Page 130 of The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate
He smiles. Not warmly. He has rehearsed this moment, and it shows on his face.
“Marcus Vale. I lead the Covenant.” He spreads his hands out at his sides. “We’ve been expecting you.”
The entire yard goes still around us.
Behind him, his men have stopped fighting, but they haven’t stepped back. Their eyes are on their leader, waiting forwhatever he does next. My own soldiers become wary at this unspoken pause.
“Expecting me?”
“For some weeks now.”
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“I do.”
“I’m going to enjoy wiping out you and your organization,” I snarl.
He smirks. “You misunderstand, Alpha. I’m not the obstacle. I’m the courtesy.”
I don’t answer him. He lifts one hand, and the yard erupts into chaos again, enhanced wolves versus Darius’s and my soldiers.
Vale and I shift at the same instant, and he hits me before I’ve fully landed on four feet.
The impact drives me twenty feet across the yard, and my shoulder slams into the dirt with a crack I feel through my whole body. Pain whites out my vision. He’s on me again before I can roll, his teeth at my throat, and only the angle of my head saves my windpipe from being crushed in the first second of contact.
I get my hindquarters under him and kick. Hard. He flies back. Lands on his feet. Comes again.
Twenty years of training my own army. Ten minutes of fighting enhanced wolves. Nothing has prepared me for this. He’s faster than the enhanced rogues or even the fighters here. Stronger. He doesn’t telegraph; every move he makes, I have to read in the half second after he has already committed to it. Twice in the next thirty seconds, I’m almost too slow.
He opens a slash down my flank. I roll out of his next lunge and barely get my teeth in his foreleg before he tears free.
I’m losing.
A gray blur comes in from my left.
Darius hits Vale in his ribs at full speed, and they go down together, snarling, claws raking. I get my feet under me on a hard lunge. The two of us drive Vale back across the yard, paw over paw, his teeth flashing for whichever of us is closest. He fights both of us at once and almost holds.
Almost.
Darius sinks his jaws into Vale’s haunch. I find his stomach and bite into it.
Vale staggers. Drops to the ground. Convulses once. The gray wolf shifts back as he dies, Marcus Vale the man lying naked in front of me with his throat in ruins, blood pooling around him.
He laughs.
It’s a weak sound, low, his chest hitching.
I shift back and drop to one knee at his shoulder.
His pale eyes find mine. He’s grinning. Blood on his teeth. “You think…I…was the threat?” His chest shudders on the next breath. “I’m one piece. I was always one piece.”
“What does that mean?”
He laughs again. His head tips back against the dirt. The smile widens. “You’ve been raising the next leader. Right among you.”
The world tilts. My body locks where it kneels. The breath stops in my chest.
“You know her, Alpha.” His voice is fading. The smile is still there. “You’ve trusted her for twenty years. She’s been by your side since you were a child.”
