Alpha’s Betrayal
Chapter 22

Remus

Claw Mansion

Woodward County, Oklahoma

9:55 a.m. Good. We'll arrive with plenty of time.

I pushed my sleeve back over my watch and was about to exit through the front door when a howl filtered through the mansion. A frown worked its way onto my face. I paused, turning where I stood to look back through the grand entryway. The sound of crashing replaced the lone cry and I sighed, immediately realizing where all the noise was coming from. Luna's room?

I'd seen Tala with her earlier clearly, their conversation hadn't gone as my cousin had hoped. Maybe I should check on her. While I doubted the outburst was directed at Tala, it still concerned me to hear that much banging around. I knew Tala could take care of herself, and if she ever got herself in enough trouble that she no longer could, she wasn't too prideful to call for help. It was one of the traits I had liked the most about Tala; she was practical, and she never let ego get in the way of that.

I took two steps towards the stairs before looking back up, coming to a halt as I realized someone was standing there. My mother perched at the top of the flight, one delicate hand poised over the railing as she pinned me with her narrowed gaze. She was an excellent strategist; I knew she'd often had a seat at my father's table when he would call his most trusted wolves together for meetings, be it about the pack or the company.

Hell, I often sought her council myself, especially in my first year as alpha. Fiona had never agreed with all my choices, but this? This was the first time she'd regarded me as if I were some sort of stranger, as if I were an imposter wearing Remus Silverstreak's skin. I wasn't too proud to admit I could use her council now. Luring Marnet back out was proving to be quite the puzzle, and my mother's insight into business matters rarely led me astray.

Surely, Fiona must know I still respected her, even if she didn't approve of the methods I chose to employ. Surely, she could not think so low of me, her own son. Her only child. I sighed, preparing to speak, but no words came to mind. As my jaw clicked back shut, I realized the thumping and crashing had stopped. Whatever was going on upstairs had ended, and either Tala had gotten Luna under control, or Luna had just calmed down from whatever had spun her up on the first place.

I checked my watch again.

10:01. Now I'm late.

Clearly that was my cue from the universe. I offered my mother a silent nod and turned, not waiting to see if she returned the gesture or continued her silent treatment. I shot off a quick text to Tala. Quite the commotion up there. Can you check what's up with Luna?

I paused for a few moments after I hit send The sudden silence upstairs was starting to concern me. Pocketing my phone, I turned around. Fiona was gone. I jogged up the stairs, striding quickly down the hallway once I reached the second floor. I paused outside of Luna's room and knocked briskly. "Luna?" I called when no one answered. I knocked again. Nothing. Not even the sound of someone moving.

I frowned and opened the door slowly before poking my head inside. The room was empty. My brows furrowed deeper as I retreated. I was about to head back to the front door when I heard a muffled noise further down the hall. The master suite. My room? The back of my neck prickled as I prowled closer. Had someone snuck in to try to extract some misguided revenge? I braced myself, ready to pull my wolf to the surface at a moment's notice as I opened the door. The room was trashed. My muscles tensed as I swung around, looking for the intruder. But there was only Luna, curled up by the large desk at the far side of the room, arms wrapped around her legs as she pressed her forehead into her knees.

My wariness quickly morphed into concern. I rushed over, crouched down next to Luna, and I scanned her for any new injuries. "What happened?" I asked, lifting my nose to sniff the air. It didn't smell like a fight in here; there was no blood or adrenaline clouding the air. If a scuffle didn't hit this room, then a tornado must have.

Luna made a quiet noise and lifted her head just enough to peer over her arms at me. She mumbled something so softly I had to strain forward to hear. "Sorry, what?"

She sniffed and sat up a little straighter, wiping residual tears from her cheeks. "I said, I'm sorry about the room," she mumbled. Color began to return to her pale cheeks. She looked away, expression turning sheepish as she eyed the destruction. "I wanted to look at Marnet's things, and..." She trailed off.

"And?" I prompted, too curious to just let this go. After all, it wasn't my stuff Luna had destroyed. Technically, yes, it was mine now, but I'd only inherited it a few days ago. I had no attachment to any of it.

"Marnet had twelve different girlfriends while we were together," she confided, silver eyes searching my face. She seemed to be holding her breath, but when I didn't react, she kept speaking. "Twelve. Twelve! I feel like such an idiot. I have no idea how I let him pull the wool over my eyes for so long."

I frowned, my stomach feeling sour. Once, I'd considered Marnet to be a fun person to party with; I was starting to regret I had ever felt that way, even if I'd been younger then. More immature. "You aren't an idiot," I replied, not sure what else to say.

Luna scowled. The softness disappeared from her eyes. "Aren't I? I should have realized he wasn't planning a grand gesture for mateship. Or that he wasn't shy, or that it wasn't his father holding him back, or that Claw & Co. didn't actually need that much of his time, or...or something!"

"He was really your mate?" I asked. At the party, I had thought she'd been delusional, but I couldn't think of another reason for Luna to bring up something that could be that humiliating otherwise.

"Yes," she snapped, her jaw working before she spoke again. "Yes. He really was. I really believed in the power of a mate bond. I didn't even realize he had started drifting away. I was...I don't know. Blinded by the idea of love."

Huh. I had told my mother those tales of fated bonds were dangerous, and here was proof. If only she knew.

When my silence stretched on for too long, Luna glanced back over at me. "I have no idea why I'm telling you this." She rested her chin back against her arms. "You probably think I'm crazy."

I shrugged my shoulders. "I thought you didn't care what I thought."

Her cheeks turned a little pink. "I don't," she replied, barely able to keep her gaze on me. "Everyone already thinks that, anyways."

"I don't think you're crazy. When my father d..." I stopped and shook my head. My mother's grief when my father died was her private business, and I'd known Luna for less than a week. It wasn't my place to share that. "I don't have first-hand experience with a fated bond," I said instead. "But I know wolves who've lost their mates."

Her expression softened a little. Thankfully, she didn't pry about my near slip-up. "I wish I could just...move on," she said instead.

"Why don't you?"

Luna scoffed. "If I knew how, don't you think I would have?" Her shoulders relaxed after another moment. "Sorry, I just... I was in love with him. Or the person I thought he was, anyways. And I know what happened, but it still hurts when I think about him, even if I don't want it to."

"I think that's grief," I blurted out, surprising myself. "I think that's grief, Luna."

She eyed me suspiciously. "But he isn't dead."

I shrugged. "You just said it yourself. You were in love with the man you thought he was, but that man wasn't real. That's sort of like a death, isn't it? The death of an idea."

Again, my mother came to mind, but I said nothing. Luna just watched me, an unreadable expression on her face. I opened my mouth to say something else, but my phone started to buzz in my pocket.

"Sh!t," I cursed, fishing it out of my pocket. "I was supposed to be meeting Bane," I said, already getting to my feet. "Are you going to be okay?"

To my surprise, Luna nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I am."

Bane met me down by the car. I didn't like traveling in anything but a Silverstreak vehicle, but we hadn't had the time or the means to get a few cars over to Marnet's mansion. Low priority, really. Marnet also didn't happen to own any of the luxury vehicles, but that didn't surprise me. My beta had chosen a handsome gray Range Rover from the four-car garage, and I took a moment to give the SUV a once-over before opening the door and stepping inside.

The gravel driveway crunched beneath the wheels as I settled in my seat, clicking the belt. "Not bad," I sniffed, barely masking my smile.

Bane snorted, opening the engine up the moment we hit the paved road. "Totally decked out. It's barely been driven. Had the least miles on it. Also, the interior stank the least like Marnet."

I couldn't decide if I wanted to smirk or grimace; it didn't take a genius to figure out what a womanizer like Claw did in the back seat of fancy car. Everyone knew a handsome vehicle was a great way to impress a date. "Good call." I settled back into the seat. The fields raced by as we sped towards Oklahoma City. My eyes flicked over to the dash and I scowled at the time. How had only eleven minutes passed?

I closed my eyes; I was not going to watch the minutes tick by on this entire drive. I hadn't done something that juvenile since I was ten years old, at most. The memory made the corner of my mouth tick up. It had felt like it had taken days to drive from Austin to Ouachita National Forest up in Arkansas, even if the reality had been something closer to nine hours - but that had been the first time my father had taken me on any sort of trip on our own. Not a family outing, but something strictly about us. That's where I had met Seff, too. We had spent days in the national forest; it became something of a tradition after that. We spent a little longer each year, as I was a little older every time, and a little closer to inheriting the Silverstreak Pack as its next alpha. By the time I was eighteen, we'd spend just shy of a month in those woods, camping and living in our wolf forms for days. I had looked forward to those trips when I was younger. Now, I fvcking longed for them. What would Dad say about this entire situation? I stretched my legs out in front of me, enjoying the warmth of the flickering fire. After four days roaming the woods covered in fur, it was nice to enjoy the comforts of humanity again. It was impossible to take your thumbs for granted after going for so long without them. I chuckled at my own joke and glanced over at my father; he was fiddling with something on the other side of the flames. His brows were furrowed together as he worked.

Odd, I thought. He usually enjoyed our runs - or at the very least, he'd told me he did. Said he always felt refreshed and ready for the incoming autumn after our yearly summer trip. "What's up, Dad?" I prompted, pulling my knees up a bit to lean forward. My father glanced up, messy brown hair falling in his face. There was some serious beardage happening after three weeks in the woods; we were definitely going to have to make a pit stop at some place with running water before we got home. There was no way Mom would tolerate Dad's face like that.

"You're going to turn eighteen later this year," my father said.

I grinned toothily. "Yup." There was a party being planned; my mother was terrible at surprises. "If you need ideas for gifts-" The flat look my father gave me cut me off, my mouth hanging open for a moment. I shook my head, clearing my throat. My father sighed and finally put his whittling project down next to him. "I was going to say you're about to become a young man, but..." He trailed off, narrowing his eyes.

Sensing it was wiser not to argue the point, I just tipped my head to one side and waited. My father wasn't a man known for his patience - that was definitely my mother's virtue. It only took a few moments for him to speak back up. "Well, I guess the key word there is young, isn't it? Can't expect you to change overnight." My shoulders relaxed a little and I leaned back against the log behind me. My father was clearly in the mood to talk. I wasn't sure what had inspired him. Maybe he thought I wouldn't want to listen anymore once I turned eighteen? While it was the age of majority, it was hardly a magic number.

Still, if he wanted to talk, I didn't mind listening.

"Do you know how long the Silverstreak family has been in Texas?" he asked.

"You're the fourth generation," I answered, not missing the brief flash of approval on the man's face. "I'm the fifth. Before then, the Silverstreaks were in Minnesota. Often high-ranking members of the Whispering Timber Pack, if not the betas." "Good boy," my father huffed, almost amused by my recitation. "Sometimes I wonder if you actually listen to me."

"I can retain things, you know," I replied, arching a brow.

"I know," he replied, mirroring my expression. "Which is why your grades last year were so disappointing."

“།

I got two Bs. Two! Is that really that bad?"

My father shook his head and held out his palms. "Remus, I am not trying to start a fight with you," he said. "Simply making an observation. It's not like you'll have any trouble in getting into the university of your choice." The platitude was enough to keep my hackles from bristling any further and I settled, inclining my head as I waited for him to speak.

"When we get home, I'd like to show you the family records. Our family has been in North America for a long time, but we certainly weren't among the first werewolves to travel here. The fear of wolves came with the colonists from Europe; they thought, of course, they could leave the witches and the shifters behind in the land they'd already...well. You know how humans feel about their 'space.""

He fixed me with a knowing look and I snorted. I was pretty confident he was never going to let me forget the time we were on vacation in the country and I had shifted in the moonlight to go galloping through the neighboring fields. The neighboring fields, I hadn't realized in all my eleven-year-old wisdom, were cow pastures. The neighbor was a rancher of the strictly human variety. One mighty crack! from his double-barrel shotgun and I had gone racing home with my tail between my legs.

"You'd think," I said, "they'd eventually figure out that if they stopped shooting at everything that gave them a spook, all those things would stop fighting back."

My father shrugged. "You would think."

According to my father, it had been up to the shifters to prevent an all-out war with the humans. As long as the wolves retaliated, the humans would keep hunting for them. They'd even flipped a few witches to hunt werewolves a few centuries ago. Becoming a hunter was better than being the hunted, and a witch would rather eliminate werewolves than be burned at the stake.

Wolf populations had been decimated in Europe, and most of those had just been wolves - innocent, normal wolves. Those in North America had almost met the same fate. The thought made me bristle and I had to inhale, force myself to calm back down. "So, are we having a history lesson or what, old man?"

My father gave me a dry look. "Well, I thought I was trying to remind you to keep your hubris in check, stay vigilant and always have a plan, lest you find yourself at the wrong end of a witch's rifle, but I can see I have no such need to remind you of such." He lapsed into a silence that only lasted three seconds before he snorted, shaking his head. "Remus, you are so much like your uncle, it hurts sometimes."

I flashed him a winning grin. "Which means I'm like Granddad, which means I'm also like you."

My father wouldn't admit as much, but that didn't mean Mom hadn't shared a few stories with me. If he was considered impatient now, he was downright impulsive in his youth.

Though he arched a brow, he couldn't stifle his grin. "So it would seem."

"No worries, old man. I'll be the best alpha Silverstreak Clan has had yet."

My father studied me for a long moment, and for a heartbeat, I was afraid I'd read the situation wrong. That I'd gone too far. But then he grinned, that real grin, just a hint of teeth and a glimmer in his dark eyes, and he gave a single nod of his chin. "That's the idea, Remy. That's the idea."

The car slowed to a stop and the lurch made my head bob, stirring me from my reverie. Wonder what the old man would say now, I thought to myself, stretching out my limbs before unbuckling and stepping out of the car. Bane joined me on the passenger's side, wisely keeping any thoughts to himself.

We were just outside of the warehouse; though I couldn't see my guards, one sniff told me they were still present. My beta fell into step behind me as we opened the door. Any murmurs fell to a hush. Good.

I addressed the small crowd. "Your alpha still has not made himself known. The Oklahoma territory is officially under the Silverstreak pack's rule."

Soft gasps and whispers rippled around the former Lupus Claw pack members. "Wilson Slate, come forward," I rumbled, bracing myself to summon my alpha forward if needed. No such thing was required, however; the tall man in question stepped forward. His dirty blond hair was greasy, and he looked like he was still wearing the same outfit he'd donned at the Moonmate ceremony. There was a bruise on one side of his neck and he was limping, but Marnet's beta was otherwise unharmed. "Have you given any thought to my offer?" I asked him, lifting one brow.

The man folded both arms over his chest, mouth set in a straight line. "The answer's still no," he muttered, shaking his head.

I could respect that. There wouldn't be much to say about a beta who would sell his alpha out while he was still alive. Of course, I wanted Marnet's location, and I'd pay handsomely for it if I needed to, but I still wouldn't respect the man afterwards. I simply tipped my head to the side. "Very well," I murmured to him, then raised my voice to continue. "Then you are banished from all lands under the Silverstreak rule," I announced. "You have twenty-four hours to get whatever you need and get out."

Wilson's shoulders slumped slightly, but he began to limp towards the exit. One guard moved to open the door, but the ex-beta paused, turning. A low growl rumbled deep in his chest. I stood up straighter, baring my teeth with an echoing snarl. Wilson seemed to consider his odds for three seconds and then he turned, lurching out the door and out of sight.

I snorted.

"Coward!" someone behind me shouted.

"Come back and fight!" a different voice yelled.

There were several other murmurs in that vein, varying in their vigor and vehemence. I turned back to the remaining high-ranking members of the former Lupus Claw pack. This was my opportunity-this was how the clan would be dissolved. I took another step into the room. "You deserve better leadership than a cowardly beta and a weak-willed alpha," I told them, addressing them like I might address a future investor. I wasn't here to antagonize; I didn't need them to even like me. I only needed them to trust me more than they trusted any alternative option.

"In his single year as alpha, Marnet Claw was running this pack towards financial ruin. He was courting several females, telling each one they were his mate; he didn't even have the good sense to manage his own issues before hosting a Moonmate ceremony - a very extravagant Moonmate ceremony, I might add. Who do you think was paying for that?"

I paused for effect, allowing a few murmurs and dark looks. Shifters glanced back and forth at one another before I continued. "Several of your packmates have already pledged their loyalty to me and the Silverstreak clan. Anyone who does not join in a timely fashion will become a lone wolf."

It was not a fate anyone would enjoy. I didn't have to wait long. Two women stepped forward from the group, introducing themselves as former guardians of pack history.

"Marnet is nothing like his father," the first one sighed sadly, shaking her head. "I was hoping he might mature a bit, but..." She trailed off. There was nothing else to say. After a moment, she leaned over and nudged her friend's elbow.

The older woman sighed and nodded her head. "Yes, I think we've held out long enough."

They exchanged a look; I could sense Bane's growing impatience behind me, but I allowed the women their moment. It could not be easy, especially given they'd been pledged to Noah before pledging to his son. I had nothing against the Lupus Claw wolves themselves I was impressed, too, that the women had enough loyalty to try to wait Marnet out. But the time had come. They were wise enough to see that.

Once their moment was over, they both nodded to me, and then knelt down. I sighed and closed my eyes; only an alpha would understand this moment. Every pack wolf knew what it was to bond, but only their alpha felt the crackle of energy as a subtle power shift occurred. One wolf didn't cause much of a change, but they added up quickly. Two became twelve. Twelve became a few dozen. Once you were into the hundreds, well... If Marnet hadn't been such a coward, he might have found out what that sort of power felt like. I had almost been looking forward to fighting him.

Ah, well.

After the first two, several more stepped forward, until only a quarter remained as holdouts. Among them, I noticed, were the couple who had tried to pull Luna away before Marnet had hurt her. There was a man I recognized as Noah's former financial officer, and, ah, yes. Sophia. I barely contained my grimace, wondering if it had been the right choice to contain her with the others. "I will never bow to you," she snapped.

This time I didn't contain myself, rolling my eyes. "Then you can remain imprisoned." Sophia was one wolf I wouldn't miss.

I turned to the guards. "Take them to a secure location. There are few enough of them that such a large building is no longer necessary."

Then I turned to Bane. "You know what to do."

Sophia was still cursing something behind me, but it didn't matter. It was only a matter of time. She would see that I was merciful and patient, or she wouldn't.