But the Alpha Prime responded with an answering wave of dominance. He withheld his rage, and forced back Miles’ fury. Another shifter stood beside him, white-faced and shaking, and Anders realized that he was an Omega and he was helping the older man calm Miles down.
Baldwin, groaning, crawled over and joined in. He absorbed Miles’s rage and madness, sucking it into himself, and finally the two Omegas together managed to achieve their goal. Miles stepped back, panting for breath. Both Omegas looked sick and shaken.
“I’m sorry, Baldwin,” he choked out.
“No fucking time for apologies,” the older Alpha growled. His eyes were blazing with rage, and tufts of fur sprouted on his face and hands. His claws were out, and the bones under his skin were shifting, making cracking noises as his wolf fought for freedom. “I’m Brandon Sheffield. I’m going to get my daughter back and kill the people who took her. Are you with me or against me?”
“With you,” Miles said.
“Then wolf up, quit acting batshit crazy, and let’s go. I hear you claimed her.”
“Yes.” Miles nodded. “She’s mine.”
“We’ll see about that,” Brandon said. “But right now, let’s bring her home.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Fenris Pack and Brandon’s men ran together towards the eastern territory, massed ranks of fur and claw and fury. They were joined by Anthea and Bryant and a dozen other bears from the Stoney Creek Clan. Brandon, running in human form, gave Anthea the side-eye.
“Sure you can keep up?” he called over the howls of the pack.
Anthea snorted. “A bear can run at forty miles an hour. Eat my dust, old man.”
Fur exploded over her body and she morphed into a mountain of a beast, dropping to all fours and charging ahead, unstoppable as a juggernaut. Brandon gave a startled laugh, then went wolf and sprinted after her.
At the boundary to the eastern territory, the wolves and bears slowed their advance. Miles sniffed the air and growled when he scented Dakota. She was close. Brandon stepped up beside him, and Anders flanked him on the other side. At their backs stood a shifter army come to claim back one of its own.
A large brindled wolf slunk out of the treeline. Ludwik. Miles could feel the waves of Alpha power rolling off him. It gave him a taste of the man’s strength…and of his weaknesses. He was arrogant. All ego.
He was joined by a wolf Miles recognized as Fargo, then by a pair of she-wolves. The smaller of the two was whining with excitement, and when Brandon uttered a low, rolling growl, Miles realized she must be the traitor in the pack. More wolves joined Ludwik and Fargo. Dozens of them. Half a dozen bears lumbered from the undergrowth. One of them reared back on its hind legs and bellowed a bone-shaking challenge.
Miles and his men were badly outnumbered.
They leaped into the fray.
The clearing turned into a snarling tangle of brawling shifters.
Anders and Baldwin threw themselves at a bear, gouging at its flanks with their jaws. The beast roared and flung Baldwin across the clearing, where he rolled to a halt and lay still. There was a furious snarl from a coyote, and Naomi barreled into the fight. She wasn’t strong, but she was persistent…and she was furious. Baldwin bounded back across the clearing barking ferociously at the lumbering bear. It staggered on its paws, beginning to tire.
Miles snapped and snarled, rolling over and over, trying to gain the advantage over the wolf he was fighting. He raked bloody gouges across his opponent’s snout with his teeth, and when it fell back whimpering, he went for the throat.
Anthea was tossing wolves around like ragdolls. Brandon, in human form and bloody to the elbows, watched in admiration as she ripped a wolf’s head clear off its body with a brutal swipe of a paw the size of a hubcap.
“That woman’s a dangerous maniac,” he said to nobody in particular. “A total berserker. Ilikeher.”
But despite the brutal strength of the Stoney Creek Bears and the fierce determination of Dakota’s friends, Miles and Brandon’s men were being beaten back by sheer numbers.
More than one shifter was in human form, with the limp shape of a bleeding friend thrown over their shoulder, trying to get them back to neutral ground so they could heal. A bloody black trail bisected the clearing where a dying wolf had dragged himself away from the battle.
Brandon was uninjured and Miles had already healed an ugly wound from where a bear had raked its massive claws across his chest, but even with their Alpha Prime strength, they couldn’t hold back the onslaught alone.
But then a tawny-furred wolf came running out of the woods, snarling. Creel. He was huge, standing head and shoulders above the wolves that followed him. A force to be reckoned with. He met Miles’s gaze and nodded his shaggy head, and Miles realized that Creel was there to fight by his side.That was all Dakota, he realized – if it weren't for her, Creel would have sat back and watched both sides tear each other to pieces. His men were scrappy and undisciplined, but tough. They were used to fighting for survival. Creel howled defiance and, along with his men, the Fenris Pack renewed its assault.
Slowly but surely, the tide began to turn. Miles ripped out an attacker’s throat, then turned snarling on a she-wolf, his muzzle bloody and mad fury in his eyes. She ran yelping into the woods, tail between her legs and ears flattened against her skull.
But then the undergrowth rustled and swayed, and Ludwik dragged Dakota into the clearing. He was flanked on either side by a skinny, pretty blonde girl and a middle-aged woman with features so similar that she had to be her mother. Half a dozen huge male wolves were ranked behind them. They let out a constant rolling growl that curled through the clearing like poisonous smoke.
Blood trickled from the corner of Dakota’s mouth, and an angry red-purple bruise bloomed over her cheekbone. Her arms were twisted awkwardly behind her back – she must be bound with silver-threaded rope so she couldn’t shift. But she was alive. Alive and only a hundred yards away.