Delicate

Epilogue 1

It was probably why so many people were staring at him.

With his pretty face and toned body, my man was fucking gorgeous. But it wasn't just Will's beauty that had people ogling him, he was the only human in the arena right now and he was my mate, after all these years, they were curious.

But Will didn't cower under their planted gazes, he barely seemed to notice them at all.

After all, Will could take care of himself if he needed to, I'd ensured that. Plus, he had the strongest warriors of the pack at his back, and they'd all listen to their luna without a second thought.

He knew he was fine.

"You've got this in the bag," he says as he leans on his muscled forearms, "this fight is yours to win."

"That goes without saying," I reply and he snorts.

Glancing at Mekhi, I jerk my head in question, "What're things looking like?"

"I'd say roughly eighty per cent are betting on him," he grunts as he settles his brown eyes on me while his everpresent gum bounces between his teeth, "they're doubting you."

"Fucking idiots," Amelia mumbles beside him and I chuckle.

"Can't blame them," I say with a shrug but by her scowl, I could tell she didn't agree.

I couldn't really blame people for doubting me when it had been more than three years since anyone outside of my pack had seen me fight. 

Three years wasn't much time in the supernatural world, but it was enough for people to wonder if I was still the bloodthirsty wolf that would happily disembowel any opponent I faced.

Add to that the fact that our pack had fallen in rank over the years, it only made sense that they had their doubts. 

A lot of things had changed over the years, and even more since I became alpha of my pack.

In the two years it had taken for me to earn my place as alpha, we'd fallen from the number one pack in the world to the third, and then to the eighth while Will and I started implementing changes throughout the pack.

When we got control, we started fixing all the broken parts to our pack first and we took our time doing it.

Our pack was great, but there were many serpents and even more holes in it that needed to be filed. So we'd spent our first year in charge changing lots of rules and throwing out outdated laws and practices that were only really hanging on by a thread.

So while the rest of the world worried about what they looked like on the outside, we focused on burning out all the things that were festering on the inside of our pack.

As a result, I never answered the challenges that came. I didn't have the time for it, and it wasn't a priority for me. 

My only priority was taking care of my pack.

Some packs got pissy about that and tried to bring the fight to us. They thought they could take over what remained of the pack that people sometimes called 'the Fallen' now.

Those packs rarely ever returned home and their alphas never saw the light of day again, but that kind of thing didn't count officially, so we still dropped in the ranks.

Honestly, I didn't care as much as I thought I would or probably should've, rank just didn't seem as important as getting the pack where it needed to be was.

It just wasn't, and though it had taken some time, a lot of time, it had all been worth it.

Our pack had no holes now.
There were no cracks born of mistrust or feeble foundations of doubt, we were solid all around.