Free Hungry Like a Wolf by Christine Warren Page A

gesture if she had been. Her dark eyes had begun to glint with feral flecks of gold, and he could almost see her alpha energy seeping from her pores. He doubted the other men had missed it, either, but they weren’t backing down, not just yet. That wasn’t a good sign for Honor’s desire to keep her spot at the top of the pack.
    “You know as well as we do that we got a right to defend our territory when a strange wolf come into it—”
    “You don’t know shit, William Petrey. That right belongs to the alpha, and last time I looked, you were nowhere near being the alpha of this pack.”
    Bill’s eyes narrowed, and he crossed his thick arms over his chest, mumbling, “Female ain’t all that near it, either.”
    Uh-oh. Those were fighting words.
    Under Logan’s watchful eye, Honor shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet and began to stretch. Or rather, her body began to stretch, growing a couple of inches taller, muscles beginning to thicken and layer on top of each other. It wasn’t quite a change, since her features remained human, and she didn’t seem to be sprouting any fur that he could see, but her wolf was definitely rising to the surface, and he could feel the air thicken with the almost magical wash of energy.
    Honor’s lip curled in a snarl, revealing long, white canine fangs that looked more than capable of rearranging her pack mate’s vocal chords. From the inside out. “Would you care to repeat that, William?”
    The force of an alpha’s authority began to press down on the atmosphere in the clearing, making both Bill and Dave fidget in distress. Logan could feel it like a weight in the air, but he withstood it easily, maybe because Honor wasn’t his alpha, and maybe because she just wasn’t alpha enough. Wasn’t that what he’d come here to decide?
    Bill, though, had started to look uncomfortable. His mouth tightened and his chin dipped, and he broke his gaze away from Honor’s, fixing it instead on the ground near her feet. Dave had already stepped back and dropped to one knee. Bill stood his ground, but he said nothing.
    Honor moved in a blur of aggressive intensity. One moment she stood just in front of Logan, and when his lids rose from a blink she had reached her challenger and wrapped a dainty, clawed hand around her pack mate’s throat.
    “If you have something to say to me, say it,” she snarled, pressing close until Logan was sure Bill felt the heat of her breath on his face. Thin rivulets of blood trickled down the sides of the White Paw’s throat where her claws bit into his skin. “If you question my authority to lead this pack, then challenge me. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and your muzzle out of things that don’t concern you.”
    She punctuated the question with a rough shake of the throat she continued to grip. The rest of the man’s body followed along like the hand of a metronome. He had gone limp in her grasp, finally surrendering. His head dropped to the side, his gaze fixed firmly on the ground, and he bared his throat in submission to his alpha.
    Honor accepted the victory with something less than enthusiasm in evidence. Logan could see her fingers flex in the flesh of her subordinate, could see new drops of blood well around her claws, and could hear the tenor of her rumbling growl. She sounded not satisfied but angry. Frustrated. As if she wanted to exact retribution from the Lupine who had defied her. Logan couldn’t let that happen. A cruel alpha would be just as unacceptable to the Silverbacks as a weak one. An alpha had to lead a pack with power and strength, mental as well as physical. A leader who ruled with fear could only foster instability in the pack, which was exactly what he’d come here to prevent.
    An instant before he stepped forward, Honor released her grip and sent her erstwhile challenger crumpling to the ground at her feet.
    “Get back to working fences,” she spat, clenching her fists at her sides and taking a measured step