My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

"You three elders, the wise males appointed to this pack, made a deal to hand over all of our pack's alyko forever?" The thought was inconceivable.

"Yes," Pearce swallowed back the uneasiness of having to admit such a thing in front of the pack's current Alpha. He knew how it sounded. They had made a difficult decision to sacrifice the lives of their descendants… to be handed over to this vampiric creature for Goddess knows what purpose.

The disgust was plain on Graeme's face. And increasingly as Pearce sat here speaking with him, it became more of a revelation that he wasn't just speaking with the pup he had known—the Graeme Hallowell that he had so easily made feel small and insignificant and unworthy of his place in the pack in order to prevent him from rising—he was speaking with the Alpha.

The aura of this male was the aura of the Alpha. It was truly something to be in his presence now. He hadn't appreciated it—he hadn't had a chance to.

"What if you were aborting lycans?" Graeme tilted his head accusingly. He was outraged either way. Lycans and alyko weren't separate species to be parsed. They were all precious lives gifted to pack families by the Goddess.

But wasn't that a flaw in their logic if they truly cherished the lycan lives of this pack? It was unlikely that they could be absolutely certain that a given fetus was a future alyko.

"It was necessary risk," was Pearce's response.

The truth was difficult to stomach. Graeme felt his own twisting in knots with grief for those that were already lost. He raked a hand miserably down his face. Those losses felt like his own, because they were. He was responsible for protecting these people.

"What is Zoe?" he asked, emotional exhaustion now making his voice husky.

Pearce's face twisted in distaste, but he did not answer. He seemed to be considering whether or not he should.

Rather than pushing him for an answer, Graeme let the fullness of his Alpha dominance unleash itself from within and cloak the room. He wondered what his mate would perceive with her eyes if she were here, because the affect of this force on Pearce was undeniable.

The elder's eyes grew wide even as they held Graeme's glare, but then his body was overcome with trembles at trying to resist the force bearing down on him and he submitted, looking down into his hands.

"She is like him—vampiric in nature," he finally answered. But then he stopped as if he were going to end it there.

"We know that already. What else?"

Graeme watched a muscle feather in Pearce's jaw. The elder swallowed uneasily.

"She was alyko at one point. Decades ago. Taken from another pack, but Andreas said she doesn't remember any of it. Her memory from that time is gone. She has very few memories prior to arriving here, in fact. But she was an experiment of some kind."

Graeme became very still as he processed this information. She had been alyko. An alyko juvenile, it seemed. That was the last thing he expected, and the knowledge gutted him.

Zoe was so fascinated with the alyko and with August as an experimental subject from Eliade… it all made sense. It was like Zoe held the memories of what she was tucked deep inside her unconscious and she was trying to get back to them.

"You had her working on a project to malign, take down, and destroy that which she once was," the words came out softly as if Graeme was speaking them to himself.

Pearce grimaced at the depiction. "It is not like she remembers it!" he spat.

When Graeme's eyes returned to the elder, they were the eyes of the Alpha male. They were the eyes of his wolf, narrowed and menacing—free from any warmth or desire to understand.

"It is still a part of her," the cold depth of his voice made Pearce shiver. "So this could be what has happened to our alyko, Pearce?" Graeme stalked toward the elder, crossing the small distance left between them in this cramped space.

He grabbed the elder by his neck and raised him against the stone cell wall, high enough that his feet were dangling, unable to find the ground. Pearce's eyes were bulging, and he grasped the wrist of Graeme's hand that held him, cutting off his air supply.

"There are things worse than death," Graeme snarled, tightening his hold the more the elder struggled against him. "The wise males of our pack who were meant to guide, to be guardians to all, have sentenced this pack to something worse than death. With this deal you struck for our alyko, you have inflicted a wound that continues to bleed, that will not heal. And you continue to feed it."

Without air, Pearce was bright red, the terror of being denied his breath bared to Graeme through his eyes. Graeme watched as he struggled, clawing at the arm that held him, the instinct to fight for life racking his body with desperation.

Graeme held him there, never easing his grip, until he saw the fire of resistance start to die in the elder's eyes and his struggle begin to wane. It was the very last moment before he would lose consciousness—that's when Graeme dropped him to the floor.

Pearce landed on his hands and knees, coughing and sucking in air and then crumpling against the ground, no energy left to even hold himself up.

"You will answer for all of this tomorrow," Graeme squatted over him. "In the morning, the pure fire will be lit. By nightfall, you will be in it."

Pearce's chest heave as he watched the new Alpha leave while the heavy weight of his dominance stayed, lingering in the air.

That was Pearce. Lucas arrived with Andreas shortly after.

Now both elders were locked in the dungeon, their cells at opposite ends to prevent them from conversing.

"Post guards who we trust at the entrances," Graeme told his Beta. "No one is coming or going in here tonight unless it's authorized."

"Consider it done," Sam replied.

Graeme nodded his approval.

"I'm heading up to medical to see how things are there. And then I want to get back to my mate. I'm sure you do, too," he sighed internally. He needed August.. He needed to share all of what he had learned in just these few hours, but he also just needed her close.