My Alphas: The Complete Series by Emily Cantore Page A

the clouds. He was heading to what he privately thought of as Rey’s bluff. He’d known Rey would return there after dealing with the attacking werewolves so they could speak, far away from the pack who would be watching and listening.
    Unspoken between them was also that it was far away from Cass and her maddening scent.
    Rey was sitting on a boulder in human form, looking out over the valley, his feet pressed flat against it. Edon felt relief when he saw this - at least it wouldn’t be another one of the one-sided conversations he’d had with him a hundred times before. Edon shifted, feeling the chill of the wind touch his skin and moved around another boulder which blocked the cold flow. He leaned his back against the sun-warmed stone and relaxed.
    “She was naked.”
    Edon glanced across at Rey and nearly laughed at the distraught look that crossed his face. It was as though Cass being naked was some treacherous trick he’d fallen prey to. Something deeply unfair and dishonorable.
    “So it goes using a gun and then nudity? Or is it the other way around? Which is the more dishonorable?”
    Edon couldn’t help himself. He laughed and then laughed even harder at the sour look on Rey’s face.
    “If you had gone to her room when she was naked then our positions would be reversed,” Rey said.
    Edon pulled himself together. They were talking and that was more than they’d done for many months.
    “Yes, you’re right,” he said once he wiped the grin off his face. “Bringing her to the den was a good idea but leaving the choice unresolved wasn’t.”
    They sat there in the sun listening to the cold wind blowing.
    “I went there to kill her. If she was gone we wouldn’t have to choose. We could keep going,” Rey said.
    “Why didn’t you?” Edon asked, feeling the fragile connection between them trembling. If he put too much weight on it, Rey would shut down.
    Rey gave him a look that was dead flat and serious but Edon saw the mischievous glint in his eye.
    “As I said, she was naked.”
    Another minute of comfortable silence passed. Edon wanted to talk to Rey but also didn’t want to break the temporary spell of the past. They had been friends since they first met despite their many differences and upbringing and that friendship had deepened over time into an unbreakable bond.
    Well, almost unbreakable Edon reflected.
    “Carcer is the new Turo pack Alpha. He has aligned with humans. Men were set up over the ravine. They killed those two werewolves with guns. High caliber,” Rey said finally.
    Werewolves soon learned about guns if they wanted to survive but it had been Edon who taught Rey the difference between low and high caliber. Low was a survivable wound. High was your head exploding into chunks.
    “Shall we split the pack?” Edon answered.
    They had considered and rejected the idea in the past and now with the attack it was more than clear they were stronger together than they were separately. The unspoken bond they shared that made them such successful warriors was telling them breaking apart now would ensure almost certain death.
    “Carcer is insane. He needs to be put down. He is surely behind the dead humans,” Rey said.
    “Eos and Trammel shared a mate,” Edon replied.
    “And look how that turned out.”
    “It worked while it worked.”
    “Will you talk to the human?”
    “If you think it may work,” Edon said, feeling himself walking on a cliff edge.
    Rey didn’t answer and eventually Edon shifted, walking around the boulder, to head back to the den.
    “Edon,” Rey called out.
    Edon turned, looking at his friend sitting on the rock, cold air ruffling his hair.
    “Watch out if she’s naked,” he said, deadpan, and then looked away across the valley.
    *
    Once she decided to leave, Cass got out of the warm spring and dried herself off with the ripped towel. Her clothes from yesterday had dried in the hot sun and although they still smelled slightly of mud, she slipped them on.
    Nia