Alpha Rising

Chapter Forty-Two

Alvira’s P.O.V.

“Again!” My dad’s strong voice bellowed in the hollow amphitheater of the Star Garnet training pit.

He was standing before me, massive in size and mid-shift. It was a skill that all Alphas could harness, but it took time. He had the size and the strength of his wolf, not to mention his speed. But by staying in this in-between form for a short period of time, he could maintain some more of the human qualities needed for talking an enemy down. That’s what he was trying to teach me now, how to shift partway.

I tried to breathe as I wiped the sweat off my reddened brow with my arm. “Wait let me-”

But before I could catch my breath, my father lunged at me again. His teeth were bared and he was swiping at me with half-shifted claws. 

Nikolai stood to one side of the training pit, holding Jacob up on the edge of the dividing wall so the young pup could see over at the action. Alban was there beside them, nervously fussing with his hands as he kept his gaze locked on us. I could feel his worry from here but tried to ignore it. 

Dad’s voice snapped my focus back to him as a kick whizzed by my head. “No waiting,” he said, going for another kick and missing as I ducked under his leg. “Do it!”

My knees scraped the dirt as I slid under his extended leg and rolled back up to my feet. Not even Beta Stephan had been this hard on me in the ring before. “This is f*****g insane!”

The patter of bare paws sounded on the dirt and then I lost all breath as the wind was knocked out of me. A swift blow landed in my gut and I heard my father snarl. “Language,” he growled. I tossed a look back over at my ten-year-old brother and winced. “You have to be able to trigger it under stress!”

 His speed quickly overcoming me as I tried to dart around him, but I didn’t let that keep me from trying to focus on the task at hand. He lunged for me, claws outstretched and teeth bared on his elongated muzzle. I clenched my eyes tight, bracing for contact when I felt my arms move on pure instinct. I reached out and struck him across the chest, a flex of my fingers making the bones in my hand crack like they would if I shifted. 

When I looked down, I saw the soft brown of my wolf’s fur creeping up my forearms. I could feel the twinge of pain in my ears and my face as my features began to contort and twist. I felt Amelie struggling to not take over completely. She was going back and forth with me in my mind trying to keep that balance. But we were in pain, and that pain made her want to react. 

“Good!” Dad barked, taking great heaving breaths as he crouched roughly six feet away from me. He stood back up to his full height and shook out his short-cropped dark hair. But when he saw me start shaking and keening in pain, he turned to our spectators. “Nikolai!” He shouted over to my mate. “Talk her down!”

Without further prompting, Nikolai passed Jacob off to my brother and hopped over the barrier. He came bounding over to me, clad only in his training shorts. “Vira,” Nikolai said firmly. I felt his hand on my side and winced away from him. “Try to hold onto that place in between. You have to find the right pull against your wolf.”

Feeling my face twist and burn as it blended with Amelie’s wolven features, I could hear and feel every crack of my bones louder than my first shift had been. And that had ended with me in an anxious mess for a day and a half. I was terrified of what this would do to me. “I can’t,” I nearly howled.

“You can!” Nikolai gripped my wrist tightly and started to shift himself. I looked into his eyes. He had this fierce and determined look to him that made everything look easy. He barely winced as his limbs elongated and his nose and jaw grew into a half-animalistic muzzle. 

“It hurts!” My voice cracked, though it didn’t even sound like my voice. There was a second layer to it that came from deep within my chest. 

“It’s going to,” he added, the deeper husk to his voice dropping it nearly a whole octave from his usual timbre. “But it’s going to hurt a hell of a lot worse if you can’t stand toe-to-toe with the other Alphas.”

I caught my father’s eyes as he nodded in agreement. I was going to be held to unimaginable expectations. The other Alphas wouldn’t care if I was a she-wolf. They wouldn’t hesitate to challenge me if they thought it could give them the upper hand. I had to be just as strong as them, if not stronger. Black Opal deserved that. 

The struggle strained my breathing and made my head ache. I knew that Amelie wasn’t comfortable either, but we had to do this. We had to learn and grow stronger. The pain of the halted shift stayed with me in my limbs, weighing them down with tension and thickened muscle. But I soon felt the wave of balance pool in the back of my mind, washing down my back and out into my extremities.

Shaky breaths grew steadier as the burning eventually came to a manageable level. My chest was heaving, and I shook out my hair, loose and wild down the back of my neck and over my shoulders. Pointed ears twitched as I froze in place. 

When my father and my mate looked as though they were going to advance on me, I stood tall and turned my face to the sky, loosing a howl to the cloudless afternoon sky. In the distance I could hear the return call of a small group of scouts that Nikolai had sent on patrol earlier. It honestly surprised me, but I couldn’t help but still feel that deep sense of pride. 

“I told you you could do it,” My father said, standing down and slowly shifting back to normal. He rolled his shoulders and I let Nikolai guide me in deep breathing as the tension and burning of the shift took me over once more. Before I knew it, I was back to normal and only a touch lightheaded. 

“Daddy! Daddy!” Jacob yelled as he zoomed across the pit into our father’s arms, Alban sauntering slowly behind him to keep a watchful eye. 

“Sorry,” Alban said with a laugh. “He said he had something very important to ask you.” The way my brother raised his hands, I knew that it was likely nothing major, just little kid stuff. Alban made eye contact with me, the unspoken question in his eyes met with a nod of my head. I was fine. It wouldn’t be like last time. This seemed to instantly relax him, thank the Goddess.

“Jacob,” Dad laughed, scooping the young pup up in his arms and spinning him around in a tight hug. “Did you learn a lot watching the training?”

He gave that little emphatic nod that kids did and beamed up at our dad, clinging to his neck when he was picked up. But he looked at me and then at Nikolai with this sad and worried look before asking in a soft and small voice. “Are we leaving?”

“Not until Saturday, Kiddo,” was the reply. I snuck in and blew a raspberry on my little brother’s cheek before ducking back out to lean up against my Mate’s side.

Jacob laughed and squealed, wiping the spot with his shirt and sticking his tongue out at me. When Dad answered him, though, he looked right back into our Father’s loving face. “Oh,” he said, nodding seriously like he knew that all along. But his face scrunched up again before shifting right back to excited. “Can we go swimming again?”

And there it was. Nikolai and Alban had been swimming that morning with him in the large pool on pack grounds, and Jacob just absolutely loved it. I think it was less the pool and more the horsing around with his brother and brother in law, but who was I to say anything. 

Dad hummed and started tickling Jacob’s sides. “I don’t know, that’s a question for Alpha Nikolai,” he said, gently setting Jacob back on the ground. “Why don’t you ask him.”

As my brother turned his eyes up to Nikolai, I could already tell that he would cave at any request made of him. These were the most important men in my life, all gathered in one spot, and despite the trials of the training, I truly felt at ease in that moment. 

Like nothing could possibly bring me down.