The Making of a Dark Gamma - Book 1

His breath comes out in sharp ragged gasps, paws no longer evenly thumping on the ground, definitely tiring, the smell of fear hangs in the air, his heart racing in his chest, he can no longer focus on anything but his own heartbeat thumping loudly in his ears

His fear, his panic, bubbling under the surface is the greatest punishment he can take, she’d been careful to drive him further from his pack lands, not letting him turn around.

Tyra sensing he’s about to break, angles towards him, easily lengthening her stride she closes the distance.

Launching at him, grabbing at the scruff of his neck, she brings him down quickly as he stumbles under the added weight, energy spent, body collapsing under him.

A shudder of fear passes through him as he makes a gurgling whimper.

She changes her grip, holding his throat, his life, in her jaws and the last smallest bit of fight leaves him, raking her back claws from his chest down to his stomach, making sure it’s deep enough to scar, a pathetic howl escapes his mouth.

Shifting, Toni pulls the release cords that hold her cloak in a tight ball, it falls effortlessly, covering her body thanks to the weighted seams, grabbing the hood, she pulls it up fully, the wolf before her hasn’t moved, she bends down, holding his neck in her hand, ready.

The wolf hasn’t attempted to move, as if he’s already dead, eyes tightly scrunched shut, only his heartbeat, rapid breath and quiet whimpers are proof he hasn’t died.

“Shift”

She commands, the darkness in her voice even chills her.

At the sound of her command, he shifts, curling into a ball, trying to protect his already injured body, as if that single movement would save him, Toni looks carefully to see the extent of the injury she inflicted.

It will heal, but it’s deep enough to scar him permanently, she nods, her job has been completed.

“Why do the pathetic bullies always run?”

Her words dripping from her with disgust, the line slowly delivered, seeming to physically pierce him as he jolts from her words alone, she doesn’t expect him to answer.

“My….”

He’s trying to speak between whimpers

“Brother…”

It takes two long minutes for him to say these two words.

For crying out loud, she can feel her patience slipping, this is going to take all night for him to get just one sentence out and she doesn’t have time.

Frustration increasing, she lets her hand shift, the claws on her left hand barely piercing the skin on his neck, earning a muffled scream from him.

“Speak faster or I’ll make sure you can’t speak ever again, do you understand?”

Toni’s voice is quiet barely above a whisper but she knows he can hear her.

He nods swallowing, digging deep inside himself to find some final courage

“My brother will hunt you down, kill you for this”

He finally gets his words out, this maggot has found the smallest of backbones, courtesy of his brother.

A cold laugh leaves her lips causing him to lose final control of his bladder, the strong smell of ammonia destroying the last scrap of his dignity.

With her right hand, Toni removes her phone from the zipped pocket in her cloak, dropping it in front of him, she takes her hand off his neck, confident the wretch before her won’t dare to try and run.

“Phone him.”

His eyes open wide, wild with shock, he’s not yet moved

“If I have to repeat myself, you won’t like it”

Her words hiss out quietly, the quieter she speaks the more deadly it seems, this is something she has learnt.

Fumbling for the phone, he clumsily puts in the number, as he hits dial, she takes it and puts it on speaker

“Hello?”

The snivelling wretch on the floor doesn’t answer

“Who is this, how did you get my number?” the voice demands

The voice she hears is powerful and confident, nothing like the pathetic excuse of a wolf she is crouched over.

Roy whimpers beneath her.

“Ollie”

Crying out his brother’s name, his voice cracks with fear.

“Roy, what’s up?”

The concern for his brother is clear in his voice

“Whose number is this?”

It looks like Roy’s backbone has disappeared again, sighing she kicks him in the back to push him out of his silent state.

“Someone…… is ……trying …….to ……..kill ……me”

He finally manages to get his words out between gasps and crying

Tears are streaming down his face, dear Goddess if she was trying to kill him, he’d have been dead already and she definitely wouldn’t have had to watch this pathetic show.

“Where are you, I’m coming with warriors”

“I… I … don’t know, I ran…. it seemed so long…. I ran and I don’t know”

“Think brother, where were you before you ran.”

She can hear the frustration in his brother's voice, it’s the voice of someone used to command, odd that this is the brother of the weak mess in front of him, she hears a noise in the background, maybe people entering an office quietly, he’s probably already called for back-up.

“He’s trying to say he’s near the road about 3 miles to the Northeast of your pack lands, fairly close to the river, but he’s too pathetic to be able to use his senses to hear where he is.”

Toni speaks up, needing to speed this shit along.

She can hear the sharp intake of breath, as they suddenly remember this wasn’t Roy’s phone, that a stranger had been listening in.

“This is Beta Oliver from the Lowlands pack, who are you?”

She can hear his command down the phone, but it has no effect on her and she smiles.

“Who I am is not important, your brother attacked a member of the pack I belong to, a seventeen-year-old on his first hunt off pack land.

He was left scarred and injured thanks to your brother…..” She pauses

“… ‘Roy’,”

She says his name as if it disgusts her

“before he then stole the carcass, effectively stealing from our pack.”

“Which pack and I repeat who are you?”

There’s a stronger command in his voice this time, not that she needs to obey it, but she gives him some information he’s asked for.

“Nightshade pack and I,” she pauses “Well I’m nobody, just a pack enforcer, my name doesn’t matter.”

There’s silence for a short while, but it won’t be hard for them to work out who she is, not many are allowed of Nightshades pack land and only one is female.

“Roy, what have you done.”

His voice holds no fear, but it’s quieter almost breathless, some of his confidence gone.

The resignation in his voice makes Roy’s eyes go wide, the final understanding that his brother won’t or can’t protect him.

“Ollie I….” he blubbers

“Please make it quick, for the sake of my parents”

His brother addresses her through the phone, his voice filled with sadness, the Beta knowing he can’t get there fast enough if his pursuer is right by his brother’s side, Toni has already been watching the call time, not wanting to hurt anyone else that will be sent.

Any final control Roy had over his body was lost with the realisation of what his brother had said, luckily, she’d placed herself near his head, she always did, this wasn’t the first wolf to lose control of his body in her presence, and it was unlikely to be the last.

‘I just hope when my time comes, I have more dignity than wretches like this’ she thinks to herself, before taking a breath.

“You can send warriors to pick him up, if I’d wanted him dead, it would have been done long before this, he just boasted you would come to save him and I was curious.”

She closes the call before he can answer.

She leans in to get close to Roy’s ear, speaking so very quietly, that he has to still his breathing to listen.

“Touch anyone from the Nightshade pack again.

Even think about it, just once…

and I will know and make your last day feel like you lived a lifetime of pain, understand?”

He nods, before losing himself to his fear and panic, but she knows he heard, shifting, she starts her run home, to the place she grew up, the only place she can feel herself, her house.

At two in the morning, she lets herself into the house, emptying the concealed pockets in her cloak throwing it and the clothes she took with her into a wash, before immersing herself in the shower, standing for fifteen minutes under the hot water, letting it stream over her as if bathing in scolding hot water could remove her sins, trying to scrub the last four days off her skin.

Every time she closes her eyes, the faces of the wolves she’d had to kill on this trip come unbidden to her mind, their last panicked moments, burnt in her memory, a stain on her soul that she knows that no amount of showering can erase.

Throwing a bathrobe on, she heads downstairs, lining up two bottles of Whisky, pouring herself a tumbler full from the first, drinking it as if it were water.

She closes her eyes as the burning sensation hits the back of her throat, it won’t erase the faces, but it helps and it is usually the only way she can sleep on the first night back, but today she’s not even sure if she will get that release.

It’s been almost five long years since she was brought back to the pack, ordered to make her first kill at fifteen and there’s been no let-up since.

Each year after that, the number of kills increases, she knows they aren’t legitimate, and she won’t kid herself that they are anything but cold-blooded assassinations, but even after five years she has never been able to get used to taking a life; the worst days are the first few after the kills, not even the fact she’s commanded to do it can appease her conscience

So, once she gets home, she drinks, needing to numb her brain to forget the faces briefly and to stop the nightmares.

Other people, like Roy, well he was never on the kill list, he was a retribution attack, people who crossed the pack or wronged a pack member made that list, and she had to deliver a punishment, but at least for those she did get to dictate how.

He attacked a young wolf, barely an adult, leaving him scarred so that he could steal his kill, so he was marked back.

Roy lives, he’s got a permanent reminder of his actions but she doesn’t feel guilty over that, her sense of justice, though harsh, accepts what she did.

Roy was twenty-three and either Beta born or born to a family good enough to be Beta’s, albeit the younger, clearly pathetic brother, so at least the ‘fight’ with her at nineteen was a closer match than when he picked on a seventeen-year-old pack wolf.

Toni realises she’s finished the first bottle but the images are still too fresh to allow her to sleep opening the second makes her think about the Royal Pack, she’s close to breaking the wardship, just a few more months to go.

Each year, on the day of the competition she is required to see the Royal Pack representative and prove she’s not marked or claimed, each year after the competition, the Alpha gives her a punishment as a reminder of the trouble she’d caused.

But now, her birthday is only five months away, a month before this year’s competition, at that point, she has to present herself to the Royal Pack to prove she’s not mated or marked so they will release her from their ‘protection’.

To be honest, she’s not sure if she gives enough of a damn to go. What would they do if she turned up there marked, or just didn’t turn up at all?

The only protection it gave her was being forcibly marked as a youngster, for the rest they turned their back on her, forcing her into this life, protector pack my ass, she thinks, understandably bitter.

The deaths that she has perpetrated on the command of Alpha Vincent, fall as heavily on them as they do on her, she is the one that has the stained and marked soul, but their hands aren’t clean either.

But, she also had to admit some of her anger towards the Beta and Delta had been appeased, five years of having to follow orders of her Alpha made her realise their hands were probably tied as well.

Checking the time, it was only four and she already drunk her way through the two bottles of the enhanced whisky but was still not sleepy, it was eluding her today.

“Time to start another day in paradise.”

She announces to her empty house turning on the music.

Laughing loudly at the irony of her words, she understands that her life is hell and when she dies, well, she won’t be invited to run in the garden of the Goddess, but she’ll be going to actual hell, so at least it’s all practice for her!

She used to believe that the Goddess had a plan for her, that she was here to make a difference, but that was beaten out of her quickly, now, she realises she must have done something terrible in an earlier life and this lifetime, well this is her punishment.

Pouring out a strong coffee, she makes herself breakfast before putting on a fresh uniform, she heads to her office skipping training, after the last few days, she doesn’t need to take part, nor be seen there.

Three hours later, she’s finishing the paperwork in front of her there’s a knock at the door.

“Alpha Vincent”

She stands and bows briefly

“How may I serve you?”

“Have you got my latest list he asks”

“I have,” she looks at it one more time “I think seven to ten days should do it, hoping for seven but... it depends on the last few assignments.”

Hesitating briefly, she wonders how she could delay it, she’s only just back from the last set of tasks. Normally she has a month or two before she is sent back out, but if she already isn’t sleeping, she may as well head straight out.

“I’ll leave in three days, that way the contract terms on the last one will be down to twenty-four hours when I get there, not too long to wait.”

“Agreed, are you going alone?”

“I think a Delta and four warriors will be fine for the first three visits, they can leave after that, I will be more effective alone for the next ones.”

Alpha Vincent smiles, but it’s not a pleasant look

“Cole?” he offers

“Alpha, I know you would like him to be my chosen mate, but he lost that chance when he showed he was spineless five years ago, he should have fought harder.”

She shakes her head at the memory

“I’d prefer Rufus instead.”

“Agreed” he sighs

“You never told me, how did you get him to submit in that fight?”

His eyes are peering into hers, he’s never asked, but then she’s never before openly refused him as a chosen mate before.

“I told him to submit or I would use his knife to castrate him in public, so he tapped out.

But he castrated himself that night when he didn’t have the balls to continue fighting a fourteen-year-old, saving me a job.

I cannot make a man like that my chosen, he would weaken me.”

She answers honestly

Alpha Vincent chuckles, it’s a weird noise she’s never heard before and hopes to never hear again, but he nods

“I’m so glad you came back to us Gamma; these last five years have run so much smoother with you in place.”

She fights down the feeling of sickness that crashes over her at his words, remaining unmoved externally.

“Thank you, Alpha.”

Her words are spoken as he turns to leave

“Oh, take Robert, let him lead the negotiations but, send him back with Rufus.”

“Yes Alpha”