cement her posi ti on
and boost her ranking in the pack.
But if she failed...
“ You
have to prove that you are more useful to us alive than dead,”
Mason had said to her. He had smiled as he handed her the silver
knife, but the threat was unmistakable.
Kill, or be killed.
Her mission was to attend
the banquet as the representative of Dark Moon pack, and bury the
silver knife in the heart of the Thunderfalls Alpha before the dinner
was over. To stay in the pack, to stay alive, she had to kill the
Alpha of the rival Thunderfalls pack.
Leah
forced her eyes away from the mirror and stared at the glittering
hallways of Thunderfalls Manor. The Thunderfalls pack was hosting a
formal dinner for all the wolf packs in North County to
celebrate the pack's one
hundredth anniversary.
The Thunderfalls pack was a relatively young pack, but they had grown
swiftly in size and power. Leah had heard Mason say that this dinner
was a show of strength for the Thunderfalls pack. By hosting a
lavish dinner at their Manor, they were displaying their wealth,
influence and power to the older wolf packs.
Each
pack was to send a representative. Leah
wasn't at all honored to be the representative of Dark Moon pack.
H er feet felt like lead as she dragged them down the red carpet. She
smiled and shook hands
with the long line of Thunderfalls wolves but
she didn't hear a word that was spoken to her . Her blood was roaring
too loudly in her ears and she kept wondering if her hosts suspected
that many of their impeccably dressed and outwardly affable guests
came to the banquet armed to the teeth.
Her
hosts were all handsomely dressed in long coats and lush gowns, and
they welcomed all their
guests politely. They didn't refuse to shake her ha n d
because she was half human. Any wolf, any full-blooded shifter,
would be able to tell from her scent that she was only half werewolf.
She was a lesser werewolf, not pure of blood. She
was a half-breed, a mongrel.
But
her hosts didn't seem to mind. They
welcomed Leah warmly and
a handful of Thunderfalls she-wolves complimented Leah on her dress.
They were friendly and jovial, and laughed and joked with one another
and with all their guests. Leah began to relax a little as a well-mannered young
wolf personally ushered Leah to the banquet hall.
As
she chatted timidly with the exuberant young man, Leah had a
fleeting thought that Mason was wrong. This dinner was n't
a calculated show of might and
aggression . It was just a gesture of goodwill on the part of the Thunderfalls wolves. It was their pack's
anniversary celebration, and they simply wanted to share the
happy occasion with the other packs.
Leah
took her seat at the banquet table, and felt the cold silver blade press against her
thigh. Silver had no effect on her, and Leah suspected that it was
because she was more human than werewolf. Her mother's human genes
were probably more dominant than her father's submissive werewol f genes. She was trained to fight, shoot and
use a knife like all
the other wolves in the pack, but honestly,
she didn't enjoy the training at all. The sparring sessions were
brutal and bloody ,
and more often than
not, she had to drag herself out of the training room with some part
of her broken and bleeding.
It
wasn't just her body that was broken. Her heart had long been broken
into jagged fragments. She'd
heard her fellow
trainees laughing as
she covered her face with her hands and curled into a tight ball to
prevent them from kicking and clawing at her face and soft
underbelly. Their taunts were cruel. They ma d e
fun of her full, curvy figure, her wide hips and generous ass. They
dared her to turn wolf and attack them back. Leah tried. She really
did, but she just couldn't summon her wolf and shift.
Trembling,
Leah tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and glanced around.
She was seated beside a silver-haired gentleman with a goatee and a
giggling, tittering young woman who was gulping down her champagne
like water.