Chapter 40: The Chains of Destiny

Ben clung to the edge of the battle, wheezingly gasping, his body still shuddering with the leap that had left him there. Copper-scented blood burned hot on his skin, each wolf's eyes hanging over him like leaden weights. The air was thick with the stench of the aftertaste of battle, a sorrowful visitor to the gore that accompanied.

He'd known it. The power. The raw, unformed power that'd coursed through him like fire. It'd burned over him, transformed him, and left him on the cusp of something greater. And now. now they all saw him differently.

Not as an alpha.

Not as an omega.

But as something more.

The transformation had been brutal, a foul re-birth of his own form. It was not the smooth, streamlined one to which he had become accustomed. It was a twisting, distorting one, a foul bursting of pent-up energies. The new form was one many times greater than the one to which he had become accustomed, a monster of stupendous power and foul presence.

The silence that had fallen over the battlefield was heavy, replete with unanswered questions and hollowed awe. Even Viktor, mastermind of the operation, sat stock still, eyes huge with fear and hesitating awe. The wolves shifted, the super-soldiers Viktor had introduced onto the field, now stood defeated, heads hung low, eyes cast asunder.

Ben's nerves were stretched taut, his senses heightened. He could scent the stench of respect and fear that curled from the wolves around him, the unspoken acknowledgment of a power they didn't understand. He could scent the lingering stench of fear that clung to Viktor, jarring counterpoint to the man's normal arrogance.

He looked down at his paws, the longer clawed ones sharper than before. His coat was thicker and darker, bristling in the wind. He could feel the weight of his new body, the raw power that coursed through him. He no longer bore the weakness of his former form.

He remembered that voice in his head that night he had stood guard, the words suspended in the fog: You were born for this. He had never questioned himself, only questioned where he fit into the pack, if anywhere as an omega. He had thought he was a failure, a weak one, a hindrance to the others. But he knew now. He was not weak. He was not a hindrance. He was something more.

It was a drunkenness and a nightmare. He was a force of nature, an old monster, loose on the planet. He was a contradiction, a conjunction of the new and the old, a movement from the old to the new.

He stood looking out over the devastation, at the corpses of his deceased pack, at the ruin of the sanctuary. Choking wave of grief washed over him, deep grief for the dead, for destruction wrought. He knew he couldn't bring them back from death, but he could make their sacrifice never to have been futile.

He came back to Viktor, ice-blue anger raging in his eyes. Games were over. Judgment day was finally here. Viktor was not going to take this bullying, not going to get away with it. He was going to end it for good.

He advanced, soggy paws and muscular. The ground trembled beneath his paws, a stifled warning of purpose. The rest of the pack parted way, opening a path to his prey. Viktor comprehended the gravity of his position, retreated in hopes of finding an opening. There was none. Hunter was prey now, judge time.

His claws curled into fists, his body resisting the change. He prayed it was a glitch—to believe some zany survival mechanism had kicked in just in time. But he wasn't so lucky.

This was him. What he'd always been.

And that terrified the living crap out of him.

Max's slow step forward had him hissing into Ben's sight. His bright green eyes were impossible to read. He'd seen Ben's entire life, to himself in hiding. Now he stood before Ben, arms crossed.

"You're holding something back from me," Max said, eyes closing in.

Ben winced. "What?"

Max bobbed his head, eyes closing tighter. "You knew what it was. What you could do. How easily they could be made to do your bidding." He breathed out. "But you're still afraid of it."

Ben shrugged defensively. "I—"

Max advanced a step. "Disprove me."

Ben ground his teeth. "I don't want to lose control."

Max smiled. "That wasn't losing control, Ben. That was winning."

Ben turned around, his stomach knotting. He had seen raw power. He had seen it in Jack.

Uncontrollable. Unyielding. A power that was tearing everything apart.

What if he was heading down the same path?

What if he was turning into the same thing he had struggled against?

Max seemed to see his doubt because his face grew stern. "You'll be like him?"

Ben's throat tightened. "I don't know."

Max blew hard. "Jack has no fear of his power. He knows it. Where you and he are different?"

Ben stared at his hands, at the folds of his uniform now clean on his skin. He had not been more or less. Never less or more than he was.

But was it that being not more was why he had been imprisoned all those years ago?

Max's voice eased a little, the way a wave eases coming onto the beach. "You can make a choice, Ben. Being tough does not make you a monster. Fear does."

Ben gazed at him, his own heart pounding.

He had spent his entire life in fear.

Maybe it was time to leave that behind.