Chapter 13

Other perspectives

AMY

Amy had known from the moment that she caught Star’s scent that he was going to be the one that she named her Alpha. She’d had to put all of the Zeta’s of her fathers former Run in their places as they’d traveled to Dragons Roost together. Any beastkin female with a nose on her would smell it from a mile away. He smelled of power. Of security. Of promise. having him as a sire for their children was almost guaranteed to result in strong healthy children. And all of that was just ignoring his personal power and strength.

Amy had never really seen pure humans as very attractive potential mates. Their looks were bland. She herself had always admired fox-kin their sharper features and generally sleek builds had always appealed to her sensibilities. Star may be a bland human, but he was large and powerful looking along with his actual capabilities. And nothing compared to his scent which had only gotten more powerful since she’d met him.

Traveling with Star from her old village and what was now her Run had been an exercise in massive self control. Amy had had to keep pushing down her instincts to mark him as her own. Especially on the occasions when he would look at her for a few moments his scent would change, his desire for her palpable in his scent, though he gave her no outward indication of his desire with either word or action. It had only made it harder for her to suppress her instincts when he did that.

When they had finally reached the city and she had declared him as her Alpha it had been one of the most scary moments of her life. To sponsor an Alpha as a Beta she was putting her honor and possibly her title on the line. The trials were designed to keep weak Alphas out of the breeding pool and the very first trial was where the majority failed. But they were also a way to determine if a Beta’s judgement was sound. As it turned out, hers was, and Star had succeeded without even trying.

When he’d finally beaten the trials handily it had been all Amy could do to keep it together until they arrived at the SilverEye estate. And when she’d finally given over control to her instincts it had been far and above what her mother had told it would be like when she finally had her own Alpha. It had been glorious. Slightly painful at first, but her instincts fuelled by Star’s scent had completely overwhelmed any discomfort.

Then Amy found herself having to deal with Pack applicants. Her mother had warned her that it was a trial to overcome the desire to keep an Alpha to herself. She didn’t want to share. Star’s attentions and proclivities made her knees weak just thinking about it and she found it very difficult to not feel intense jealousy at the thought of her packmates getting treated the same way. But she pushed through her selfishness for the good of her future Run. To top it all off, Star had introduced her to the concept of having more than one of the pack in bed at the same time. At first she had been leery about it but suppressed the feeling and went along with it because it gave her more time with him. She had discovered that though she wasn’t repulsed by other women and didn’t mind doing things with them as long as she was doing them with Star’s direction or requests, she did like to watch him dominate the others. It scratched a primal itch deep in her psyche that she had never even known was there. She especially liked to watch when he was rough and aggressive, when he had her Packmates mewling under him and trembling, his scent giving off a feeling of absolute control and domination.

Amy shook herself out of her contemplations. Star was out taking care of their enemies right now and it would do her no good to get all hot and bothered with him here to satiate the needs that that brought on. Right now she needed to get through more of the applicants who wished to join her pack. Paperwork, it seemed, had become the thing that defined her days, and apparently nights when Star was away or it was not her turn with him.

Amy sighed deeply and wished she had been able to get more sleep. But with Star out fighting she had found that sleep was difficult to come by, and had eventually given up. Deciding instead that it was better to go over the applicants to her Pack and make sure that she wouldn’t be getting anyone undesirable or who might become a detriment to the Pack later on. She no longer had any concern for Pack members trying to overthrow her. The collars that granted her the pseudo Elite status ensured that those who wore them differed to her. It meant that if any more Moths wanted to join, and she knew they would, she wouldn’t have to worry about them overthrowing her.

Moths, she knew, would probably come running from hills to be members of her pack. Their sense of smell was much more powerful than any other variant of BeastKin. Especially when it came to finding powerful mates. Most Moths preferred to keep a harem, a different version of a pack, of powerful mates that they collected over their lifetimes. Both Gamma and Zeta Moth’s were in essence their own form of Alphas and Betas. Their magic meant that they were oftentimes more influential than the Alphas and Betas. Especially in the big cities deeper in Dogs Run.

Amy looked over the stack of papers one last time and saw no reason to deny any of them. She wasn’t sure how Star would take it though. She hadn’t told him how many had actually applied. She probably never would tell him either. practically every eligible female in the city of Dragons Roost had applied. Or at least that is what it felt like. She had a stack of a hundred and fifty three applications. Tomorrow morning she would be sending out the acceptance letters then meeting them in the afternoon to go and make it official in the city center. With these her pack would be bigger than most packs. And their Run would be secure in the amount of funds and manpower available to them when it came time to start building. But it also brought with it a challenge. These Zetas were entitled to time with Star. She would have to organize groups and set up a rotation, for this to be a timely thing the numbers that Star was going to have to be with every night would have to grow. The others, and Star, were just going to have to deal with it.

* * *

STAR

Star lay there regenerating from his near death experience not really wanting to think about how freaking close he’d actually come to dying. Those Griffon Riders had powerful magical attacks and just running through the forest and taking glancing blows had nearly killed him. That last little bit of confrontation had quite literally killed him as he discovered. The Juggernauts auto injector had used up its revival syringe, meaning that he had in fact died at least once during the encounter. though everything had been happening so quickly that he didn’t remember when that could have happened.

As the pain receded entirely, Star started to laugh up at the sky. The soldiers around him didn’t seem to know what to do with him so they just left him alone. Star wasn’t laughing out of relief or anything like that. No he was laughing because he’d had so much fun with all of this. That desperate feeling of a life or death struggle. The feeling of coming out on top regardless of the odds. This is the shit he lived for. He found himself suddenly very much in the mood to throw his entire pack in bed and ravage them as he saw fit. He lay there basking in the feeling for several long moments before he finally pulled out his WarPad and looked at the notifications. He accepted the Loot All notification. Then smiled at the next one in line.

Congratulations!

You defeated a Level 75 Griffon, and his Level 80 Rider.

Level up X5

He’d reached level 8 and he did as he always did, distributing all of his stats equally. Raising his base stats to 64 across the board, with his fifteen percent bonus his stats now totaled 73 across the board. Looking good, looking really good. Star was unsure why he went with a completely even distribution, but he always liked to be entirely balanced as far as stats went. He liked it when he could out play and out do min maxers. Plus he’d noticed since arriving here that points in his Intelligence stat made him feel more alert, more responsive, and it felt like he remembered every little detail nowadays.

Standing up Star looked down at himself and immediately switched out his armor for his civilian getup. The juggernaut armor had been melted and shredded, holes and slagged pieces dangling off of the set that had saved his life. It was no big loss as he could easily purchase another set as long as he had the resources for it. Speaking of resources. he checked his inventory and looked around at all the shiny new loot he’d gained.

It was then that he noticed that there had been an update to how his looting worked. He now was the proud owner of 1254 human corpses, as well as a metric fuckton of blood, bone fragments and severed limbs, bits and bobs of organs. Apparently when he looted a corpse now, he got the whole thing as well as everything on them. Immediately Star dumped them all in the recycle function. It was far too weird to be toting around hundreds of human corpses. Maybe if he eventually became a necromancer he’d regret getting rid of them, but until that day he’d be immediately getting rid of anything biological that was looted.

Another interesting thing Star had looted was the corpse of the Griffon he’d shot with the RKKV rifle. And it was surprisingly intact. the thing should have damn near exploded being hit by one of those rounds. But apparently they were made of some magically sturdy stuff. The rider had left a fully enchanted set of plate armor. but the armor was for someone several sizes smaller than Star was, but he set it aside in its own folder regardless, thinking to give it to either Ruby or Alexandrea. Alexandrea would probably like it the best, keeping his harem happy was a good way to stay a very sexually satisfied man.

Scrolling through the entirely disorganized mess of items Star finally found the strange egg shaped stone and looked at its description.

Obfuscated Spatial Anchor/Displacement Node: This item trades its, and anything within a radius of 50 yards, with its sister Node for a massive mana cost. The displacement area is obfuscated from view in both a magical and mundane way.

Ok so Star had definitely discovered how Justin’s Kingdom was moving its men around. This probably meant that there were more of these Nodes in hidden locations around the edges of the different cities they were currently sieging. And it also meant that they were relying on these stones as a baggage train for supplies and wounded troops. Star had just cut off the enemy's retreat path.

Star was lucky that it was then that General WhiteClaw, Lupin, and several other Alphas happened to be waiting patiently for him to notice them.

Collecting himself Star explained everything that had occurred, and informed them of the Spatial Anchor Node thingy. Along with his suspicions that there were multiple of them hidden near the different cities that were under siege. He didn’t want to take the thing out of his inventory because he was pretty sure that it could be activated still and he didn’t want to suddenly find himself at whatever location the other side of the node was. So he threw the thing in the recycling function and accepted the prompt. He would be able to purchase another of them from his store. Flipping over to the store page to make sure his eyes went wide when he saw his resource counter. The amount of resources he gained from the stone was astronomical! but it appeared that all of the human bodies had counted for significantly more than he thought they should. He now had enough resources to make ten more collars or about two hundred rounds for his RKKV weapons.

With all of that sorted out with the general Lupin cleared his throat and gestured for Star to step to the side. Apparently he wanted to talk in private. Star followed him out of earshot of the others before Lupin turned to him with a concerned look on his face.

“How are you holding up after all of that?” Lupin asked in a gentle tone that threw Star off.

“I am not exactly sure what you mean. I feel damn good right now. I haven’t faced odds like those in a long time.” Star said, feeling pretty proud of himself.

“I just wanted to check. Do you realize we all thought you were dead when you flopped onto the road after sprinting through the gates? You had a hole through your belly the size my fist and you were trailing your own damned intestines for gods sakes. Half that armor of yours was shredded, and the other half was melted to your skin. I thought that I was going to have to tell Amy that her Alpha went and got himself killed.” Lupin sort of whisper yelled all of this in a tone that suddenly brought home something to Star that he knew but hadn’t really considered for real.

He had never actually faced odds like the ones he had over the course of the night. Star’s actual life had never really been on the line before, and his actions throughout that night had been reflective of his attitude towards death in WarZone. It sucked, but he’d always come back from it in the game. Here though, if he died without an auto injector of revival serum or an ally who had one to use on him in a timely fashion, he would be dead for real. Oddly enough he didn’t really feel fear from the fact that he’d almost actually died. If anything his feelings of pride and elation jumped up even higher.

Realizing that he’d kinda fallen into his own head there for a few seconds with Lupin standing there looking at him with a mixture of emotions on his face Star sighed,

“I’m sorry I made you all worry. But that kind of thing is not enough to put me down… obviously.” He gestured to himself grinning at the statement, “And we’ve gained much more than was lost through all of this. We know that Justin’s Kingdom has a method of instant transportation of their troops and supplies. We also know that the army outside our gates now has no supply train coming, which means that they will either be retreating immediately or committing to an all out attack very soon. We need to be prepared either way. And I need to go find my Pack.” Star ended the conversation by turning and heading out immediately.

He wanted to strip down his Pack right now. He wanted to try and break his bed in half with them whilst turning them inside out and leave them as moaning puddles. Star was on a high of victory right now and he wanted to keep that high going in the most carnal way.

* * *

AMY

Amy could smell Star’s own blood on him the second he walked into the family estate. She’d been worried at first, but he’d made a bee line for her with a giant grin on his face. That was when she felt the scent of his desire flood through her. It was stronger than she’d sensed from him before and was enough to practically daze her from nearly fifteen feet away.

Then Star had scooped her up in his powerful arms, carrying her princess style before she’d even gotten a single question out. He marched with her in his arms straight to their shared room and had started practically mauling her before he’d even finished closing the door. Star had never been this straightforward with or so aggressive with her before. But she wasn’t complaining one bit. In fact Amy found herself drawn up into whatever frenzy Star had worked himself up into to the point where she couldn’t have told anyone what time, day or even where she was. She hadn’t even noticed when Willow had arrived, or Ruby. But Apparently the both of them decided to join in.

Amy didn’t know how long they’d gone for. She didn’t even remember the whole thing, she’d blacked out at some point. Now she woke in a tangle of limbs finding herself snuggled into Star’s side with more than one set of arms and legs draped over her and Star from both sides. Amy frowned at that and raised her head to look around and felt ever so slightly miffed. There were perhaps a dozen women in the room, at least five of them were not approved members of the pack. In fact they were maids who worked here at the estate.

The entire room reeked of sex and Star’s seed. The unfamiliar females scents intermingled into the air. What had happened had been wild and unrestrained. Amy even spotted Alexandrea pile around Star. She’d always refused to have anything other than alone time with Star. Apparently she’d decided to jump into the deep end of group sex.

After calming herself for a few moments, Amy decided she wasn’t really as annoyed at the non pack members' participation as she’d originally been. She would bind them with Pack contracts soon enough. If anything She was actually feeling a little something like pride at the fact that she had an Alpha who could handle a Pack of such a size all at once. It was… Impressive. To say the least. She’d chosen truly well, she knew her mother would be proud.

Extricating herself from the pile of unconscious people proved to be a challenge, but one that she overcame. Finding her clothes was easy enough and she made her way to the washroom to freshen up.

She was about to head back and start waking everyone up when she ran into Uncle Lupin and smiled at the pained look on his face.

“You and your Alpha are going to leave me without any servants by the time you head out to your Run!” her Uncle exclaimed with annoyance before continuing, “But aside from that did Star tell you what all he discovered? What happened out there? What we are expecting?”

Amy found herself blushing at her Uncle's first comment but shook her head at the second. So Lupin explained everything from his perspective of what had happened yesterday evening and telling her about the state in which Star had returned. Amy didn’t know how to feel about it all. Obviously Star had survived, but it worried her that he’d take such risks. She found herself feeling a strange mixture of pride, fear, anxiety, anger and things she couldn't put a name to.

After her discussion with Uncle Lupin, Amy decided that she needed to get on with formalizing the pack contracts with all of the applicants. She hadn’t been able to do it the day before because Star had arrived and thrown everything out of whack by starting up an orgy. So she set everything in motion and started planning out her day. Star needed to go to the walls as the Army was expecting an attack any time now.

With her emotions swirling in her head, Amy set about waking Star and company, pulling the non pack members aside and setting about making sure they would be joining. Her day was about to be a very busy one.