9. Cannon

Doc didn’t turnhis head from where his gaze lingered out the window. I didn’t want to look at him right now anyway. When he began to speak, I cursed my instincts.

“I mean it, it was never my intent to betray you or…”

“Or put Kezia in danger?” I scoffed. “Talk faster, Mal, I have a war to fight.”

“A war to start,” he corrected sharply.

“Watch your tone when you speak to me right now,” I warned quietly, folding my arms across my chest.

“The bond can be broken,” he stated bluntly. “I’ve been researching it ever since you two realized you didn’t want it.” Still not looking at me, he huffed out a laugh. “We all knew it was bullshit. You two were drawn to each other, and some mumbo jumbo bond had nothing to do with it.”

“Your lack of faith in the Goddess is going to get you in trouble one day.” Tilting my head, I regarded him. “If it hasn’t already.” I urged him to continue. “Speak.”

With a loud, resigned sigh, Mal sat back in his seat, finally meeting my stare. “As you are more than aware, information about shifters is hard to come by.” Mal rubbed his jaw. “I’ve read everything. You know that. The need to know how I exist has been my?—”

“Obsession.”

He glanced at me. “You say obsession, I say passion.”

“Both equally dangerous when it gets out of control,” I countered.

“Yeah, well.” His focus shifted to the bookcase. “How the DNA of a shifter and a human worked to create me, and the few like me, remains my torment,” he added bitterly. “The bond between you and Kezia was almost as much a mystery to me. Everyone knows chemicals, pheromones, and adrenaline cause attraction, but you and her, it’s more than that. It’s almost beyond science.”

“Or things in common?” I added dryly. “Physical attraction, attributes, recognizing similar likes and dislikes. You know…personality.” His questioning look made me want to shake him. I recognized that gleam in his eyes; I’d seen it before. There was a reason I used the word obsession. His next sentence jarred me out of my inner musings.

“You told me her brother was making contact with the Pack Council…”

He wouldn’t.The more I stared at him, I realized that he had. “You reached out to the Pack Council archives?” I asked him incredulously. “About breaking a mate bond? A sacred gift from the Goddess Luna?” Mal nodded. “Any request to the archives is public knowledge!”

“I know that…now.”

“Why the fuck would you be so reckless?”

“I was researching!” he bit back.

I watched him as he glared at me as if it was my fault he was unhinged when he became focused on his work. “You put my pack at risk.”

“Unintentionally.”

“Mal…you don’t want to be pedantic right now, not if you want to walk out of here.” I focused on what he said. “Hold on…are you saying you intentionally put Kezia at risk?”

“No! Never!” He stood and crossed the room to the bookshelves. “I like her, she’s perfect for you,” he told me as he looked at me over his shoulder. “But she can resist silver. And…is your mate. Both of these things are rare. Put them together in one girl, and…”

I hated to admit that I could see how that would be the ultimate puzzle for someone like the Doc. “It’s a coincidence.”

“I’m a scientist. We don’t believe in coincidences,” he muttered. “It’s either you or her.”

“What is?”

“The anomaly.” He walked back to the couch. “One of you is powerful enough, but together? You talk all the time about Luna creating a mate for an alpha for balance. Kezia didn’t balance you out; she didn’t calm you down or make you rational. Nor you her. You’re both volatile, overly aggressive, and hated each other.” He pulled at a thread on his shirt sleeve. “So, it had to be the being inside her.”

“Kezia and I were volatile to start with, but that changed. We changed.”

“Well, I know that now,” he grumped at me. “But by then, I had already made inquiries about breaking mate bonds and if they could be broken.”

My eyes were wide with horror. “Tell me that you worded it more subtly than that. Tell me that you never asked it that bluntly?” He didn’t look at me. “Luna above, you stupid fucking idiot!”

“I know!” Mal shouted back. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Who did you tell?” I was seething. “I know you. Who did you tell when you realized that you had fucked up?”

Mal wouldn’t look at me, then finally whispered a name, “Koda.”

Fuck. “Why?”

“Too much whiskey, self-loathing, and…a pretty face.”

“You’re gay.”

He shrugged. “She was an attentive listener.”

I bet she was. “You stupid bastard.”

He stood, his posture one of a defeated man. “I never meant to harm Kezia. Or you.”

I knew that. Mal was a genius, but when his obsessive nature took hold of him, he let it. He’d been down too many dangerous paths before, and we’d made the inner joke a long time ago that he was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The obsessive-don’t-care-what-happens persona was Mal, and the doctor, the healer, was Doc.

“Tev?” I asked him.

“Wasn’t me,” he assured me quickly. “I only told Koda how a bond could be broken.”

“Get out.”

I watched him leave, and after a moment to calm my rage, I left the house to find my ex, connecting through the mindlink to Royce to let him know what had happened. Koda was in the food hall, doing as little as possible to help the others. Watching her from the shadows, I wondered what I had seen in her. Sure, she was pretty, her hair perfect even while preparing for a fight. Her clothes were chosen carefully, simple jeans and a shirt, but on closer inspection…the jeans sculpted her ass, the shirt a deep V that accentuated her chest. She was attractive, she knew it, and I never judged her for flaunting it.

It was the look of superiority she wore that turned my stomach. I watched her as she practically sneered as Willy struggled past her with a burden too heavy for an older woman, even a shifter, to carry, and Koda merely glanced at her nails rather than help.

Koda was shallow. I hadn’t lied to Kezia the day I told her that Koda and I used each other to scratch a mutual itch. Nor had I shied away from the fact I knew that Koda pretended it was more. It wasn’t because she cared for me, like Kezia thought, it was because she enjoyed letting others think she was better than them.

I may be alpha, but my shit smelled like any other. A fact Koda never grasped. I wasn’t a better shifter than anyone in my pack; I was the best shifter I could be because of my pack.

Nikan took the box Willy was carrying from her, his comment too low for me to hear, but I saw Koda’s flushed reaction. However, it was her knowing smug smirk at my brother’s back that caused me to move forward.

Come for me, I’ll fight you if that’s what you want. Come for my loved ones, I’ll kill you, no questions asked.

The pack stilled around me as I approached her. No one spoke when my hand wrapped around her throat and I practically lifted her off the stool.

“Who did you tell?” Koda made a show of looking innocent and outraged at once, but my temper was barely hanging on.

Koda.

She stopped clutching at her neck. Her eyes filled with hate as she met my glare.

My lover.

“Seems like you’ve been collecting them,” I mocked as I dropped her. “Don’t even pretend you slept with Doc. So…Landon would be my guess? Who else have you been trading pillow talk with?”

“Are you jealous, Alpha?” The sultry look she gave me made me laugh.

“No. I don’t care who you fuck, Koda, I never did.” I saw the effect my words had on her, and I didn’t care. “How long has Landon known how to break the mate bond?” I ignored the whispers around me. “I won’t ask again, Koda.”

“A few weeks.”

“I’ve been in an infirmary bed for more than a few weeks…try again. This time, tell the truth.”

“A month, maybe more.” She didn’t look at me.

“You told Landon over a month ago how to break the mate bond?” When she nodded, I glanced at Nikan, who was rigid with fury, but he nodded once. “Why did Landon want to know?”

“Her.”

Figures. “And?”

Koda tossed her hair. “His sister.” Gaining confidence because I wasn’t acting on what she was telling me, made her cocky. She shrugged carelessly. “Why he would need to know for her, I don’t know.”

“Because, you stupid bitch, she’s mated to an alpha,” Nikan snapped.

Koda looked at me in confusion. “No! Landon said Kezia was your mate!”

I was in her face, my snarl quieting the cacophony of sudden voices. “She is my mate. Landon’s sister, Cass, is mated to Kezia’s brother, Kris.” Koda searched my face as I loomed over her. “Did he tell you he was an alpha? Is that it, Koda?” I saw the truth in her eyes, and I stepped back. “You thought Landon was an alpha and would want you?” I snorted. “You’re an idiot. Get her out of my pack.”

“Where will I go?” Koda wailed.

“I don’t give a fuck. As long as it’s nowhere near me, my mate, or my pack, I don’t care.”

Royce stepped up beside me. I had seen him enter, but he’d kept his distance. “Willy?” He gestured to the older female and another male. “She leaves but not until we’re back. She’s betrayed us already. Let’s not allow her to do it again.”

As I left them, Willy was already putting binds around Koda’s wrists, as deaf as everyone else to the sound of Koda’s pleading.

“What did we miss?” Royce asked as the three of us left the food hall. I filled them in that Doc had alerted the Pack Council to the fact I had a mate and wanted to break the bond. A fact that could sign my death sentence for heresy against my Goddess. I told them he had told Koda, and she in turn had told Landon, whose father actually wanted to break the mate bond between his daughter and his enemy’s son.

“If Bale has the Council on his side…” Nikan shared a look with Royce. “Cannon…”

“I know,” I told him. “It’s going to take more charm than I have to dissuade them.”

“What do you want to do?” Royce asked hesitantly.

“Nothing’s changed.” I kept walking. “Kris is our priority. Everything else can come after.” I hesitated. “If we pick up the treacherous little fucker as we go, I’m okay with that.”

“Doc really told her?” Royce muttered. “He gets so blind sometimes.”

I said nothing as I prepared my pack to go to war.

We advanced at night,keeping to our human forms. Shifters were more inclined to pick up on the scent of a fellow shifter. Human scent was much subtler, and it wasn’t until you were very close to one, that you would know if they were a shifter or not.

A fact that had fascinated Doc in the beginning. I met him in the army. He was, as his name suggested, a doctor and was the medic on duty the night my unit took me into the medical tent after shrapnel had ripped into my body from an unexploded mine. My unit never knew that if they’d just left me alone, I’d have been fine. But it’s hard to explain miraculous recoveries in the army.

I knew within a few minutes that Doc wasn’t one hundred percent human, but it took too many nights to realize he was half shifter.

When we both realized there was more to us than met the eye, he conceded to hide my recovery if he could watch me shift. I had no issue with nudity; I was naked more than I was dressed sometimes. Doc took my hesitancy as homophobia. Idiot. I remember his face when I laughed so hard I cried. I ended up telling him that I hesitated because there was a moment during the shift when I was at my most vulnerable.

He had moved to the other end of the room, his hands raised at all times. An act of trust from us both. A friendship was born. It had been rocky at times, but it was a friendship nonetheless.

“It really pisses me off because,” Royce murmured as we moved through the night, “he wouldn’t have meant harm.”

“I know.”

“He still caused harm,” Nikan grumbled at my other side. “Why didn’t Hannah notice his tells?”

“Because my wife is not his babysitter.”

The edge in Royce’s voice shut my brother up. We approached Anterrio Pack two hours before dawn, and as we had on the run-up to the Luna Ball, we circled the perimeter and we watched.

Leo had been wrong. Their security wasn’t slack. It was non-existent.

I was just about to give the signal to move forward when my signal changed to hold. If the shifter who fell out of the house, more likely the bed, of his lover knew he was being watched by an army of shifters, he showed no sign as he staggered towards the trees to the north.

Leo and Nikan were already following him, as he obliviously tucked his shirt into his pants, swaying unsteadily before setting off again.

What’s there? I asked through the link.

Nothing. Abandoned barn. Searched it before, Nikan replied.

Search it again.

I ignored the image of the hand gesture my brother sent back. We waited. My pack never moved. Even as the dawn began to break, we held position.

Alpha. Come.

Twelve of us broke off and headed in the direction of my brother and Leo. We found them a distance from the dilapidated barn. They stood around two doors in the ground. The long grass hid the doors from visibility.

“A cell?” Nikan asked.

Looking around, I realized at the same time as Royce did. “A trap!”

They burst from the soil like ants from a disturbed anthill. Shifters I didn’t recognize were ready to fight us. Their element of surprise was short-lived when my pack quickly recovered.

Nikan pulled the doors open of the bunker that hadn’t opened. “Let’s see what’s behind this.”

My yell of warning was lost when he disappeared into the darkness, and I hurried after him, reaching him in a few strides. “Let’s not jump into any more underground tunnels,” I whispered angrily when I caught up to him.

We both slowed when we realized how extensive the tunnels were. We were faced with a fork ahead of us, and Nikan looked over at me.

“They’ve utilized old mines and made them structurally stronger.”

He nodded as he looked around. “Who do you think they are hiding down here?”

Cautiously we moved forward. Keeping the mindlink open, Royce and the other unit leaders kept me updated with the skirmish above. I heard the noise first, my pace increasing as I led and my brother followed. As the tunnel split into two, I walked forward, the noise leading me to it.

When the tunnel ended abruptly, I almost didn’t notice, because all I could see were the two wolves that lay on the floor of a cell, heavy collars of silver around their neck.

“Fuck,” Nikan hissed. “Is that them?” When I nodded, he cursed again. “How do we get them out of that?”

“Painfully.” I approached the cells, careful of Kris’s tawny wolf. His body lay protectively over the smaller gray wolf. The protection he offered was little. He was half-dead, the she beside him more dead than alive, I feared.

“Cannon? How do we get them off?”

“We need a human.”

“Well, I’m fresh out of carrying humans around in my pocket!” Nikan snapped.

I sent the command. “They’re bringing Doc.”

He gaped at me. “That will take hours.” Both of us turned to the sound of running feet behind us. “And them?”

“Something to pass the time?” Rolling my head on my shoulders, I stretched my arms over my head. “I came here for a fight. You?”

Nikan’s answering grin was wicked.

Four approached us; two shifted just as the other two attacked. They were skilled fighters. They weren’t me or my brother.

It had never been a boast to make Kezia feel belittled. My pack was a pack of superior fighters. We trained extensively, and when I killed Rek, we had all thought that there would be retaliation from other packs. A pack with a new untested alpha was just as vulnerable as a pack without one. My pack wanted me as alpha, and for that, every single one of them had gone through emergency combat skills. It was one of the reasons we had been so eager to attend the Luna Ball. I’d put them through the training, and then no one had challenged us.

It was ironic.

The games at the Luna Ball were their outlet, or they were supposed to be. Right up until Kezia went into heat and I knew she was my mate, and all thoughts of the games vanished like smoke on the wind…the same way my mate did.

Bale had filled his pack with fighters, I could see. But they weren’t my fighters.

They didn’t stand a chance.