Rise of the Female Alpha Read Free Page B

better shot at landing one of the top males. When facing an outside threat like the Silverlake tribe or the vampires, the pack would act as one unit and defend each other until death overtook them, but within the pack it was a different story altogether.
    Although Sienna stayed at the edges of the pack politics and social circles, she did have a few friends among her fellow wolves. The truth of it was that she was their only herbalist and healer, and that sooner or later most of the wolves in her pack would need to visit her for one reason or another. She made a point of being kind and patient with these people despite the lack of respect some of them showed her, and it had gained her some respect with a few of the other females in the pack.
    Sienna sat with two of these women, chatting idly about the coming winter and supplies they hoped would come in from the next run to the city. Her two friends had both mated and given birth to young pups, and although visiting with them gave her slight pangs of jealousy, she still enjoyed the chance to chat and relax while holding one of the babies. The little ones were always so innocent and unaware of the nonsense that they’d have to deal with as they grew older, and it made Sienna feel that staying with her pack was worthwhile. It was one of the few things that kept her there, and she enjoyed these happy reminders of why she put in the hours helping those who would just as soon put her down or make fun of her.
    She’d just handed one of the babies back to his mother when she heard the noise of a hunting party coming back to the village. Sienna sighed and apologized to her friends, thinking that she might be needed to heal one of the hunters, but by the time she’d stepped down off the front porch of her friend’s cabin, she realized that the yelling she could hear coming from the center of the village was not the usual celebratory cheering that might happen after a successful hunt, but more of an angry shouting that meant something else entirely.
    When she arrived at the edge of the gathering crowd, she saw the reason for all the noise. A man was on his knees next to two of the pack’s toughest hunters. His hands were bound tightly behind his back with thick rope, and just as Sienna squeezed into a position to possibly catch a glimpse of who he might be, Kane strode out of the crowd and kicked the man in the back, sending him face first into the ground where he lay motionless.
    “What’s going on?” Sienna asked a young boy next to her.
    “ They caught one of them sneaking around the edge of our territory!” he said, his eyes wide with excitement. “I heard he almost killed Roald before they finally took him down!”
    Sienna didn’t have to ask what ‘one of them’ meant. The Blackstones and Silverlakes were the only two wolf packs in the area, and the feud between the two clans had a long and bloody history. If they’d really caught him sneaking around inside Blackstone territory, then things weren’t likely to go well for him.
    “Sienna,” said Kane, his eyes locking onto her in the crowd. “Come.”
    The two hunters picked up the Silverlake spy and dragged him off towards the edge of the village. Kane glared at the people who’d come to watch, and ordered them back to whatever they were doing.
    “I need you to heal our prisoner,” he said to Sienna when he was certain that his pack was following his orders. “We need to get some answers out of him, and I don’t want him dying before I can rip his throat out with my own hands.”
    No matter what she might have thought of the situation, Sienna knew better than to disobey her alpha in public. She hated having to play any role in the torture and interrogation of the captive, but Kane would likely beat her to within an inch of her life if she didn’t follow his orders to the letter.
     
    The pack didn’t have much use for a prison of any sorts, but there was a small cave with a heavy iron grate that served as a