6. The Alpha’s Protector

6

The Alpha's Protector

FLOR

M argarette's beautiful eyes filled with pain, but I didn't let my own resolve falter. If she was going to change the rules now, after I'd come here, I wanted to hear it straight from her.

"Of course you're not a prisoner, Flor. You are a guest, an honored one, no matter how dishonorably my niece acted when you arrived."

She wished it was just her niece. From what I had heard and seen so far, unranked shifters still got the short end of the stick here. Maybe worse. Was Margarette unaware of the disparity, or did she not care? I wanted to ask her, tell her what I thought, but all I said was, "I'm not sure this is the pack for me."

"Mountain is the right place for you, little flower," Brand whispered.

The other guys heard, of course, and started arguing, until Margarette held up a hand. "Why not, sweet girl? Please, don't let today's incident sour you on all of us at Northern."

"Incidents," I told her, emphasizing the s .

"We may not deserve another chance, but I would ask you to give us one." She nodded at Patrick, and he took up the argument.

"I know the senior Enforcers have been anxiously awaiting you at the training grounds."

"Me? Why?"

Down the table, Finnick let out a sharp laugh, and Patrick joined in. "Are you kidding? The story of you saving our Alpha and Alpha Mate is all anyone's talking about. The Sergeant at Arms requisitioned an entire set of steak knives for a special training that he hopes to convince you to teach."

"I-I can't teach anyone," I sputtered. "I'm not that good."

Finnick shook his head. "She has no ego at all. None."

Patrick shushed me. "He said we all need to be trained with whatever's at hand. Our pack's too dependent on our traditional blades in this form."

I shrugged. "Tell him to throw some mop handles into the mix. You aren't always at dinner when they attack."

"But you were." Glen spoke for the first time since I'd cut him. He sounded devastated. "Today, just now, in my own home. You were attacked… twice?"

"Chased the first time. Boys being asshole boys. Not sure whether they would have touched me," I lied. Nostrils flared around the table as the metallic scent of a lie wafted through the room, and even Margarette let out a growl.

Brand snarled. "I will tear their legs off and sear the stumps. That will keep them from chasing you ever again."

To my surprise, Finnick muttered, "Sounds fun. I'll help."

I didn't want to talk about the first attack, and Brand looked like he might force the issue. So instead, I circled the table to Glen's side, gently pressing my hand onto the cloth on his arm that they'd bound the wound with. I didn't think it was still bleeding, but more pressure seemed like a good idea. "Where's the pack doctor? You need to get this looked at."

He swallowed. "It… It actually feels better with your hand on it," he murmured, pressing his fingers over mine. "Could you keep holding it?"

"Sure," I said, trying not to show how his touch affected me. I knew my face was turning red, but no one said anything about it.

Except Finnick, of fucking course. He rolled his eyes and muttered, "It feels better when you hold it, Flor. Hold it harder, harder —ugh." He broke off when someone, probably Brand, kicked him under the table.

"Boys, manners." Margarette took charge again. "I'm still just stunned that you were attacked at dinner in our own home. You have my sincerest apologies. What happened? Help me understand."

I figured Vanessa was unranked now, so it wouldn't hurt if I went ahead and told them everything. "Someone—I know now it was you —told Vanessa that I was unranked. She was talking shit about my pack, and me, and how trashy I am, but then she brought up the Hunt. I think it got the younger males a little worked up."

"What did she say exactly?"

"That I fucked every wolf who caught me in the Hunt." I took a shaky breath. "That was their prize. And that I was the pack whore."

Glen rose. "Mother, I'm sorry. Stripping her rank isn't enough. I'm killing her."

"I'll help," Brand muttered.

"No," I said, as calmly as I could. "It's pretty much true, what she said." I turned back to my plate and took another bite of my steak, pretending it tasted delicious, even though my appetite had fled. "I was the prey in the Hunt for… I guess it was just over four years now. And after the first time I was caught, and my mama got me free, I did fuck every wolf who caught me." I took in their reactions, keeping my own face still.

"Damnit," Patrick breathed, dropping his gaze. "You were a child. " Margarette's eyes glittered with fury. Brand just smiled that tiny, quiet smile. He knew.

Glen sat back down, getting it at last. "You avoided every single unmated male in your pack for over four years? I'd heard that, but I wasn't sure it was true."

Finnick choked on something, then rasped, "They hunted you every day?"

"Every night, more like." I shrugged, trying not to shiver as Glen's hand moved across my jawline and grazed my neck as he sat again. "From dusk to midnight. After Trevor's attack, they started enforcing the official rules of the Hunt. I think Luke was the one who convinced his dad to hold them to it."

Patrick spat out another curse. "I thought Luke was a decent shifter, at least for Southern."

Luke wasn't the worst of the shifters at Southern, but he was no saint. "It actually made things better. Before then, it was sort of a free-for-all. I was never safe. But when Mama was sentenced to death by banishment?—"

"Rogues," Margarette murmured, and I nodded. "I've heard about your problems with rogues at Southern."

"Yeah. Back then, the males were hunting me all the time, and Luke convinced Alpha Callaway that the males were coming to training exhausted from hunting me through the nights." I blinked, remembering my own exhaustion, and those three nights in the tree when I'd thought I would die. When I'd almost wanted to. "Anyway, then they could only hunt me between six p.m. and midnight, and not when I was doing my pack duties in the dining hall. I got really good at washing dishes and sweeping up. It took a long, long time to finish each job, though. Nobody ever figured out Del was helping me."

Brand spoke at last. "That's when Del started teaching you to defend yourself?"

Patrick's mouth gaped. "You mean you've only been training for four years?"

"No, closer to ten." I smiled at their reactions. "He started teaching me to hunt and work on conditioning when I was really small, about five or six. Once I was old enough, he'd sneak us into an unused pack gym before breakfast and school, and we'd spar for an hour at least. And after dinner, when we hunted in the woods for squirrels and rabbits where nobody else was around, he taught me martial arts."

"Which styles?" Patrick's tone sounded casual, but the look in his eyes was pure excitement. He'd seen me fight Finnick at Southern, so he had some idea.

"Oh, you know. Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu, sword and staff forms from a couple different Korean schools. Krav Maga, a little bit of everything." I smirked. "Some street fighting."

Finnick coughed. "Dirty tricks."

I nodded at him. "I'll fight you again without dirt and kick your ass just the same," I mocked. "Oh wait, I already did."

The whole room exploded into laughter. "I deserved that," he grumbled.

I was almost proud of him. Where had that haughty shifter gone? My chest still ached when I looked at him, though. His words on my last day at Southern still rang in my mind. I couldn't be your mate, Flor. I wouldn't ever make that mistake.

Yeah, that chickenshit deserved to have his ass kicked a few more times. Maybe this Sergeant person would let me demonstrate my steak knife technique on Finnick's toes.

"Are you done?" Margarette asked, and I looked down at my plate, shocked to find it empty.

"Apparently, I am." My stomach felt nicely full.

"Good. Sleep well tonight. In the morning, we'll have training."

Sleep? I wasn't sure I even wanted to leave the dining room, or go anywhere alone, not in this house. Who knew if the males who'd chased me might come back? But my limbs were quivering with exhaustion. I needed to crash, and a safe place to do it.

I glanced at Brand nervously, but before I could say one word, he mumbled, "You won't be alone. I'll be right outside your door, guarding you."

Margarette started to fuss at him about needing to sleep, but let it go when he narrowed his eyes at her. "Right, let's all get to bed then. In the morning, I'll find you some clothes to fight in." She crossed the room and stared down at Glen's and my hands, like she could weld them together with her eyes. I pulled my hand back, the drying blood making the cloth sticky. "Can I take a look, Glen?"

"Sure," he answered his mother, his eyes still uncertain. He carefully pulled the napkins off. The cut was still there, bleeding sluggishly. It had healed somewhat, though. Maybe it just took a while, with a cut that deep.

I let out a sigh of relief. "See? He's healing fine. We're not true mates."

"What do you…" Margarette trailed off when Glen shook his head.

"See you in the morning, Flor," he murmured.

Brand followed me to the room and, as promised, sat outside all night. I showered, changed, and put on a set of extra-large sweats to sleep in, the only clothing I could find in the room.

I slept well, and woke up early as usual. When I heard a soft knock, I opened the door instantly. "Margarette's here with clothing," Brand mumbled, running a hand through his hair. He looked like he'd been awake all night; his long dark hair was messy and his eyes bloodshot.

"Go get some coffee, Bearman." I squeezed his hand in thanks as Margarette stepped around him and bustled inside with a bag full of clothing, followed by an unranked maid with a tray of breakfast for us. It felt peculiar to have people helping me get ready for the day, but it was better than being alone in the Lodge and running into trouble.

"I'll see you at training," he promised, though he seemed to be having a hard time leaving. "Stay with Margarette."

"I will."

In a half hour, I was ready to go. I let out a low whistle as I stared at myself in the floor-length mirror. Margarette had found some better clothes for me than the loose sweats—all black, like the ones she'd been wearing when I first met her. The pants and shirt were a little baggy but clean, and she'd brought some sort of gel to slick my hair back. With my steak knife strapped to my waist, I thought I looked kind of badass… until she told me they were sparring clothes one of the youngest women in the pack had outgrown years before.

"I'm wearing kid's clothes?" I grumbled.

She stifled a laugh. "We won't make you new ones yet, because if the boys have their way with feeding you, you'll be bursting out of the seams in a few weeks."

"The boys?"

She shrugged, opening the door for us to go. "I'd call them men, but around you, they tend to act like boys." She laughed. "Even Brand, and he was born an old man."

I smiled as we walked toward the back of the enormous house. This hallway was brighter than the ones at the front, the walls decorated with framed blueprints of what I thought might be the buildings on the property. The main Lodge was huge, with wings that stretched out like a four-armed starfish. Then there was a clearing, with equally large rectangular buildings to one side, and more buildings that had to be the unranked dorms set farther back, almost under the trees. There were even trails marked that led into the forest, and one aerial photo that had lines drawn on it. The pack's farthest borders?

I need to memorize all of this, I thought, Del's training kicking in. This would help me if I needed to run, or if anything like the Hunt… No. I had to believe Margarette wouldn't let that sort of thing happen again.

I jogged to catch up with her. "You've known Brand a long time then?"

She grinned, her scars making the expression oddly fierce. "I don't know if they told you, but the larger packs foster out their future leaders for months at a time. Brand's mother died a while back, during an attack on their packlands, so he stayed even longer with me while his dad was… in the woods. He calls me Mom once in a while." She sighed happily, obviously pleased by that.

"What about the others?" I asked. Had Luke ever come here? I knew he'd gone to Eastern once; our whole pack had been buzzing about him buying new clothing to go to New York. I'd been bitter as hell about it, because that winter, the food rations for the unranked had been cut even more, supposedly to pay for those fancy clothes. I'd still been a kid, and if Del hadn't been able to sneak me leftovers from the ranked shifters' meals, I would have starved.

"All the Heirs had visits here," she said, but didn't elaborate.

"Did they all call you Mom?"

She pursed her lips. "I think they all needed one, to some extent. Finnick's parents are both alive and well, but his mother… Well, some mothers are more hands-off in shifter culture, especially with sons. He was always looking for reasons to visit, even after his official foster stay was over. I think Finnick needed an affectionate foster mother more than most, but he was taught that wanting love was weakness."

My heart ached a little. I was still pissed at him, but her story made me wonder if Finnick was as much of an asshole as he pretended to be. He seemed cold, but lonely, like his icy distance wasn't by choice.

"Luke went to Finnick's pack once, but not for long. Days, not months. Why was that?"

Margarette frowned in thought. "Glen mentioned that. I always assumed there was friction between Finnick's parents and the Southern Alpha, and that Luke was recalled early." Then we turned a corner, and she threw open the door to the vast yard behind the house.

I squinted into the sunlight. It was green, bright, and noisy. Shifters were moving everywhere, wearing either camo fatigues or black and gray sweats, sparring in rings that had been marked out with colored chalk on the grass. I saw groups of shifters play fighting in wolf form, and others in human form doing movements in slow motion. It looked like some sort of tai chi, but they had knives in their hands.

There was a group of older children, too, six to eight of them meditating in the sunlight, legs crossed, and eyes mostly shut. One of the smallest ones wasn't meditating very successfully, and she let out a tiny howl of victory when she spied us. "She's here! The Alpha's Protector is here!"

The whole yard went still, every head swiveling toward me.

Margarette watched the tiny shifter as she pelted across the lawn, greeting the child with an indulgent kiss on top of her hair. "You're right, the Alpha's Protector is here. And did you know she has a name like yours? She's Flor."

"Like flower," the girl said, smiling up through a gap in her front teeth. Her hair was a wild mess of brown tangles, and her face and clothes looked like she'd been berry picking—or berry fighting—all day. She hugged Margarette, but before I knew what was happening, she threw herself at me, up into my arms.

I caught her, wondering what to do with her. Children were rarer now, so holding one felt like holding the Northern pack's treasure. And I could tell from the way every shifter in the yard fixed their eyes on me, that that's exactly what I was doing.

"This is Daisy," Margarette said, placing her hand on my shoulder, showing everyone who was watching me—a little too closely—that she trusted me. "She's one of the youngest members of Northern."

"I'm seven!" she announced. "I like your hair, Flor. Yours too, Aunt Mags."

"Aunt Mags?" I asked.

"My parents are dead," Daisy said matter-of-factly, tugging at the ends of my hair. "Aunt Mags, I want to cut my hair all off. Can I?" The older male wolf who had been leading the meditation called out for her to return, and Daisy pulled free, lightly dropping to the ground. She smacked a kiss on my hand and giggled.

"What was that for?"

She wrinkled her nose up at me. "Don't you know? If you kiss the Protector, you get good luck."

"What... Why—" But she was gone. And all that was left was a yard filled with shifters.

All laughing at me.