The Gamma's Birthright - Book 2

Toni breathed a sigh of relief as she felt the pull of the pack border, caressing her, like an old, but favourite blanket, that smelt and felt like home, relaxing her.

Shifting back, she takes off her backpack, changing quickly into jeans and a red polo-necked jumper, it’s a cooler climate way out here and she loves it, less than one minute later she is met with an SUV as expected, she knows she had been tracked from the moment she entered the ravine

“Alpha Ant, great to see you home” Karl bows his head briefly as he jumps out and embraces her

“Why so formal, has something come up?”

Karl is her Beta now and someone she’s learnt to call a friend.

“You know me, Toni, it will always be your formal title the first time I see you for the day, even if it’s late” he looks up at the sky

“Guessing you haven’t seen the news lately?”

“Been evading some wolves, didn’t exactly have time to turn on the news Karl!”

“The Crown prince has been stripped of his title and exiled to a different continent.

The King is promising change and has confirmed a review of your status will be undertaken, asking for those with input on your actions to come forward.

But the packs are in uproar and the King hasn't yet named the new heir apparent.”

“His review makes no difference to me."

Looking around her she continues

"This is my home”

She smiles at how Karl’s emotions are reflected on his face, relieved at her words.

This is home for her, this small pack of seventy-five misfits and outcasts, follow her with absolute loyalty, she was never a rogue, but an Alpha.

When she went to see Alpha Karl to join his pack, at least until the birth of her pups, he told her she couldn’t join unless she became the Alpha.

His wolf couldn’t accept Toni’s oath in any other form, nor would the other nine members of the original pack, all voting her in as their Alpha.

Karl had, however, followed Cage in coming to the Desolate Waste, finding a good area to set up the pack

But through her pact with Prince Einar Falkenberg, Leif’s sire, they procured the materials and transported them the short distance through vampire territory.

At the outset, they had even provided builders for six months, the vampires worked at night, the wolves during the day, and after that period, they had fully equipped pack buildings and functional pack amenities, enough for one hundred wolves.

In the last months, they had planted crops for the coming year, and now had a herd of sheep to supplement their wild game hunting, the bigger the pack grew, the more organised they needed to be, something she, Karl and his mate Leah worked well as a team to keep on top of the pack needs.

At the moment, they were running off the money Alpha Robert had left in the account, their next big challenge was to become self-sufficient, and then make money, the veiled pack would not just survive, but prosper and grow, that was her vow.

The people who all called this their pack home were technically ex-rogues, malcontents, rebellious wolves, and lost souls at the start.

For those with families, she had encouraged them to get in contact with them, for no other reason than to let them know they were safe.

Eventually, a few family members, migrated to this pack, taking their number to forty after they made their move to this area.

She’d adopted Ant as her official title, trying to obscure the link to herself; she was still a wanted person and it helped to let people believe there was a male Alpha in charge, not that people strayed this far into no-mans-land.

Between that and their trade agreement with Leif’s Sire, they felt relatively safe and secure, but she took nothing for granted, freedom was far too precious a thing for all of them.

“Anything to report?”

She asks as they make their way to the centre of the pack land

“We have ten in the holding cells, nine self-hand in’s that want to join us.

I’ve done a preliminary and I think they are good, but I know you like to speak to them all, oh and there’s a family of four in there, we had to split them into two rooms.

And one forced capture…”

“A forced capture?”

The surprise was evident in her voice, something they never do.

“Almost full rogue, we’d need to use drugs to suppress his wolf to see if we could rehabilitate, but he was harrying our patrol for hours.”

“I’ll deal with him last; he’s being fed and treated well though?”

“He is, Geoff has been sat each day talking to him, he’s a lot calmer now.”

“We’ll start with the family, then go by ascending age, but let’s do it tonight, people need closure as much as freedom” she announces.

“Let’s head there first, I don’t want to get distracted.”

He looks at her slightly surprised and nods.

It never failed to surprise her how many people and youngsters they got on their border. She’d been away for just over a month and nine people had turned up in that time, normally it's three or four a month.

She knows where most of the referrals come from, Leif and those in the same sire line, talking to the newly made rogues, who enter the Neutral zone looking for a solution.

Most wait to be picked up, they step over the pack line and sit down calmly waiting for the patrols to get to them, not knowing they had been tracked from the canyon when they passed through, as she had.

The pack had this simple rule, no excessive violence ever, restrain but explain.

This means they tell people they will add restraints as the pack needs to protect themselves until they are in the secure unit, but they are offered food and shelter, essentially individual units that have a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living room, until they are assessed.

If they fail the assessment, they are taken to the border with food for a few days and wished luck on their journey.

This bunch of ex-rogues, people banished unfairly, running from violent Alphas, stupid mistakes and bad families don’t need to be met with more violence, they need fairness and space, Toni knows this from personal experience, so this is what they get.

Here, in the middle of no-mans-land, they have space, they could expand a hundred times over and still have room, no pack ventures here and true rogues generally seem to avoid the area.

Maybe it’s because the pack doesn’t chase them away, maybe they sense the power of the Alpha, but here, it’s live and let live, that doesn't mean they don't train, everyone is expected to know self-defence at a minimum.

The pack has discipline and rules that must be met, but Toni refused to put whipping on the list of punishments and that one simple rule garnered so much respect from the pack.

It may also be something to do with the fact they all recognise her inner power, she doesn't hide Tyra anymore, in fact, she doesn't hide at all.

As they pull up next to the secure unit, it is just that, a secure unit not cells, although the pack has been fitted with those in case they are ever needed, but in this building, they have the choice of pre-cooked food that the pack eats, or food for them to prep and cook themselves.

The only thing bothering Toni today is that they’d never assumed these places would house families.

Heading into the building she can see from the boards outside the rooms, that each parent has taken one of the children into their rooms, something they need to look into, splitting families is not good.

Knocking on the first door she waits until she hears them call out, before she unlocks the door, everyone in this unit is entitled to some privacy and to feel like they have some control over their life, to feel powerless is to break a person's spirit and she won't do that.

“Shall we go across and see the rest of your family?”

She smiles openly and inclines her head before repeating the process on the other door, except they all go in and seeing the family reunited is heart-warming.

“Let me introduce myself, I’m Alpha Ant”

Toni reached out to shake their hands, noticing their surprise she could tell they were expecting a male.

“Sorry you had to be split up, it’s not ideal but we’ve never had a family before, something we’ll have to think about for the future.

But for now, just tell me your story, don’t skim over the bad bits, we all have a past here and we don't judge, so there’s nothing to be scared of.”

Three hours later, they have nine new members to the pack making eighty-four wolves, and only one of them is under specific conditions, he admitted he has a temper, so he’s been allocated a mentor to help with the transition and to work on healthy avenues for his emotions.

The last, the forced capture, she sat with for thirty minutes in wolf form, letting Tyra take over the conversation. He wants to be free, at least for now, but he let her peacefully lead him to the edge of the territory where a deer carcass had been left for him.

She’ll keep a look out for him, he’s close to the point of no return, but she has a small hope that the bond Tyra created will help him find his way back, but everyone deserves a chance to decide their destiny.

Running back to the pack house, Katie comes out with her lifelines, the reasons Toni has to make this pack successful, her children, and the result of mating with Andy.

Theodore Andrew and Althea Emma Woodfield, her adorable twins and anchor to life, known as Theo and Thea to those close to her.

She’d missed a month of their life, at their age, that’s a lot of time but it was necessary in her mind; they smiled reaching out for her as they heard her voice, calming Toni’s nerves that they’d forget her.

Taking them into her arms, she felt complete, she had finally accepted who she was.

Breathing in their sweet scents, her inner beast is calmed and Tyra huffs happily at being reunited with her pups, a feeling of peace and tranquillity falls over her.

They kept Toni alive and sane in the darkest moments, to carry them safely, to give them the chances she didn’t have, ultimately, they are the reason she had agreed to lead this pack.

A massive grin spreads across her face, this is her living a real life, no longer a hidden one, she hopes that in time, maybe when her twins are old enough, this pack will become official, until then, she will protect them and this pack with her life.

The stains on her soul from killing other wolves can never be erased, not for Toni, but it helps that she knows the Moon Goddess saw fit to forgive them when she won the challenge match.

It’s given her a darkness she can call on, that she can never remove, but when you face the darkness, she understands now, that it helps you see the light more clearly, and she intends to use that to bring this pack into a more knowing and aware future.

Toni’s past still hasn’t been resolved fully, she knows that, eventually she will have to face the information given to her by Colin, in time, she will look into what happened to her parents, but her priority now is her pups.

In addition, the hidden account that Alpha Robert had given her had been emptied via Leif's contacts and moved to a new clean account, however, Leif's contacts had also tracked the payments, not only finding the host account but another account in her name.

Each time she'd killed, money had been deposited in that account, without her knowledge, the hackers had removed the money and routed eighty per cent of it to her main accounts before deleting all records of the account they had found.

What they'd done with the hosting account, she didn't care, that was, as far as she was concerned, not her money.

All of that dirty money was going towards building the pack up, they would have the best chance of success if she had any say in this.

For now, she’ll watch and wait, she approves of the removal of the Crown Prince, but she knows she has to make contact with Andy, he deserves to know about his children, but at the moment, isn’t yet sure how to do that safely.

But for the next year, she intends to spend the time inside the pack, nurturing both her own pups and the pack, building in safe zones, like the Deadfall pack, underground bunkers with exits elsewhere, securing housing for families and making them totally independent as a pack.

She can’t change her past, but she won’t let it define her future, not anymore, this may not be the fairy-tale ending her mum had once hoped for, but this is better than she’d been promised.

The Moon Goddess worked in mysterious ways, but Toni was glad she’d never lost her faith in her, and this pack now followed the ancient rites, whether they believed in them or not, that was one of her two stipulations to accepting the Alpha position.

Gradually, they were all learning the old language and the pups, which now number seventeen after the newest arrivals today, are all being schooled in both languages, the common tongue and the old tongue, her aim, longer term is for the old tongue to be the main language used, but like all things, it will take time.

For six hundred years, Toni believed the Moon Goddess had worked at matching mates in her family line, so that she could be born, and she understood and accepted her Birthright.

She was, after all, Antonia Emma Woodfield, first of her name and line, Lycan born, technically a pup in the old Lycan world, until she got to twenty-five when she would shift into her third form.

Leif felt it may come sooner, her Lycan’s eyes of Cobalt blue, already showing in times of need, the book he'd lent her "The way of the three form Lycan" confirming this as well.

A Lycan bent the knee, only to other Lycans, becoming Lone Wolves if they didn't find one in their own packs when they came of age; wandering until they found a suitable lineage to kneel before.

The odds of it happening were astronomically small, seventy trillion to one that her parents had given birth to her, even longer odds if you factored in the scale of getting two parents with enough Lycan DNA from the scraps that had been left after the great war.

She was the improbable probability as Leif had called her.

If what Leif had told her was true, and using the information from the book he lent her, somewhere out there was an Erasthai for her, often different to a fated mate, but someone that once she marked, would turn into a Lycan, to bring about the next generation of full Lycans.

She had hundreds of years to find them, and with a three century long lifespan ahead of her, she was in no rush.

That’s why Toni was so sure that it had been the Moon Goddess’s plan and not blind luck, all those years of silence from her were part of the bigger picture, to bring back the race that her children had once destroyed.

This is the start of a new story, one she can control, the start of the veiled pack and her children’s legacy.

This is where they will write their own story.