Chapter 253 If I Can Do That
Fennigan’s fierce Alpha instincts instantly spiked, flooding his veins with ice water, because the scene unfolding in front of him made absolutely no tactical sense.
They weren't fanned out in their usual, flawless defensive formations. They weren't crouched low behind the tree line, using the cover of darkness and the scarred earth to mask their presence. They didn't even have their weapons drawn and leveled at a designated target. Instead, the entire elite stealth team—the absolute deadliest, most highly disciplined and ruthless warriors in the Blackwood pack—were standing completely exposed in a staggered line along the jagged edge of the newly formed ridgeline.
And every single one of them was absolutely motionless.
They stood like statues carved roughly from the shadows, their postures rigidly locked and their heads tilted down toward the abyss. From the most hardened, seasoned veterans to Gamma Toby, and right down to his fiercely unshakable Beta, Jax, they were all just... staring. The air around them was thick with a suffocating, paralyzing dread that Fennigan could physically taste.
Fennigan didn't call out. He didn't send another mind-link to demand answers. He simply closed the final distance, his heavy boots making absolutely no sound against the soft, pulverized earth as he stepped up directly between his brother and his Gamma to look down into the dark.
For a long, agonizing second, Fennigan stood completely frozen on the jagged ridge. The great Alpha, a man who had just smoothly and confidently secured the absolute loyalty of fifteen powerful leaders without batting an eye, was entirely paralyzed by a sickening cocktail of profound shock, utter disbelief, and pure, visceral horror.
The suffocating silence of the ash-choked woods was suddenly, violently shattered. The sheer, unholy wrongness of what he was looking at at the bottom of the cavern completely snapped his legendary composure in half.
"WHAT THE FUCK?" Fennigan roared, his booming, Alpha-laced voice ripping from his chest and echoing down into the dark, subterranean cavern like a physical blow.
Down in the damp, echoing gloom, the aimless, dragging footsteps abruptly stopped. One of the massive, lumbering abominations slowly, mechanically turned its heavy head toward the ridgeline. It didn't bare its teeth. It didn't release a territorial growl. It just stood there, swaying slightly on its feet, staring blankly up at the precipice.
Looking at its face in the thin, silver slivers of moonlight sent a fresh, violent wave of nausea straight through the stealth team. They couldn't tell if it was meant to be Jax or Fennigan. It was some twisted, grotesque concoction of the two brothers—a hulking, unnatural hybrid with dead, milky eyes locked onto the ridge in chilling, empty apathy. It was a walking nightmare of flesh and stolen genetics.
Fennigan’s shock lasted only a heartbeat before it instantly incinerated into pure, lethal panic and a blinding, white-hot rage.
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck," Fennigan snarled, his protective instincts screaming at him to eradicate the threat before it could ever crawl out of that hole. "Shoot them. Shoot them all."
But the elite silent team—warriors systematically trained to kill on command without a single question or moment of hesitation—hesitated. A seasoned scout standing to Jax's left slowly lowered his tactical rifle, his chest heaving as his hands physically shook against the metal stock.
"But sir... I don't know if I can," the scout stammered, his voice tight with a deep, instinctual panic that overrode his training. He was asking a wolf to fire on the face of his own Alpha. "I mean... they look just like you and Jax. And..."
The scout swallowed hard, looking physically ill as his trembling finger pointed deeper into the shadowed cavern.
Fennigan’s glowing eyes snapped violently back down to the cave floor. The mob of massive, hulking clones had parted slightly, revealing the center of the cavern. Standing dead in the middle of the hulking abominations was a much smaller, slender silhouette. The faint moonlight caught the soft cascade of her hair, the delicate slope of her shoulders, and the painfully familiar, elegant curve of her jaw.
It was a perfect, soulless replica of Leela.
She stood completely motionless among the monsters, her milky, vacant eyes staring blankly into the dark, entirely devoid of the fierce, radiant spark that made the Matriarch who she was. Seeing his beautiful, vibrantly alive mate desecrated like this—turned into a hollow, manufactured meat-puppet standing in the dirt—shattered whatever restraint Fennigan had left holding him together.
"Give me that fucking gun," Fennigan growled, his voice dropping into a terrifying, demonic rasp that vibrated the very bedrock beneath their boots.
He didn't wait for the scout to hand it over. Fennigan ripped the heavy tactical rifle straight out of the hesitating man's hands.
"But sir—" the scout protested, his panic flaring at the sight of his Alpha disarming him.
Jax instantly stepped in. The Beta didn't say a single word, simply raising a firm, commanding hand toward the scout. Stand down, soldier. The scout immediately snapped his jaw shut, falling back a step to let his Alpha work.
With the interference cleared, Fennigan didn't flinch. He didn't even take a breath to steady himself. Driven by pure, unadulterated revulsion and absolute devotion to his real mate back at the party, Fennigan pulled the stock tight to his massive shoulder, leveled the barrel with lethal, unshakeable precision, and pulled the trigger.
BANG.
The gunshot cracked like thunder, a violently deafening explosion in the cavern's tight acoustics that made several of the scouts flinch.
The heavy caliber bullet caught the Leela clone dead center, right between her milky, unseeing eyes. The hollow, lifeless replica's head snapped back, and she instantly collapsed, dropping to the cold cavern floor like a severed marionette.
Silence rushed back in, heavy and ringing.
Fennigan slowly lowered the smoking barrel. He turned on his heel and shoved the weapon violently back into the stunned scout's chest, forcing the man to grip it. He turned his glowing, furious silver eyes on his paralyzed men, projecting an aura of absolute, unforgiving lethality that left no room for debate, emotion, or hesitation.
"If I can do that," Fennigan snarled, his absolute command vibrating deep in the marrow of every wolf standing on that ridge, "then you can fucking get rid of the rest of them."