She walked right into Ivy’s cell. The bitch was asleep. Ava pulled her up by her hair and backhanded her awake.
Ivy fell to the ground and looked up at Ava in shock. How could Ava still be alive?
“Ava, why–”
Before she could complete her sentence, Ava was pulling her up again with a wicked grip on her hair and shoved her into the wall.
“You fucking piece of shit. I should have had you executed the moment you stepped into pack property.”
“Ava, what are you talking about?”
If Ava was still alive, it meant her plan had flopped. That idiot couldn’t be trusted to do anything.
“Shut the hell up! Do you think I wouldn’t know that you planned everything? Elder Cayenne might be missing but I have a brain. The only person he could have done this for was you. You couldn’t get him so you would kill him, huh? But you overstepped this time. Adrian might have forgiven you but I would never.”
The pieces fell in place. He must have poisoned Adrian by accident instead. Idiot. Idiot. Not that it mattered. Adrian too deserved what he had gotten for the way he had treated her like garbage; the only thing that hurt her was that Ava was still alive.
Ivy laughed finally done with her facade. “You think I expected your forgiveness walking into this? The only thing I regret is not killing you as well. Both of you killed my child and ruined my life, consider this payback. Now your family will never be complete as mine will never be.”
Ava saw red.
She pulled away from Ivy. “Calvin, come in and bear witness to this.”
Calvin entered warily. “Ava?”
It was too late. Her mind was already made up.
“I, Ava Gavin hereby sentence you to death for your treasonous crimes against the Mountain Coast pack.”
Ava turned to Calvin and drew out his dagger from his side where he always strapped it and quicker than Calvin or Ivy could react, she slit Ivy’s throat spraying her blood on her hand, the dagger and her clothes.
Ivy choked trying to staunch the blood flow that was too much to be held back and she fell choking on her blood and spasming until she lay dead at Ava’s feet.
“Ava, what have you done? The council–”
“It’s Luna Ava to you, Calvin. I did what should have been done a long time ago and if the council has a problem with that, they can take it up with me.”
She found it difficult to feel any respect for the same council Elder Cayenne had been a part of before he absconded. It was about time it was dissolved.
Suddenly, she felt a disturbance in the pack link and Calvin looked at her with wide eyes.
“Hunters have been spotted outside our borders.”
Naturally, this would happen now.
*******
“You can’t just do something like that.” Elder Asher was aghast. “There are protocols to be followed. You can’t–”
“That isn’t our concern right now. We have hunters literally at our gates. We can talk about Ivy’s execution later.” Ava said, trying to restrain her anger.
Couldn’t they see that they had bigger fish to fry right now?
“Laws are laws. They must be followed.” Elder Boyd said completely ignoring her statement.
“She was the Alpha’s consort, her father a former council member. You held no trials and took the law into your hands. So no, we will not discuss the security of this pack with someone like you who doesn’t care for this pack.” Elder Asher intoned.
Ava had heard enough. Adrian was out of commission. This pack was now her responsibility and if they couldn’t see it then that was fine.
“I completely agree. We should not be having this conversation. I, Ava Gavin, Luna to this pack, the highest authority in the absence of my mate henceforth dissolve this council. There will be no more councils in the Mountain Coast pack henceforth.”
The entire table went silent with shock.
“You can’t do that.” One of them finally spoke up, shock evident in his tone.
Ava smiled harshly.
“I just did. You may all get out.”
The elders began to file out.
Elder A paused next to her as the others moved. “Good luck fighting off the hunters with no experience. If anything happens to this pack, the responsibility will be on your shoulders.”
“Better than your old ones at least.”
He shot her a glare and walked away angrily. Then it remained just her and Calvin.
“Ava, are you sure about this?”
Ava wiped a hand down her face, tired out.
“No, but it’s better than having them here telling me how to run my pack.” Her anger finally fizzled out and she looked at the situation with a lot more alarm.
The hunters were probably planning out their strategies now. Half of their fighters were probably down from all the celebrations, it was even a miracle that a sentry had managed to catch a whiff of the hunters.
“Goddess, Calvin, I literally have no idea what I am doing. Will you help me out?”
Calvin smiled. “Of course.”
“So I was thinking about a preemptive attack.”
“A preemptive attack?”
“Yes, we don’t know what they are packing but they don’t know we are aware they are there or they would have attacked already.”
Calvin nodded thoughtfully. “But we would lose our home advantage. We know our pack lands terrain well.”
“Our home isn’t very advantageous at the moment. We have women, children and the elderly. If they manage to breach the border, it will be a massacre like before and to make matters worse because of the bonfire earlier, our fighting force won’t be at full capacity.”
“That’s true.” Calvin looked at her with surprise. “For someone who doesn’t know much, you are really good at strategizing.”
Ava smiled. “I am the daughter of a Beta. What do you expect?”
“Touche. Oh great strategist, what other plans do you have?”
Ava almost laughed but the situation was too dire.
“I’m not quite sure, we need a small, compact but very efficient team but I don’t know what sort of attack we can launch…”
“I do.” Calvin said and together they began to iron out the plans.
She didn’t know what was going to happen but she would be damned if she let anything happen to their pack on her watch.
The ambush was quiet, this was their land after all. They knew every nook and cranny of it and more than that they were preternaturally quick and quiet. The hunters on the other hand were loud and clumsy in comparison. They must have thought they would take their pack the way they had taken the others.
They were wrong.
As the hunters sat around their campfire, discussing their strategy for the upcoming attack, they surrounded them.
“We enter from the north and–”
Calvin gave the signal and they attacked.
The hunters quickly reached for their weapons, but they were too slow and the werewolves were too fast. They pounced on the hunters, their razor-sharp claws tearing through flesh and bone.
The hunters fought back with guns and knives, but they were no match for the werewolves’ supernatural strength and agility.
The air was filled with the sound of snarling and screaming as the werewolves tore apart their prey. The hunters tried to retreat, but the werewolves were relentless, chasing them down and finishing them off one by one.
Calvin made sure to save one as Ava had instructed. Though what she wanted to do with one of them he couldn’t fathom.