"He's coming," one of the wolves told the others. Almost instantly, Layla felt the entire room change. She knew it was the Alpha that was coming.
An Alpha wolf had a grasp over the other wolves of his pack. More than just respect, there were certain times when they had no choice but to obey his orders, or, if they pushed the refusal, challenge their Alpha.
It was coded into their biology. They were wolves, and this was a part of it.
Layla sensed something off in the way these wolves behaved with their Alpha. It was like something other than the respect and awe that was natural for a wolf to feel for its Alpha.
She didn't have much time to think about it further. Within a moment, she heard the tell-tale sound of footsteps. The scent of an Alpha then filled the room.
The first thing that Layla thought when saw the Alpha was that he was entirely unstable. Layla wondered how on earth any wolf still followed him.
He smelled like feral wolves-like the ones who lost their minds when they had no pack left to turn to.
He was big, built like any of the Alphas were built.
"What have you learned?" he asked the Beta wolves standing around her.
For a moment, they didn't answer. The scent on their skin changed, turning rank. Layla understood all at once why they followed this wolf. They were afraid of him.
There wasn't much else to it. They were just terrified to their core, and no one would question him.
Eventually, one of them standing close to her shifted.
"She's refusing to answer," he answered his Alpha simply.
The Alpha came toward her slowly. Layla tried hard not to gag at his scent. He smelled worse than the feral wolves, and the scent of fear in the air was terrible.
The Alpha cupped her chin, tilting her face up to him. Layla saw his face. Before she could think, he released her chin from his grasp and slapped her across her face.
It barely hurt, she had to confess. She was a wolf, and small hits like that weren't all that painful to her. But it was the insult behind it that bothered her.
"I am Auburn," the Alpha spoke to her like he hadn't just hit her. "You can call me Burn for short. I am the new Alpha of Bloodmoon. Your Alpha may have spoken about us, about my pack. We are the opposing pack to Wolfsbane. We will claim this territory from them."
Another pack. The opposing pack too. How had they gotten so far into Wolfsbane territory? How had no one sensed their coming?
Had this been the forest, there was no way that a wolf would have crossed into their territory so unknown like this.
Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe territory didn't work as stringently in the city as it did out in the packs. Maybe there weren't such clearly defined lines drawn in the sand.
"And you, Little Omega. You will talk," Burn threatened her. "One way or another."
Layla knew that as deranged as he was, he was speaking the truth.
He would break her eventually. She would have been able to withstand torture under a Beta's hand indefinitely, but not an Alpha.
Not when she was an Omega.
She'd seen this done before. Her father might have been a Beta, but he was one of their pack's greater guards. He knew how to break wolves and make them talk.
He'd allowed her to watch him as he worked once she was old enough. He had always told her one thing. Only the human half could be convinced to talk. Once they were a wolf, there was little that even her father could do.
He would have to wait for the wolf to shift back to human form. There was no way to force a shift in a wolf.
If the wolf never shifted back, they would have to kill it.
Most of the time, they had to kill the wolf anyway, and the information they got out of it would just be a very helpful bonus. Normally, the wolves they caught close to their territory were scouts or spies, wolves sent ahead to investigate to see how best other wolf packs could attack them and claim new territory for themselves.
Her father had often told her that if they could draw enough information out of the wolf, they could stave off a fight or win a war before it even began.
Wolves were taught to fight ruthlessly, but they were just as careful to try and make sure that they never got to that point. Wolves fought to the death, and they always preferred not having to lose.
Layla knew what she had to do to avoid talking, but it most likely meant that she would die.
She would choose death over and over again before she even considered talking before, she told them anything about Henry. She knew the world he lived in was dangerous, but he had saved her life. She wasn't going to repay him with death.
Besides, he had done so much for her. He had gone over and above everything that a person could ever do for another person. He had given her a place to stay and bought her clothes.
She knew what she had to do.
She began her shift.
The shift happened in less than a second. It was lightning fast, but to the wolf that was shifting, it felt like forever.
Half of the battle of the shift was remaining calm and staying in control. Her body knew what it needed to do. All she had to do was guide it, but she had to control her mind. When a wolf shifter, it could be in a tense situation that required more strength than their human bodies could give them.
The shift slowed time down for the wolf, and they felt like they were taking forever. This almost always caused panic because the wolf felt that it was exposed.
Layla focused her mind on her body and willed it to change.
She pushed her claws through first, fingers changing. Her hands and feet were becoming paws and claws. She bit down on her teeth, flat human teeth at first and then sharpened, the way they became in a half shift, and then full wolf teeth.
She felt her pelt grow out all over her skin, pure white hair lengthening until the cold wouldn't bother her even if she lived in the snow.
Her ears pushed upward on her head, and she heard sounds from all over-the wind passing through the building they were in. Her nose lengthened and new scents joined her body. She could smell blood a few rooms away. Nothing was familiar though.
She had the scent of Henry's blood memorized. She would know if it was him
bleeding out.
She could smell wolfsbane, silver, and rotting food. Wherever this pack was, whatever it was, it wasn't very well cared for.
These wolves smelled of desperation, insanity, and so much fear.
Her wolf's senses were beyond comparison. No matter how strong or great a wolf was in human form, nothing compared to the wolf itself.
In less than a second, her shift was complete. She stood a single wolf among them.
"You idiots!" The Alpha raged at the wolves around him, understanding, like she did, that he would get nothing out of her now.
"Why was she able to shift?!"
They had forgotten the wolfsbane and silver.
Because they knew she was an Omega and thought they would always be stronger than her.
It was harder to think in wolf form.
Everything was more instinct than thought, but Layla focused on herself. She needed to think like a human now, not a wolf. All the wolf was still telling her to do was fight.
She felt bigger than all of the wolves around her, even though they were larger in wolf form, standing at their shoulders. Her wolf nature was convinced that she would be able to take them all apart in seconds.
She forced herself to stay calm. She had already made her point.
"Take her to a room!" The burn continued to rage at the wolves around him. "We'll get nothing out of her now. Maybe she can still be of some kind of use to me."
The wolves shifted uneasily. Layla snapped at the hand that tried to touch her just for fun. She was in control. She wouldn't be able to fight them all off, and she wouldn't even try.
They still needed to kınow that if any one of them tried to touch her again, they would lose a limb.