Saving Briar

The handsome, broad shouldered man arrived at the pack border to find the guard station unmanned. His lips turned down at the corners as he took in a deep breath that did nothing to calm the uneasiness stirring in his veins. Ever since he had been a child he had had an extra sense about certain things, a knack for feeling upcoming troublesome events in his veins.

A part of him had wanted to skip the so-called Alpha Celebration that he had been invited to, from the first moment that he heard about it. His mother had begged him to go. How many twenty-eight year old Alphas were as of yet, unmated?

He’d suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at his mother’s complaints. They wouldn’t have made a difference when it came time to make his final decision. She’s been complaining that he hadn’t yet found his mate for nearly a decade. He’d grown used to it. So that wasn’t why he was there, driving past the border of a pack that he thought of as nearly inconsequential, to see if their Alpha would live to see another day.

He didn’t personally know Theon, but he had known his father unfortunately well. He’d never liked or respected the man. There was a darkness in his soul that he simply couldn’t ignore.

Most people didn’t feel any particular way to the last Alpha to arrive at the celebration. Whatever the gift, or as he sometimes called it the curse, that he had been born with did, it didn’t give him insight into every single person that he met. He was grateful for that, at least.

But now and then, in the presence of those who were undeniably evil, or angelically good, he would find himself almost bowled over by the sudden, instant, and almost overwhelming knowledge that the person before him was almost entirely something in a way that most people just weren’t. Most people were a mix of good and bad, and while many listed in one direction or the other, it was only when either extreme approached perfection that he could feel the difference in his very bones.

Theon’s father had been one of those men, whose evil character seemed to grow more and more extreme with each and every year. The last time he had attended a meeting with the man, he’d returned to his hotel and showered for nearly an hour, letting the water scorch his skin in an attempt to wash away the feeling that he was in the presence of someone extraordinarily evil.

The road led past any number of houses, but he vaguely remembered that if he stayed on this route it would lead to the heart of the pack, and the Packhouse. The feeling of dread was suddenly compounded with a feeling of urgency. He needed to be there. Now he only hoped that he wasn’t too late to do whatever it was that he was suddenly certain he needed to do.

He’d stopped on the way across the state to visit an old friend. He’d been close to her mate, once upon a time, before the man had been killed. While she wasn’t a wolf-shifter, she was one of the few people who he trusted. Despite her sometimes rough around the edges exterior, she was one of the only people he’d ever met who seemed to simply vibrate with goodness. But he’d been told when he stopped, that she’d been out of town for a few days, and none of the waitresses who worked at the diner knew when she’d be back.

Throwing his car in park, he opened the door, only mildly surprised when he heard shouts and screams coming from the back side of the massive building. Running a hand through his hair he headed directly towards the noise, running his tongue over his teeth as he felt his canines begin to lengthen, his claws extending from his fingertips ever so slightly.

When he reached the edge of the large field his eyes swept over the scene before him. Two huge wolves were fighting in front of a stage, at the edge of a large crowd. He recognized every Alpha present, at least those in human form, as he continued to process what he was seeing.

There was a young woman with a silver collar around her neck who looked close to passing out, and a blonde who was hauling a small child around the edge of the crowd, a large silver knife held in her hand, although he could only barely see it since she was obviously trying to hide it in the skirt of her dress.

He even saw, from his vantage point, set back from the area that had clearly been prepared for a celebration of some kind, a large man, who he guessed from his distance by the giant’s sheer size had to be either a Kodiak shifter or a dragon shifter, creeping up behind the pair on the stage, who both seemed entirely oblivious to the intruder’s presence.

There were so many people around that it was hard for him to understand why he was here. The feeling of evil didn’t seem to be coming from either of the two males fighting, or really from anyone near the front of the stage. He watched, unblinking as the dark gray wolf slammed the wolf with a white muzzle into the ground. A second later he was on top of his rival, and the gray wolf didn’t hesitate to tear out the other wolf’s throat.

The visitor wondered, as he watched the scene, who had won the day. He had no idea if one of those wolves had been Alpha Theon. While they had both been large, powerful beasts, neither had struck him as an Alpha, but he hardly had time for his thoughts as several things then happened at once.

The giant behind the stage moved fast, snapping the neck of the man sitting on the stage, before gathering up the collared woman against his chest. The bystander breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the big man snap the collar in two, throwing it back on the ground, his face filled with rage. He didn’t know why the woman had been collared but he did know that putting a silver collar around any wolf shifter’s neck was a torture that should be left in the distant past.

His eyes were drawn to the left side of the stage then, where the woman had lifted the knife, holding it against the young girl’s throat. This had to be the evil he’d felt. Who else would threaten a small child like this one, with a silver blade. He felt a strong desire to protect the girl that went beyond what he’d expected to feel.

He stepped forward, his eyes focused on the pair, when a scream from near the stage caused the little girl to turn her head ever so slightly in that direction.

“Let her go, Cara!” His eyes stayed on the girl, but the voice, though hoarse and panicked, sounded like music to his ears. He didn’t have time to be distracted though. It was clear that he was later than he should be.

As he moved forward, well aware of the great distance between himself and the woman with the child, he felt a strange twisting in his gut that he usually associated with magic. His gifts were not magic, at least that’s what the old witch that his mother had dragged him to when he was a child had insisted, but they were close enough that he could feel it in the air when it was being used. This though, felt like nothing he’d ever experienced.

The girl cried out, the sound agonizing and alarming, and for a moment he was afraid that the woman had cut her. It seemed to him that she crumpled to the ground in front of the blonde, but he hadn’t seen the blade move, although the woman had jerked in what looked like surprise. But when he saw what was on the ground in front of her, even the stranger froze in surprise.