War Claim (The Claim: Book 3)

Chapter 23 - Animkii

How could anyone believe in him now?

How?

Hauling his sorry-ass inside his parents' house, Animkii dragged his feet up the staircase one at a time. Each one weighted down with twenty pounds of grief.

After taking a shower, he laid down on his bed in his room. His father's fight replayed in his mind over and over again. The blows. The claws. The teeth. The blood. The guts. His stomach churned within him as he curled up into a ball.

His father shouldn't have had to go through that.

But that was the way of the Alpha. It was seen as an honor to fight to the death for one's pack.

If Animkii's brothers were still alive, his eldest brother would have taken over by now. The burden of responsibility on him. Madison might still be alive as well if his brothers were not killed sixteen years ago. There would have been no rush for Animkii to find her. No rush to bring her back to his pack and begin their training. He would have probably found her a year or two after his eighteenth birthday and all circumstances would have been different.

What difference did it make now? Madison was dead. His brothers were dead. It was only natural that a challenger would rise up within the pack when everyone knew that their future alpha was compromised by the death of his mate. Heck, his father was guilty of doing that very thing twenty years ago. Their northern neighbor had an elderly alpha and luna leading and their son, Mikwam's father, was compromised when his mate died. The pack was disintegrating from the inside. Animkii's father did what he thought was best for both packs—take over the unstable pack before devastation could leak into his own—or worse, someone else rose up from within and attacked them.

The merged packs and their territories made them a power-house for years, but now his parents couldn't manage it any longer. Now they had become the very same thing Mikwam's grandparents endured.

If Animkii didn't get his act together, another challenger would rise up. His father was granted only a month for recovery—as dictated by the Act enforced by Pack Laws: whenever there was a challenge for the Alpha title, the victor was granted up to one month of recovery as any other challenge against the winner would be unfair in his weakened and battle-wounded state.

Animkii saw his father's injuries. He overheard Dr. Waaban's summary of expected recovery—and it wasn't promising. It would take a miracle for a male his age to fully recover without any substantial long-term effects.

Animkii knew that he could get himself back into shape... but it was finding a new mate, a suitable female without a mate, that would be the challenge.

They were few and far between. Finding one with good luna qualities would be harder than finding one with whom he'd have chemistry with. Females gravitated toward males with power and he didn't want to bond with someone on such shallow premises. Moreover, she had to be a natural-born leader and not a follower, and that was rare.

He didn't want to think about finding a new mate now. It hurt to even think about it. Madison was his soulmate. She was irreplaceable. He didn't have it in his heart to let someone else in. Maybe someday, but not now. The wound was still too fresh and raw.

Until then, he had a choice.

He could continue to wallow in his own self-pity, pain, and guilt, or turn things around and make something of himself.

He didn't have much time if he intended to defend his father and claim the title that was to be handed down to him. If someone else took over the pack, the pack would lose their connection to the Moon Goddess until an Alpha from the bloodline from another pack restored it. That was a sacred gift, a blessing. He couldn't take that away from them.