Chapter 97

Grace

"As alpha, the first thing we have to take care of is getting these vagrants from other packs out of our city!" Marvin's voice boomed through the crowd. His words were heavy with his usual sneering arrogance. "Starting with those half-breeds!"

The cheers that followed his words only angered me further. Who the hell did he think he was? I hadn't even started packing, and this bastard was standing outside Wolfe Medical as if he'd been named alpha already, as if I would trust Mooncrest to him, of all people. Before I could even stop myself, I was walking out the door and shoving through the crowd of picketers and protestors. Their angry voices echoed as if from far away. My ears seemed to be filled with cotton, blotting out the sound of the crowd as I shoved my way through the crowd.

Marvin and his stupid wife had always had an issue with me, but they never said it outright because I was the alpha's daughter and the heir to the pack. Knowing what I knew now of Jackson and his beliefs, I could only imagine that they had been weighing the benefits of getting Jackson that close to the alpha position while allowing Jackson and I to be friends. I remember hearing him and my father argue about traditional werewolf values. I remember the way he and my mother had always seemed to argue.

His wife had been too spineless to say anything aloud about my mother, but I could see in her eyes how little she thought of her. Seeing him here, among those demanding my resignation, felt like twisting the knife of Jackson's betrayal.

I pushed the man in front of me out of the way and jumped up on the bench to get in Marvin's face, snarling at him.

"Jackson must have inherited his lying skills from you."

The crowd fell momentarily silent, stunned by my sudden interruption. All eyes turned to me, and I could feel their collective attention.

"And who the fuck do you think you are?" I snarled at him. "I thought I made it clear what I thought of your values when I sent your idiot son back to you."

He turned to face me, his expression hardened with anger.

"Shouldn't you be packing and looking for another lycan to marry?"

I clenched my fist. That was the second time today someone had made a jab at my marriage to Devin.

"Should you be teaching your son that manipulation isn't the way to get a date?" I snorted. "Though I guess, knowing the woman you're married to and what a spineless, weak person you raised, that's all he and you could hope to do."

Marvin flushed. "How dare you talk about me and my family that way, little girl? You'd think you would have learned from your mistakes--"

"I have," I cut him off. "But it seems like you haven't. It was a mistake to fill Jackson's head with the idea that we would be together."

I shoved him off the bench. "And it was an even bigger mistake for you to think that I would let another spineless coward speak for me."

I turned to the crowd. "Make no mistake. If the Wolfe family is stepping down, Mooncrest damn sure won't be to a family who can't even raise one child to be a decent person."

"You--"

"Liar. Cheat. Fraud. Bully." I glared at the rest of the group. "That's who you want to run the pack? Well, too damn bad, it's not your decision. If Mooncrest is going to change hands, it's going to be to a strong, progressive leader who can pull all of your heads out of your asses."

Marvin scoffed, a bitter smile on his lips. "Progressive, huh? Is that what you call it? Mixing our blood with lycans? Cooperating with other territories? You've lost sight of what it means to be a true werewolf, Grace, just like your father."

I glared at him. "Tell that to that bum knee that was replaced because of my father's values."

He flushed. Someone snickered in the crowd. Anyone who knew Jackson's family that the surgery he'd needed to fix his knee would have been expensive since he didn't have health insurance if not for the pack's medical subsidies. I turned to look at the rest of the crowd. "I thought I made it clear that if you have a problem with the way Mooncrest is run, then leave, and don't come back when you realize what conservative, traditional werewolf packs are really like."

"You can't just tell us to abandon our home. You--"

"But you can tell me to abandon mine?" I screeched.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few," Marvin said. "A real alpha would do what's best for his pack."

My eye twitched. "You have ten seconds to get out of my sight, or I'm going to have you arrested for trespassing--"

"It's a public--"

"And conspiracy!" I barked at him. "Ten..."

"You can't arrest all of us! You can't arrest us for speaking our minds."

"So you're bigots and idiots," I scoffed, pulling out my phone. "Wolfe Medical is an office building, not a public meeting place, and I damn sure didn't ask you to be here."

The Mooncrest Police pushed through the crowd as they shouted and pushed back.

"She's trying to shut him up because he's speaking the truth! He's the alpha we need."

"Him or anyone else on Blood Moon's list, hm?" I asked. The man looked stunned, as if he hadn't thought about the other twenty to thirty families who had been singled out as Blood Moon-approved replacements.

"I'll interview the other candidates," I said. "But I have a feeling that they're all practically the same."

As the police took Marvin away, they started to push. Then, Enforcer vans showed up, and they got quiet.

"See! She's not a real werewolf, using lycans against us!"

I glared at the guy. "Go home, or you're going to find out how much of a not-werewolf I am and end up in jail."

Most of them flinched back. It must have been in my face how close to going off I was. Some of them hesitated, while others continued to voice their grievances. It wasn't until the Enforcers started to get out of the vans. People broke apart and scurried.

I glared after them.

Fucking cowards. I jumped down as the chauffeured car pulled up. I walked to it and got in with a heavy sigh, watching the protesters walk away with their signs, still shouting their slogans but not nearly as loud as they had been before.

I tried to maintain a semblance of calm as the car drove me back home, but I couldn't. My eyes burned.

Be sure to leave your keys when you go.

A real alpha would do what's best for his pack.

You can go back to being a lycan's housewife before the week is over!

I could barely breathe. Why wasn't anyone seeing that I was doing my best? I had been doing my best. I'm not equipped for a terrorist attack. I don't think anyone could be.

Marvin's appearance irritated me, but it was really Eason's words that stung me the most.

Did he really not see how ridiculous it was to try and fight Blood Moon? Was I the only one who knew that this was absolutely insane? It was pure happenstance that the attack on the water plant was caught. Eason might have been running it for whatever time he ran the pack while I was in college, but he wasn't running it now. He didn't know that the police force was in shambles.

He didn't know anything about the state of the pack after Devin except what I had told him.

I pushed that thought away. I shouldn't have to deal with Eason's shit on top of everything that was going on.

He said he planned Dad's funeral, but I was there too. He can't blame me for not coping the same way he did.

It seemed like everyone was blaming me for not coping the way he did, even me.

Grow a spine.

Power pulsed through me, boiling beneath my skin, like I was going to shit or break down, explode, or something. The fear was tangled up with anger and indignation.

I didn't plan to stick around and keep my kids in danger. No one would think that's a good idea.

My father wouldn't have kept us in Mooncrest if he was under threat. He would have packed us up and shipped us anywhere else because we were the most important people to him.

Our legacy might be forgotten by the masses, but it wouldn't be forgotten by us.

I pulled out my phone to call Eason. No matter what he felt, I was the eldest, and while I hadn't handled Dad's death the best, I wasn't going to just leave him behind to be stupid.

I wanted to do right by my father's memory, but there were other ways to do that than risking my life and the lives of my children for a city that didn't want me anyway.

I started to dial Eason's number when my phone started ringing with an unfamiliar number.

My stomach twisted into knots.

Was it Blood Moon or someone else?