Chapter 11

Peter was feeling on top of the world.

The female bitch he had brought to the howling had already put herself at the top of the pack as the number one choice and he already had an in with her so he was sure that she would be his prize before the night was out.

It was easy to get her away from the humans because they weren't that smart anyway. He wondered how long she had been away from her pack. He also needed a break, because the humans always had a way of infecting others with their stupidity, thought Peter.

But as he was having these thoughts he saw the pack Alpha, Lykaon, starting to circle around the clearing watching how she dealt with the other males interested in her. The vicious nature of how she kept them at bay started to draw his interest.

Hoping against hope Peter saw the pack Alpha going back and forth as he checked her out. A cold feeling started to settle in the pit of his stomach as he watched and saw that the Alpha interest didn't seem to diverge towards anything else but her.

"No no no! This is so unfair! She is mine! I found her first! She is mine to claim!" ranted Peter to himself, but he knew better than to protest it.

Pack rules allowed for males who wanted to claim the same females to fight for the right to claim her.

While still watching the other male in their half hearted attempts trying to get close to her, it kept resulting in quite a few injuries to the males who persisted. She really was a wild one and everyone wanted a chance to tame her.

Lykaon thought if he was truly serious, then he knew he would be the only one who could certainly tame her, because he was the most powerful member of the pack. The pack was only as large as it was because of the strength of Lykaon.

Peter continued to watch him, but he really wasn't that stupid.

He wouldn't have even brought her here, but he had to bring her before the pack so they could witness him claiming her and her submitting to him, or his right of claim to her wouldn't be valid. But if he now tried to fight Lykaon for her tonight, then the right of "Fang and Claw" would be enacted.

The only wounds that couldn't be regenerated, were the ones received during a fight that were given to another Were in combat by the Were's fangs or claws.

Lykaon wasn't known for his mercy and he had killed many a different challenger to claim his right to the Alpha spot and so far he had managed to keep it by the same brutality.

But as he watched Lykaon pace back and forth, moving faster and faster, Peter knew that Lykaon would claim her before the night was over, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop it.

Dejected Peter slipped away into the darkness, no longer interested in the howl for tonight.

As the pack Alpha looked around he watched the new female bitch that had recently joined his packs howl. That young pup brought her in thinking to claim her, but it wouldn't take much for him to set that pup in his place.

But as he looked around for the pup that he thought he might have to challenge for her, he saw that he was indeed gone from the howl

"Good, he knows his place and this makes it much easier. Good to see his time around the humans hadn't made him completely stupid," thought Lykaon with glee.

He was always playing around with the human packs and it was making him soft, even though that pup would never admit it. This was a good lesson for him. While they needed the information he provided, he sometimes stayed far longer than he should to gather it.

But at least this time he brought back something good from his visit to that human pack.

While the Alpha was checking her out before he realized that she didn't quite smell anything like the other females, but her glowing red eyes, vicious nature, and her strength was far greater than what any human would ever have.

So the only thing that she could be was a Were.

It was so obvious to all that she was a Were, but for some reason she wouldn't transform all the way.

She still maintained her human form, even under the glare of a full moon, the one time they all lost the ability to transform fully into their human form so they could walk among men. They could still walk upright, but only as a hybrid creature, as how Lykaon was currently.

Yet as he looked at her, even in her human form, she was still very appealing.

Her flowing red hair and her sharp muscle tone showing through her torn clothing was captivating. The size of her teats also wasn't something to discount. In all he found her to be very shapely and pleasing to his eyes.

He would mate with her, but not claim her as his primary mate. He would just be with her a few different times, as he had done with various others who caught his eye, while the pack was all gathered around and none would dare think to cross him for it.

As Alpha the rules didn't apply to him if he said they didn't.

So far she had discouraged a few different males from getting to close who thought to mate with her later by her vicious attacks when they closed in on her, but he was the pack Alpha for a reason.

None could stand up to him and no one had the same level of power or physical strength he had.

Ever since that young pup brought her in to the pack she had viciously attacked anyone who came near her, including the female Ylva who was far stronger than any other female he had been with. He had mated her a few times as well, so he knew full well Ylva's strength, but he also left her unclaimed once his enjoyment was finished.

Not to mention if it wasn't for the healing power of the various members of the pack that the new bitch had beaten down so far, some of those she had dealt with would have been maimed for life, instead of only for a few hours while they regenerated.

While he had a primary mate he normally ran with, she never did say anything when he sampled other females, claimed or not, and sired a litter or two with them. He had a few different litters he had sired with other females because it only strengthened the pack to have so many strong pups around.

Lykaon also felt that too was his right and due as pack Alpha.

As he approached her she seemed to sense his presences and turned around snarling at this newest intruder.

Unlike some of the other males so far, where just the sound of her growl at them and her flashing red eyes made them back away slowly in fear, the Alpha decided this was all part of her mating dance to make him prove he was the most fit to breed with her.

As he approached, her growling at him was increasing to become something far louder, intensely guttural, and more intense than anything he had heard so far from her before.

Normally they all spoke either the language of the wolves or the language of men if forced, but for some reason all she was doing was growling at him.

She was down on all fours like the rest of the pack while she watched him approach as she growled. He was still half transformed into wolf, and so he still had very hairy rough looking hands and arms, but most of his features were canine in quality.

Lykaon was sure that she was down like that to get ready for him, and needed to make it look good for the pack before she gave in to the best male wolf for the job.

But his reasoning for why she was still on all fours couldn't have been more wrong for his last night on earth.

He approached, and once he reached her, he started to slowly circle her and she kept turning her head growling as she tried to keep him in view.

During one of the passes where she had to quickly turn her head to switch around to the other side to watch him, he leaped at her from behind and tried to pin her underneath him.

While he was on her back he tried to secure himself and bit at her shoulder, trying to bite through the clothing of the humans she still had on, to make her settle down so he could start to mount her. Sometimes a few nips were needed to reign in the female.

Her struggling was making him more fevered and determined than normal. He knew she would give him a good ride.

All females went through this practiced motion, but once the superior male had them under their control they always settled down.

He would soon take this highly desired female in front of the pack to again secure his role as leader, as no other male could come close to her, and she would of course feel honored to have a litter by him.

With her strength, and power he brought of his own, their pups would be very powerful.

But if he had been paying more attention he would have noticed that she wasn't trying to throw him off as much as she was trying to get a better grip on his arms.

Right when she seemed to stop struggling as hard to dislodge him, while the pack Alpha was quite sure she acquiesced to his wanting to mate with her, Brianna stood up on two legs.

She had managed to grab both of his arms soundly, somewhere between the elbow and the shoulder, right about the meaty part of the triceps, and then she tightened her grip.

The Alpha realized something was wrong a split second before her fingers punctured deeply into his arms, and she then savagely pulled as hard as she could, as she completely straighten her arms out.

She strained hard as she pulled as hard as she did in that practiced motion away from her body.

No one ever disputed that normal werewolves have extraordinarily fast healing ability, but having both of his arms ripped so savagely clean off his body as he did didn't leave much room for that to even matter.

Blood sprayed wildly as his arms tore free of his body at the sockets.

The werewolf Alpha fell from her back and screamed out into the night in deep pain and shock from what she had just done to him. The rest of the pack, realizing something was wrong, all looked on in silent wonder at the rage the female was displaying while he was trying to mount her and was stunned to see what she did.

Brianna turned and threw his ruined and now separated arms away from her somewhere behind her body, as she then turned and looked down at his torn and broken body. Her eyes seemed to get even brighter as she snarled loudly and bared her teeth at her fallen foe.

Even though Aric was no where to be seen, and she saw him die, she still realized deep in the recesses of her mind that only he was her one and only mate, she had picked him and she would tolerate no others trying to take his place.

Only he would ever be the one permitted to mate with her.

The werewolf was now weakly struggling as he kicked at her, and the Alpha was sure that he could feel his death approaching as his blood left his body. Brianna put one booted foot on his chest and leaned over his battered body while deeply growling and snarling at him.

Grabbing the sides of his head with both hands she savagely twisted and wrenched his head back and forth until she was sure he was dead and he had stopped thrashing around as he was unable to stop her.

Stepping back she surveyed the brutal carnage and didn't even seem to notice all the blood on her arms and back.

Looking around at the rest of the pack that was now still, silently watching her, she lifted her head and suddenly howled out loudly into the night.

Suddenly her howl was answered by other howls and then the whole pack was now crying out with her. She was declaring her victory and making sure all knew it.

In an unexpected twist Brianna had now become queen of this pack of werewolves.

It wouldn't be the first time a male from her new pack, or any of the other surrounding packs, would question her right to rule over the coming week and often tried to challenge her for the position with the intent to take it from her.

But each lesson came be as brutal and savage as this one each and every time. No other wolf had ever showed the savageness of Brianna when she killed an opponent.

Shortly she was soon known as the untouchable Queen of her pack among all the wolves.

All wanted her, but none could tame her and any foolish enough to continue to try paid for each attempt with their lives.

Often the other members of her pack wondered why she never transformed totally into a wolf, spoke the language of wolves, or even that tongue of men, but they couldn't discount her voracity or the savageness of her leadership.

Soon her pack stood above all others and eventually no wolf dare cross her.

Nathan and Kat, both carrying a pack each, were several days out as they finally wound their way out of the valley on the far side and in to a heavily forested area.

Following the pull of his magic in Ariel, Nathan was able to use it to track the general direction of where she was.

He tried not to, but his mind drifted back to the morning they left. He looked in on Terrance and Rory and made sure they were comfortable and quietly thanked them for their sacrifice to find his wife.

Kat, at first thought he was making sure that she hadn't killed them, and she felt great sadness at his lack of trust in her even at this point of their journey together.

But when she heard him quietly saying thanks to Terrance and how touched he was to do this in spite of his great fear of dying at Kat's hands, she realized that he was thanking them and not showing distrusting in her, and that thought made her softly smile.

She tried to be some where else when he exited the room.

Taking him back to the cliff where he fell, she watched as he sat on the ground and closed his eyes for a moment.

He put his hands in front of him, with his fingers pointed down, made a circle with his hands just over his stomach, and concentrated with his head down.

She knew he was using a locator spell, but without something of Ariel's to use, she was wondering how he was going to use his internal power to see if anything answered him from her.

He had been sitting like that for almost twenty minutes before eventually she saw something that looked like a tiny "spark" that appeared between the circles of his fingers, and it pointed off into a general direction before it winked out.

"This way, we have a lead" said Nathan as he took off at a jog.

Kat did her best to follow and keep up.

It took Nathan and Kat about a week and several days to go through two villages before they found Ariel and her pack.

Asking everyone they ran across if they had seen any one who looked like her never brought up a lead, and it wasn't until the reached a town where the looks alternated between outright cold staring, being ignored, or having some who gave them looks of fear.