An Alpha's Alpha

Before.

Three Years Ago...

She woke on a startled breath. Her wolf at her skin, pushing for dominance. Danger flashed through her mind, as she leapt from her bed, claws already unsheathed and teeth ready to shred.

He stood, nonchalantly, against the side of her tent. Arrogance rolling from him in waves. She hadn't seen him for a couple of months, not since the day he'd- not for a while.

Cassidy swallowed a lump in her throat and bit her tongue, forcing herself to focus on her pack link, at the chaos that gnawed at the edge of her mind. Her pack wasn't large, only about 20 in total, but she knew without tapping too far into the link that it was in utter meltdown at the devastation and destruction. As images from the minds of her pack filtered through her own, Cassidy forced the bile from her throat and rounded on Caine.

A man she'd grown up with, under the tyrant that was his father, she'd always known that one day this day would come. The day when she would need to kill the son of the Alpha she'd despised, of the alpha she'd challenged, of the alpha she'd beaten.

Caine's cocky face unsettled her. He knew as well as she did, that she was stronger than he was, and yet in the dead of night he'd chosen to attack her pack with his own. Pull them from their beds and force them to submit to him as alpha or lose their lives. Now he stood there, obviously needing to challenge her as alpha in order to take over the pack - but why had he chosen today? Even in the dead of night, he was no challenge for her. Pushing the complex thoughts to the back of her mind as the screams of her pack mates ramped up from around her, Cassidy knew that it was time to kill Caine, to end this madness.

They met in a clash of teeth and claw, as tooth caught bone and drew blood, Cassidy's wolf snarled in victory. Momentarily wounded, but not defeated, Caine's wolf put distance between them and began to circle Cassidy, looking for her weakness, but he should have known her better than that. Faking to the right and charging from the left, Cassidy had just managed to wrap her teeth around his jaw, when the scream tore across the night.

She wasn't even sure if it had been as loud as it sounded, carried to her on a lucky wind, and yet it could have happened next to her for the clarity of pain in that call. "Leah." She ground out from between her clenched teeth.

Acting more on instinct than intention, she leapt past Caine and scrambled over barriers, benches and even the fire pit, until she ended up in the clearing in the middle of her packs territory.

Around her, their homes burned brightly in the night's shadows. The sounds of their forest were drowned out by the screams of her pack, but she only had eyes for one wolf in that moment.

She recognised him from before - before the packs had split. He walked with a limp and had lost half an eye last time they fought. As Caine's beta, Jackson was a wolf not to be trifled with, unless, like Cassidy, you were much stronger than he was.

Unfortunately though, it was not Cassidy's throat that he held in his clawing grip - it was her best friend, one of her first friends during the early days under the wicked Alpha Harrison.

Anger pitted itself in her stomach as she glared at the wolf that held her friend. Tenseness rolled off of her and lashed at her wolf's control. The anger rose through her body, sparking out across her like lightning in a dark sky. Every nerve ending hummed with her anger, with her pain.

Her pack was in disarray, Caine had come prepared. He had more wolves than when he'd last tried this. This time he wasn't so relenting.

He sauntered towards her, acting as though moments ago she hadn't had her teeth clasped around his neck, ready to kill.

A cocky grin owned his face as he raked his eyes up and down her. Stood here in the night's wind she hadn't noticed that she was only in little sleeping shorts and a camisole. But he had.

"Cass." He purred, causing bile to collect in her throat. "It doesn't have to be this way."

"Let her go." She didn't address Caine, instead, her attention remained on the wolf that held Leah.

"Cass. Come on. All you need do is submit to me and-"

"I said. Let her go." Her voice like ice, sliced through the night. Hesitation flickered through Jackon's stance as she sent alpha waves at him. She saw him stumble but to regain his footing he used Leah, slicing her skin as he did so.

As the smell of blood hit her, her wolf lunged to the surface and Cassidy, caught off guard, couldn't contain her. Her wolf lunged for control and seized it, transforming mid-leap.

Hitting the man who held Leah square in the chest, Cassidy sent him tumbling backwards as she snarled and bit at his soft flesh.

Through her pack link, Cassidy tried to tell Leah to run, but she wasn't sure she'd heard her.

Lost in an ocean of wolves, Cassidy fought and fought for as long as she could, until suddenly she felt a sharp shot in her hind leg. Whirling around she saw Caine, in human form, with two of his wolves. They each held guns of some kind and began picking off Cassidy's wolves one by one.

The world began to quake beneath her feet and she slipped to the side, realising too late that they'd drugged her. Her last conscious thought was that she about to die.