Defy The Alpha(s)

Chapter 824: Come For The Wolves

Just like the other day, the alphas and sub-alphas were seated in Alpha King Elijah’s meeting room.

This particular room was arranged in a conference style, with a long polished table dominating the center of the space. The table curved inward at the middle in a broad crescent before stretching back out along both sides, allowing everyone a clear view of one another.

The main alphas occupied the seats nearest to the head of the table, their spouses seated beside them on both sides, while the sub-alphas spread out farther along its length.

The only Alpha missing from his table was Alpha Caspian. None of them thought much about his wife, knowing she was better off wherever she was.

Not long after, Alpha King Elijah strolled into the room with Alpha Caspian right on his heels. The latter moved to his assigned seat just as Elijah came to a stop at the head of the table.

The room seemed to straighten around him, attention shifting to the Alpha king.

"Thank you, Alphas and sub-alphas," Elijah began.

The slight pause between both titles made the distinction clear enough, even without him saying more.

His measured gaze swept over the room.

"For honoring my invitation. It is a delight to have you here."

"Of course, I did not call this meeting out of boredom," he said, folding his hands behind his back. "I called it because of necessity. Because dark times have fallen upon us. At a time like this, we cannot afford to be divided. No time for foolish pride, old grudges, or the luxury of pretending this is someone else’s problem. We need unity now more than ever."

A few faces remained stoic while others looked less convinced. They were all familiar with Elijah’s theatrics.

The Alpha king continued, "That is why today, we will be looking into the issues that threaten our very existence."

At once, low murmurs broke out around the room. Of course, the alphas already knew what "threat" he was talking about.

The virus. The infected. And the dead that refused to stay dead.

Some of the sub-alphas— not all—clearly still held on to the belief that it was humans who were truly at risk, not wolves. That this was another human mess, one they would eventually be forced to clean up.

Elijah ignored the muttering.

"The last time we gathered, the question was raised whether werewolves could be infected by this virus or not?"

That sentence drew the room’s attention back fully and the murmurs died down.

"At the time, we did not have certainty. We only had assumptions.But now..." His gaze turned towards the side of the table where Caspian was seated.

"We have our answer." Then he lifted a hand. "And to present those findings, I invite Alpha Caspian Storm, who has carefully led the investigation, to speak."

Elijah lowered himself into the head chair while Caspian rose from his.

The Alpha of the North looked nothing like the image one would expect. Not in his dark green plaid cotton shirt, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, paired with plain charcoal trousers that fit him without trying too hard. His hair was roughly tousled, as though he had been absentmindedly dragging his fingers through it for a while now.

It was incredibly rare to see Alphas who were naturally shy. After all, Alphas carried a stereotype. They were expected to be loud, brash, commanding, and impossible to ignore.

And honestly, no one could really blame that expectation. Strength was everything in wolf hierarchy. The moment an enemy scented even the faintest trace of weakness, they would circle like sharks smelling blood.

But then again, what exactly counted as strength? Was it dominance? Throwing one’s weight around? Being the loudest in the room? Because truthfully, anyone could pretend to be strong by being overbearing, aggressive, and impossible to miss. That kind of performance was easy. But real strength was something else entirely.

And Caspian Storm was a perfect example of that.

The North pack, while appearing simple on the outside, was perhaps the most complicated of all the major packs. It ran like a powerful, efficient engine except only the brightest minds could truly keep it running.

Caspian was brilliant.

The Storm lineage had always been known for producing minds that were terrifyingly intelligent. It was almost as if the moon goddess had blessed them with it. Or perhaps, it was simply the result of generations of careful, strategic breeding.

Either way, no one could do the North pack the way Caspian did. He understood every moving part of it in a way outsiders couldn’t.

And yet, one would be a fool to mistake his quietness for softness. Because while Caspian Storm hardly felt the need to show off, he was no less lethal than the loudest Alpha in the room.

In battle, he was a different creature entirely. Cold and merciless. The men who had fallen to his signature blade were proof enough of that.

Caspian stepped forward and came to stand beside Alpha King Elijah, his presence alone enough to draw the room’s attention.

He let his gaze sweep across the gathered alphas and sub-alphas before saying, "As His Majesty Elijah stated, I was able to conduct tests on some subjects—"

"Subjects?" someone cut in sharply.

It was a sub-alpha from the South pack. He leaned back in his chair with a scoff. "You mean werewolves, right? We’re experimenting on our own people now?" His voice was full of disgust.

The wolf’s aim of stirring unrest worked. Almost immediately, murmurs spread across the room like wildfire as men exchanged uneasy glances. The tension rose.

And through it all, Elijah said nothing. He merely sat there, silent and still, watching it unfold with the patience of a king who knew exactly when to let his wolves bare their teeth.

Caspian let out a slow breath. Then his eyes landed on the offending wolf, cold and cutting.

"Yes," he said flatly. "I experimented on our own because that is the situation we find ourselves in. Or would you rather I experiment on you, Alpha Wolfe?"

He held the younger wolf’s gaze without blinking.

The sub-alpha scoffed, but under that crushing stare, he eventually looked away.

Caspian had the room now, and he knew it.

Undeterred, he continued, "The results came back, and it is a relief to announce that werewolves cannot be turned into zombies."

A visible wave of relief moved through the room.

"Unfortunately..." Caspian added.

And just like that, the room went still again.

Everyone knew something bad was coming.

"We are still susceptible to the infection."

This time, it was Ezra who spoke.

His brows furrowed. "What do you mean by that exactly, Alpha Caspian?"

Caspian said it plainly. "If a werewolf gets bitten or clawed and the wound becomes infected..." He paused. "You will die."

At once, silence crashed over the room. It was the kind of silence so complete that if a pin dropped, it would have echoed.

Caspian took advantage of it and spoke on, his next words more ominous.

"Our subjects only lasted two days."

That landed like a stone in the room.

"The infection took over their organs and weakened them rapidly. From our study, it would have taken only a few more hours for their bodies to fail completely, but we put them out of their misery."

"Of course, you did," Irene sneered.

Sure, the experiment had been done for the greater good, but the thought of their people—even if they had been North pack wolves—being reduced to test subjects was deeply unsettling.

Caspian did not let her words affect him. He slipped fully into that detached, clinical mode of his and continued as if they were discussing weather patterns rather than dying wolves.

"Before the subjects died, my team and I observed a few symptoms," he said. "Vomiting. A fever that seemed to burn them from the inside out. Feral aggression. And most concerning of all, hallucinations. They barely recognized us by the end."

The tension burst this time. One of the sub-alphas surged to his feet, his chair scraping harshly against the floor.

"And you want us to send our wolves out there so they can die too?" he snarled, fury thick in his voice.

The room stirred immediately.

A low ripple of growls followed, showing they agreed with him. And the commotion only grew louder and louder when no one stepped in to say anything useful.

"Enough!" Irene snapped, her palm slamming against the table hard enough to draw every eye in the room.

Silence did not fall immediately, but heads turned, attention falling on her.

Irene looked around the room, glaring at every single face, her temper flaring hotter by the second.

"I don’t know about the rest of you," she said sharply, "but I did not come here to sit around yapping like women."

Of course, Irene meant no insult to her gender. But that particular jab had been used for so long by men that the irony of her using it now—of a woman having to remind them how to behave—was not lost on her.

Her gaze hardened.

"This is no longer a matter of whether or not we help the humans, this is a matter of survival. For all of us."

She leaned in, her voice cutting cleaner now, and colder.

"In case it hasn’t been made painfully obvious to you yet, if we don’t help the humans, they will turn into zombies. And when they do, they won’t stop at each other. They will come for us next."

Her lip curved to the side sardonically

"So when that happens, I’d like to see what exactly the blame card does for any of you then."