppies compared to what I’ll do to you.”

My grandmother had tried to terrify me with stories of those wolf-monsters when I’d been a bad little pup. She’d been wrong thinking it would work on me, but I could see that it made its point with Oscar. He knew a lot more about us than he’d ever let on, and he obviously had more connections to the Mercy Hills Alpha than he let on.

“You think I put my job on the line for him just so I could not look out for them? Fuck you too, Quin.” Oscar got to his feet, moving like his muscles were already starting to stiffen. “I think you broke a rib.”

“I won’t say I’m sorry,” Quin told him and looked up at his mate. “Thank you for not getting in the way of this.”

The Mate shrugged and held his hands up in a helpless gesture. “Just when I think I’ve got you alphas figured out, you go and do something like this.”

“Dumb ass?” Oscar said sarcastically.

“You know he’s including you in the alphas, right?” Quin told him.

“Yeah, I knew. I agree with him too.”

Quin sighed and got to his feet. “We won’t keep you.”

“Stay out here until you stop bleeding at least,” Holland said, handing him a cloth of some sort. “We don’t want to get hit with a cleaning fee when we take the car back.” The Alpha nodded and began dabbing at the various cuts leaking streaks of red down his face.

Holland glanced around the group then walked over to us and, to my surprise, folded me into a hug. “Take care of yourself, okay? And him. I’ll worry, even if you aren’t technically mine. And let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.” He held onto me for a moment, then stepped back.

I nodded at him. “I will. Thank you.” Maybe I wasn’t entirely comfortable with him, but I couldn’t hold a grudge. We’d all made our choices based on the information we had at the time and he was at least trying to meet me halfway.

He nodded and turned to Damian. “You know that an omega is a gift. Treat him as such. He is worth his weight in fresh deer and more and I am trusting you to watch over him as I trust him to watch over you. You are pack now, whatever the humans say, and pack is never alone.” He leaned in and offered his scent to Damian, then turned to me and did the same, a formal acceptance of us to the pack and into his care. Awkwardly, I accepted it and then the Alpha came over to offer his, bloody and wild as it still was.

And that was it. We parted, Damian and I to climb into the back of Oscar’s SUV, the Alpha and his Mate back to their. Felix waved to me before he got in and then we were off, driving in different directions as if even now the Alpha and Oscar couldn’t stand to be near each other.

I didn’t care, though. I had Damian, and a new life and even though I couldn’t really predict what was to come, I was happy with my choices and with the opportunities that would come.