Damien's Dilemma (Ch 22)

Damien shifted. His silver wolf howled long and hard, gaining the pack’s full attention. That’s when he scented honey and flowers in the air. His Tess had arrived.

A male shifter in the back yelled, “That’s the human who killed our people,” and all hell broke loose. Growls and snarls echoed off of the mountains, as everyone started shifting. Everyone that is, except Tess.

Damien’s wolf leaped over the heads of a dozen shifters and plowed through scores more, as he raced toward Tess. Pryce had already shifted and stood in front of her, ready to defend her. Blade, Hayden, and Frank intercepted three males who were heading straight for her, but the guards had missed the tan wolf who had lowered his head and was slowly creeping up behind her. Damien leaped onto the shifter’s back, sending them both into a roll.

“Enough!” The command reverberated through the crowd as loud as any howl could have. With dark brown-red hair whipping in the wind and light green eyes that held a fire of their own, Tess stood high up on a boulder for everyone to see.

Damien bounded toward the rock, not caring which shifters he knocked over in the process. Their behavior was outrageous, and when he discovered who the asshole was that yelled the inciting comment, Damien would be picking fur out of his teeth for a week.

“I realize you don’t know me, and maybe you don’t want to,” she said from atop the boulder. “But I am a shifter, a red wolf, at least on my mother’s side. I’m only here because your alpha rescued me the same night he rescued your packmates. I’m not here to cause trouble, and I’ll be leaving soon.”

“Prove it. Shift!”

Tess stood there, likely stunned by the challenge. From here, he could sense her grief. Damien, still in his wolf form, leapt up beside Tess. Her hand slipped to his head, sinking into his fur, as if she needed to touch him.

“I’m still healing from my captivity.”

He could tell from how her voice shook that she didn’t believe her own words. He was so very proud of how she stood up to the rioters, like an alpha, giving the shifters information they could believe without having to lie. It would do the pack no good to know that the WSSO could break a shifter, steal his or her ability to shift. His pack would learn the truth in due course, but this wasn’t the time or place.

“Go home, human!”

The bastard who’d shouted that was hiding in the back. Damien growled so loud in that direction that the shifters parted, exposing the male. Whoever this faded silver wolf was, he had shifted to his wolf quickly, which meant his strength could match or exceed Damien’s.

The wolf showed no sign of backing down as Damien bared his teeth. The faded silver drew his gums back, flashing very white and sharp teeth. The crowd of wolves and shifters formed a ring around Damien and his challenger.

The faded silver snarled and lunged, too low to do more than strike Damien’s flank and send him off-balance, but that could be an effective tactic if followed up with claws to the throat. Damien let his wolf take over, making a minuscule adjustment to his angle and then leaping higher than the faded silver. Damien’s wolf body-slammed the other wolf, forcing him to the ground in one move.

Damien’s wolf clamped his jaws on the challenger’s neck, pinning him. The faded silver wolf shifted into a large man with curly brown hair. Now Damien recognized him; he was one of three new shifters he’d accepted into the pack over the winter. Callen had vetted this one. Thomas, Tim, something like that. It didn’t matter anymore. The shifter would be dead in a minute.

That’s when a hand sifted through the fur behind his wolf’s ears, stroking Damien in a way that called to him, reminding him that there were others watching, that his decision would impact the entire pack. Damien’s wolf was not pleased at the interference; he wanted the shifter’s blood.

With one leg on the shifter’s neck, Damien shifted to his human form. Tim, Thomas, whatever, remained on the ground, breathing heavily, fully expecting Damien to end him. That’s when Damien noticed the unease, anger, even confusion in the faces of his pack, the males and females who knew he could rip the shifter’s throat out, even in human form. They were nervous for the shifter they’d already accepted as one of their own.

Damien had read the reports, heard the comments of various parents about how this new addition to their pack had been a great boon. A skilled teacher who had already connected with several of the more troubled teenaged shifters as they were coming into their wolves for the first time. It would be a loss for the pack if Damien ended him. And here he had been asking the families to invest more time and heart into their children’s education.

Tess stroked Damien’s back. Her calming influence allowed him to consider the ramifications, something he would not have been able to do had she not been there. Then her hand fell away, and she stepped back, making it clear to him and the pack that the final decision was Damien’s and that he was their leader. It’s what Blade and Hayden had been telling Damien, that he needed to lead, not scare or beat his shifters into submission like Drake and even Damien’s own father had done. Tess knew what Damien needed to do, too, and she tempered him long enough to act like the leader he wanted to be.

“Lock him down for the night, then bring him to me in the morning,” he ordered Mason and Ty, two of Callen’s top shifters.

Damien offered his hand to Tess, and with a nervous smile, she accepted. If the shifters in his pack didn’t know what she meant to him before, they did now. He wasn’t going to hide his feelings from her or the pack. Everyone needed to understand that an attack on her was an attack on him. Let his shifters speak their minds, even challenge him as Tim/Thomas had done. The second anyone touched her, Damien would rip him to shreds.