A shiver ran down my spine as he took in the crowd. Several people lowered their gazes, unable to face him.
“The outbreaks of violence stop now. We’re already past our limits. I am waiting for an excuse to cull the numbers, so consider yourselves warned. If you want to challenge someone, then make it official, and on our land only. Otherwise, resolve your issues on two feet and stop disrupting our runs.”
A couple more people shifted uncomfortably. We all knew who was to blame. There had been a lot more in-fighting lately. Everyone had probably expected the matter to be resolved a little more violently. That wasn’t our alpha’s way. Bloodshed was the last resort, and I appreciated that.
“I’ve contacted my son,” he continued. “We’re discussing the possibilities of moving more of you out to him.”
“But my children have settled here,” one woman called out. While some of the people in the room were families, more had nobody but the pack to rely on.
I glanced at Perdita. I often thought of myself as a loner, but as long as she was around, I would always have somewhere to go. A flood of pity for Victor and others like him rushed through me. I had gotten lucky, but for them, the fear of an unknown future was likely still hanging over their heads.
“This is our home,” the same woman continued. “You can’t move us away.”
“Then tell your eldest to stop trying to assert his dominance after his challenges have failed,” Nathan said sharply.
The woman slapped her son across the back of the head, speaking rapidly in a string of Portuguese. Pavel was in his late twenties, but he still bowed his head in silence to his human mother. I understood maybe every fourth word of hers, and that was mostly because of her rants at her children. Two of her sons were werewolves, and she wore that like a badge of honour, so every affront of theirs was her shame, too.
“Enough,” Byron said quietly. The woman stopped her ranting mid-sentence. “Since the murders of our pack members, we’ve been unsettled,” he continued. “It’s understandable that there are some issues to work out. But we do it properly. I don’t want another Dominic on our hands. Do you understand me? I won’t tolerate it—same as most of you didn’t tolerate it when you doled out his punishment. We seem to have the gardaí off our backs for now, but that will change if we’re not more careful. In future, nobody goes on a run alone. Any issues are to be dealt with on our property, and never while outsiders bear witness. There will be no altercations with anyone outside the pack.”
“Poor Victor,” Perdita muttered.
My gaze fell back to him. His head was bowed so low his chin rested on his chest. He’d been in at least three fights at school since Mara’s death. He was on his final warning.
“And what about the witches?” an old man asked. “Will we be safe with a wolf-witch and a death-witch around us?”
Amelia made a scornful sound. “Why, are you scared of us?”
“Scared of what you’ll lead to us, maybe,” somebody else cried out. I couldn’t see who spoke.
Perdita tutted as discontented murmurs spread through the crowd. I clenched my fists. I wished they didn’t have to be so bloody old-fashioned all of the time.
“Amelia is the omega who balances the pack,” Byron said, his patience clearly wearing thin. “She calms you when you need it.”
“Is she calming us because she’s the omega or is she influencing us because she’s a witch?” the elderly man’s grandson said. “How are we to know the difference?”
“If you don’t trust me to know the difference, then you shouldn’t be here.” Byron’s words were ice-cold. “I am the alpha. I say who is welcome and who isn’t. I say my niece is Omega. If you don’t listen to me, then you don’t belong here. Do you understand?”
The younger man looked sullen, ready to speak out again, but his grandfather hushed him. “It’s not that. We trust you. We obey you. But we’re simple people. We know wolf. We know man. We don’t know witch. Help us understand.”
Byron’s expression softened. “There were many things you knew and did not know before we met. Do you remember those days? How much has changed? Well, the world is still changing, and we are discovering new things every day. My ancestors were wolves and witches, and now here we are, all connected through magic. Because your shift comes from a kind of magic. All of us are affected by something we don’t ultimately understand. Wolf-witch, death-witch, call them what you like, but your alpha calls them a member of the pack and a friend of the pack.”
“Of course you know your own blood,” a woman said, “but you don’t know the girl who smells like death. We don’t know her purpose. She doesn’t even know.”
I snorted. The woman wasn’t even a werewolf herself. She had no idea how Margo smelled.
“I’m training her,” Amelia said. “I’ll know if she’s a danger to anyone, never mind us, and so far, she has only saved lives.”
“Who are we to interfere with death? Besides, don’t you think it’s strange that she appeared here, in this place?” the woman continued. “As though she were placed here?”
“Maybe she was meant to be here,” Amelia said fiercely, “to meet the pack and help us.”
“But you don’t know.”
“She could be a monster!” Pavel piped up, earning himself yet another smack across the head from his mother.
“Dorian vouches for her,” Victor abruptly bellowed. Perdita and I flinched at the sound. “That’s good enough for us.”
The teens behind him didn’t agree, but they didn’t protest either.
Byron looked done with the lot of us. “Margo may be an enigma for now, but she’s innocent, a victim of fate. A lot like the rest of us, so show some compassion. We’ve welcomed her as a friend to the pack. I won’t tolerate any attempts to scare her away.”
A couple of faces turned to me. I scowled back for as long as I could manage. Not very long, but Byron kept talking. I noticed that Victor was shaking, but I didn’t understand why. He had been acting so differently since Mara’s death that I couldn’t figure him out.
“If she harms us, brings death our way, then we may have no choice,” somebody cried out.
I didn’t see who, but I jumped to my feet. “The alpha decides,” I called back, “not you. And if you want to get to Margo, you’re going through me first.”
The hall erupted with noise then as multiple arguments began at once. Perdita took my hand and gave me a reassuring smile, but I was stunned by my own outburst, never mind anybody else’s.
The pack had to change. After the meeting, I realised that if anybody thought it would protect us, they’d have no qualms about going after Margo. Could I even trust my pack anymore? I had to warn her.