"All warriors and those able to fight will stay, everyone else please gather inside the pack house," Delta Osvald's voice reverberated through all of our minds. The stability in his voice was extremely reassuring.

"Rayne, go with the others," I heard Valente's voice.

"I won't leave," I told him sternly.

"Rayne, I need you to leave now," he said. "This isn't safe for you."

"And it is for you? For Gramma?" I asked, looking at Gramma who had also shifted and taken an offensive stance beside me. She was older than almost all the pack members of Fathilagt, but she still was a warrior at heart.

"Rayne please listen-"

Valente's voice in my mind was cut off as the howling wolves came into view, along with unshifted foreign warriors of the same number, all being led by one person.

Kristján.

I saw Eidis's limp form clinging onto his arm with whatever strength she had left. Clearly she couldn't stand without support.

And then I saw the most surprising sight of all.

Sylvia.

Tied up with thick wires, a tape stretched roughly on her mouth to keep her quiet, I watched as she struggled to get free but she couldn't. They have probably given her something which is why she couldn't shift. And watching this sight confused me.

Who are these other wolves?

I heard Valente growl besides me loudly, a growl of contempt, but more so, he was hurt. I could feel Valente was absolutely distraught at seeing Kristján stand in front of him as a traitor, rather than a friend.

Valente shifted back into his human form, tying his ripped tunic around his torso, and walking out to the front of our group to face him.

"Valente," I spoke to him, trying to convey my fear. There were so many factors of uncertainty, it made me anxious to no end.

"He brought Sgriosaire to us. Good thing we've been training for this day. They may have surprised us now, but we have an advantage of having home ground. We'll kill them all," Valente said to me in my mind, and by the sudden growls I heard all around me, to all the warriors who stood ready behind me as well.

"What have you done Kristján?" he asked him, surveying their numbers, and I could already tell he was strategizing.

"What have I done?" he replied, sounding incredulous. "I've done exactly what you deserved Valente. You don't deserve to be our Alpha. You can never take over Sgriosaire now, once they're done with you."

"What did I ever do to you Kristján? I thought you were my friend. I made you my Gamma," Valente said, disbelieving.

Kristján scoffed.

"Gamma?" he spit on the ground in front of him, showing the utmost level of disrespect for an Alpha. I could tell Valente's hands were shaking in anger, but he maintained composure.

"All these years I've stuck by your side, did all your bidding. Everything you asked like your loyal fucking dog. And what do you give me? Huh? Gamma! You give me fucking Gamma like I'm supposed to be happy with that?" he said, also shaking in his anger. The only difference was, Kristján was blinded by it. "You didn't even have the guts to tell me who you chose as Beta. All those trips you made to the Palace, you stopped taking me with you, stopped telling me when you left, when you'd come back! Heck you even rejected my sister before giving her a chance!"

He looked at his sister, Eidis, who was startled by his loud voice and fell to the ground covering her ears in fear.

I watched as Frida shifted quickly into her human form to walk towards her. I could tell she wanted to take Eidis away from all this, but Kristján stopped her.

"Stay away from her! You ruined my plans Frida! I'll deal with you soon enough!" Kristján said, nodding his head towards the wolves behind him, who instantly moved to stand in front of Frida, daring her to take another step forward.

"Frida take back your position," Valente called out to her, and she quietly obeyed.

Kristján looked at Eidis now cowering at his feet.

"Look what you've done to my little sister Valente. And for what?" he said, his gaze quickly finding my grey fur in a sea of blacks and browns.

He took a step in my direction, immediately stopping as Valente stood in front of me.

"All because of her," he said, whispering the last bit.

He suddenly went into a fit of laughter, turning to Sylvia, who still was struggling against her restraints.

"Your aunt and I, we had the perfect plan to get her out of the equation. We knew you couldn't take on Sgriosaire. The only way you could possibly give your people "peace", was by getting rid of her. And what do you do? You make her, out of all the other bitches in the pack, your fucking Luna!" he said.

I growled at his words, Ima felt the disrespect and wanted to kill him dead. But it was nothing as compared to Valente. Even in his human form, Sterkur's growl resounded powerfully in the area.

Kristján laughed again.

"Growl all you want. You won't be growling much longer. You see you've spoiled my plans for a while now, but that ends tonight," he said.

"Your plans?" Valente asked, his anger radiated all around us.

"Who do you think injected the Wolfsbane into her?" he said, seeming proud of himself.

All this time we'd been blaming Sylvia for giving the order, when it was Kristján who administered the dose in the first place.

"I knew Sylvia would pair her against Eidis, so I told Rayne about Sylvia's plan to mate you and my sister to get her worked up in the fight, during lunch. I expected her to show her anger enough so Sylvia could give me the green light for the poison. But what really happened was so much better!" he said, still laughing. "Rayne brought her whole fucking wolf out!"

His laughter was irritating me to no end now. All of it was his idea. And although Sylvia's intentions weren't at the right place, I'd been thinking she was the mastermind behind it all when it was actually this mere boy who I considered a friend.

"The silver during climbing training was my final option. But you don't leave her side do you Valente? I had to call you over to climb with me so Eidis could take your place," he said, pretty satisfied with the amount of pain he caused me.

"That plan was foolproof. Who knew Eidis was afraid of heights?" he said, his gaze turning to Frida with a look a complete disgust.

"I didn't know you too had a hidden soft spot for the bitch," he said looking at Frida, his anger showing.

"I've never liked her because I never thought she was one of us. I too, like everyone else thought she was the reason for the Grimmileg. But she is a part of Fathilagt either way, and I couldn't let her die knowing my Alpha had already chosen her," she said.

"She is the reason for what happened that night! And she is the reason for what's going to happen tonight," he said those words casually, as if he didn't just blame me for the deaths of civilians and a battle that's about to take place that I wasn't even aware of a few minutes ago.

"The only one to blame here is you, you filthy pig. You've betrayed your pack and blood," she said to him, her tone absolutely sinister. "I'll kill you Kristján! I can't believe I ever called you my friend."

"Well thanks to you," he said, completely unfazed, "my plan with the silver failed as well. I had no other option left. So technically, all of this is your fault," he said, almost comically. As if it was all a joke to him.

"Enough!" Valente screamed, startling even Kristján for a second. He took a moment to recover.

"Let my aunt and Eidis go," Valente said. "They don't have to be a part of this."

"Well, on the contrary. Eidis is under my protection now, she suffered following my orders. She is my responsibility now. Sylvia on the other hand," he said, looking at her with a fake smile. "When she realized that my plan was going to be this big, she wanted to rat me out to you. Her only goal was to keep Rayne away from you."

He walked up to her, bent a little to level his face with hers.

"I told her, 'think bigger Sylvia', but no! She wouldn't listen! I had no option but to tie her up and leave her in Sgriosaire for," he paused, "safekeeping." His last word sounded nothing apart from evil.

"All this time when you went looking for her," Valente said, almost in disbelief.

"Some warrior feedback buddy? The search party was absolutely gullible. Well, so are you," he said, scoffing. "They looked where I told them to, they didn't question me at all."

"They trusted you," Valente's voice was quiet. "I trusted you," he said, his voice even lower.

"You don't deserve to be Alpha. You were never going to succeed against Sgriosaire, and now they're here to back me up. You've asked your people to accept our number one enemy as Luna, and you are planning to take office without announcing a Beta. All that comes out of you, Valente, is incompetence!" he said, his anger now leaking past his facade of indifference. He looked at Valente straight in the eye before spitting out his next words.

"I challenge you Valente!

I challenge you for Alpha!"