I couldn’t see Gordo anymore, and I wondered if he was alive.
I turned my head the other way. It took more effort than I thought it would.
The Omegas had overtaken Thomas and had forced him down. He knelt before Richard Collins, and just the sight of it, just the mere thought of Thomas on his knees for anyone was enough to cause my blood to boil.
“You know,” Richard said, “I expected more from the great Thomas Bennett. I’m a little… disappointed.”
Blood poured from Thomas’s mouth as he shrugged. “Expectations can be a bitch,” he croaked. “Trust me when I say that I’m just as disappointed in you.”
Richard nodded. “I’d forgotten what it sounded like when Joe’s bones broke. The wet snap of it. His back, I think.”
Thomas growled deep in his throat, but even I could see his strength was ebbing. Too many wounds, not enough time to heal. He was an Alpha, but he wasn’t immortal. He struggled aga
inst the Omegas, but they held him tightly.
Richard said, “Before you die, I want you to know. I blame you. For everything. My family. My father. All of it. Every last part of it. Your parents. Your pack. Witches and wolves. I lay all of their deaths at your feet, and I am going to take your life because of it. I will become the Alpha, and I will rape your territory into submission. This old magic will be mine, Thomas. As will your wife. And sons. You are a false god, unworthy of what you’ve been given.”
I was not a wolf. I was a human who was part of a wolf pack. I couldn’t move like they could, not really. I couldn’t heal like they could. I couldn’t fight like they could. I did not have claws or fangs or eyes that glowed. I was Ox, that was all.
But they were mine.
These people had come into my home and had taken from me. They’d given me shit, just like my father had said they would. People were going to give me shit because I was Oxnard Matheson, because I was a stupid fucker who couldn’t even protect his own family.
But no more.
No more.
I pulled on the pack bonds. I pulled on them as hard as I could.
Osmond was distracted by Richard’s words. My fingers found the crowbar in the grass.
I remembered what Thomas had taught me. My father had said I was going to get shit all my life, but he wasn’t my real father. Not anymore. My father had helped to make me, but it was Thomas who’d shaped me into what I was.
I thought we were going to die. All of us. But I was going to take as many of them with us as I could.
Osmond wasn’t expecting me to rise up. He wasn’t expecting me to sweep my leg out into the back of his knees, knocking his feet out from under him.
I was moving before he even hit the ground.
Somewhere in the trees, a wolf sang, and I felt the song burn within me, the bonds saying OxMateBrotherSonFriend, and I moved quicker than I ever had in my life.
I was not a wolf.
But my god, did I give the impression of one.
Richard started to turn as I came up behind him. His Omegas barely had a chance to react.
The crowbar stabbed through his back much more easily than I thought it would. Flesh parted and the crowbar scraped against bone. Blood spurted out over my hands and face and I pushed.
Richard screamed as he shifted, claws coming up and over his shoulders, reaching for the crowbar, reaching for me, trying to slice and cut and mark.
I pushed the crowbar in farther, hoping I’d manage to skewer the bastard’s heart. Hoping that it was enough, because Thomas was gushing blood now, and I didn’t know how much longer he’d last and—
Richard’s claws fell onto my shoulder and squeezed. They punctured my skin and he pulled me around, my blood-slick hands slipping from the crowbar.
He brought me around in front of him, and even though I must have outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, he grabbed me by the neck and lifted me off my feet.
His orange eyes were bright, his breath hot on my face.