Shiftless or Not
Shiftless or Not
MAX
All twelve of them are staring at me now, watching me warily as I continue to pace in front of them. Their eyes bulge a little with every sweep of my flesh and I’m forced to hide a grin when I hear one of them begin to hyperventilate in the corner. I am shirtless, packed with more angry muscle than any man they might see at home, inked with war symbols and vicious beasts, and now…covered in splatters of dried blood.
Blood that they may as well have spilled themselves.
“This is not meant to be a difficult question,” Jared snarls from the sidelines.
“Of course we know who you are,” Mister Brass Balls in the middle finally replies, raising his chin bravely as if he’s just scored the point that won the game.
“All of you do?” I call out just to clarify and they all nod in the affirmative. “Then, tell me, who am I?”
It only takes about a half a second before the twelve of them answer with, “Alpha Max.”
I nod, pretending to be satisfied as I wander toward the blond with the now healing lip. “And am I correct in assuming that you know, as Alpha of this pack, my word is law?”
“Well, duh,” comes the smooth reply from the middle.
Releasing a low, dark chuckle, I step closer to Mister Brass Balls once again, holding his eyes for a good solid minute before I glare down in his face. “Well-” I say softly “-duh.”
Finally, I let the anger that’s been heating up my chest begin to show in my eyes and my jaw begins to pulse with the need to tear into this little bastard’s throat. My fangs spear out and in a flash of movement, I have the little asshole by the neck, pinning him against the wall as easily as I might hang a painting.
He sputters for air, legs kicking and muscles flexing as he tries to shift, but I keep my fingers lodged into his jugular, refusing him the necessary blood flow he needs to make the change, and when he realizes this, he truly begins to panic. Before he can pass out, I lower him back onto the ground, but I don’t release his neck. Instead, I dart in close, flaunting my speed when I do just to give them all a little taste of what an Alpha wolf is capable of.
Snapping my teeth right next to his purpling face, I hiss, “How does it feel now that you’re the weak one? Huh? How does it feel to have all your peers around you, watching as you wiggle like a fish, as you piss yourself along my wall? How do you like not being able to shift? Does it frustrate you? Hmm? Do you like knowing that at any moment I might decide to close my goddessdamned fist to snap your spine and not a single one of these useless fucks that you call friends will do a motherfucken thing to stop me?”
I release him a second before he loses consciousness and he crumples to the ground in a heap, gasping for breath and coughing up a lung as he gazes up at me in fear.
“Should I start kicking you now?” I say calmly. “Or do you need a minute?”
The sound of Jericho entering the room reminds me that playtime is going to have to wait, because I still have an entire housestaff to deal with back at my family estate before I return to Blanca’s bedside.
Addressing the room, I once again pace the line, “Now that we have established that you were all aware of who I was when I charged into the field this morning, there is only one thing left to do.” I pause in my steps, taking a second to meet the eyes of every single kid on the wall before laying my full attention on Albert. “What the twelve of you did today under Gamma Corlys’ command was a crime worthy of execution. To torture a female member of this pack-”
“Shiftless female,” Blondie inserts, causing every head in the room to swivel in his direction. “And a murderer.”
For a moment I can’t even think I am so angry, and I am just about to pounce on the stupid little prick when Finn’s fist shoots out to crack the little twat in the side of his head, and the kid drops like a sack of potatoes.
“As I was saying,” I go on, “the torture of any female of this pack, Shiftless or not, murderer or not, sister or grandmother or unicorn or pony…is a capital offense and will not be tolerated. Defying the command of your Alpha is also a capital offense and as it stands today, there is only one amongst you that is not guilty of that crime. Only one out of twelve that was brave enough to take action and place himself between a broken female and her would be murderer.” My eyes flash as the truth of it settles in my chest. “Albert.” Albert stiffens as the rest of the boys glare daggers at him, but I carry on, training my eyes on the rest so that they can see how unimpressive they are. “Albert is the only one of you that not only will be exempt from the hell that I have planned for the rest of you to endure, but will graduate today to become the youngest Gamma Warrior in history.”
Albert’s eyes go wide as saucers and his face blooms with red dust as he suddenly stands a little straighter as he works to hide his shock.
“The rest of you should be kissing the ground he walks on,” Jared pipes in, glaring at them with no small amount of contempt. “Because I can personally guarantee you that if Albert hadn’t interfered and your piece of shit teacher had succeeded in murdering Blanca-” he meets my eyes for a tiny moment before returning his attention to the boys “-Commander Finn and I would still be in that field helping your parents pick up any pieces of you that we might find, just so that they’d have a little something that they could bury.”