Agent Alpha

Prologue

Rhys slammed the door to the chevy pick up in absolute fury. The force was so great he almost took the creaky old door right off it's hinges.

"What crawled up his ass?" Micah asked Jameson to his left. Both were about as low of Omegas as was physically possible.

"I over heard Isa mention to one of the girls that there was a Council Meeting," he whispered back in a conspiratorial tone. "Must notta gone too good."

Micah's instant confusion morphed into concern. If Rhys was upset about the Council, then it was probably more serious than Micah had originally considered.

For his part, Rhys was far too absorbed in his own fury to give any attention to who or what might be in his way. Every door in his path was thrown shut with remarkable force in his wake. The only one who stood a chance of stopping this tirade was Isa but she wasn't so stupid as to approach the enraged barbarian of a male at this moment. Instead, the elderly woman waited with a sage-like patience for all the commotion to come to a deathly silence before she approached Rhys's quarters with a gentle rap at the door.

There was no answer.

Had she been anyone else, Isa would have taken that silence as answer enough. Instead, the woman gently pushed open the door to observe the man seated on the edge of his bed with his head buried hopelessly in his hands.

"There will be questions," she told him patiently. She knew better than to waste sweet lies on a man like Rhys.

"And how shall I answer them?" He answered more rhetorically than anything else. Rhys let out a defeated sigh and turned his cobalt blue eyes up to the old woman. "It was worse than you thought," he admitted. "The other packs are practically frothing at the mouth for it."

"Did you do as I asked?" She replied in the sing song tone that only age can afford. "We are small and insignificant in their eyes. Surely a delay for us is no threat to them."

"I did as you asked," he replied, albeit a bit more bitterly than he had wanted to convey. "But I'm pretty sure they all took it as a sign of weakness. I'm going to have the Wylders' hunting packs testing our territory by the end of the week." He looked up at her again, this time with frustration in his eyes. "And I don't think they even gave a damn about the time frames to begin with. Just stirred up a whole lotta trouble for nothing," he added, the bitterness back again.

If Isa was intimidated or guilt stricken, she certainly didn't show it. "It is done," she replied simply. "The pack needs to be informed."

Rhys sunk a little at this. There was just so much pressure. Everything was always on the verge of falling apart and he was always the bearer of bad news. He was pretty certain he knew how the pack would take the news he was about to deliver, too. The omega males would be tickled pink and everyone else would want his head on a stick. But what could he do about it? The decree didn't even come from the New World; It was straight from Bavaria itself.

With a heavy sigh, any lingering emotion was washed off of his face and Rhys rose, pushing past Isa without another word. To an outsider, he looked like a line backer on his way to war. He always wore that face and demeanor. In fact, his stature was the only thing that kept the neighboring packs in check. No one wanted to mess with a 6'4 270 lb alpha regardless of their numbers. Wearing the pissed off face all the time only added to the image.

As to be expected, the hallways of the complex were already partially cleared from Rhys's rather dramatic entrance. Bewildered Omegas pushed themselves hurridly out of his way as he almost marched into the great room. The majority of the pack was already there, a hush of whispers coming to silence the moment Rhys cleared the hallway.

"You've all heard rumors, I'm sure, so it's probably better we get this all cleared up now," he announced, getting straight to business. "Many of you are suffering from the loss of your mate. Others have pointed out that we aren't producing enough female pups. Last year, of the twelve pups we sired, none were female."

There was a hush over the pack that spoke volumes. Everyone already knew this information as well as what was to come next.

"There's a disease. Near as they figure, any females who haven't already died from it probably won't, but... they said it's genetic. Alotta women won't be able to have pups and those who can?" He let his voice trail off as he maintained his stoic and distant demeanor. Inside, Rhys was howling for mercy. He swallowed hard as his eyes scanned his now captive audience. There was relief to be had in a lot of the younger women who undoubtedly wondered if the disease would strike them next, but there was also tremendous pain. Among the younger males, there was mostly just panic.

Rhys anticipated every one of these responses, but that anticipation did not make stomaching it any easier.

"The council's made a ruling," he announced, perhaps a little more harshly than he had intended to. "Females can take as many mates as they want; as many as it takes to produce a female pup. Council also wants us to..." Rhys swallowed again. This was the part he was actually dreading. "We are encouraged to mate with human stock," he finished in a gravelly tone.

The response was exactly what he had predicted. The Omegas had found nirvana. Everyone else was outraged. Rhys silently begged one of the omegas to make some sort of insensitive "Yesssssss" comments so he would have a legitimate excuse to rip someone in half, but no such comment came. In a way, it brought him a little pride to have his satisfaction delayed.

"The Forester pack isn't real rich," he started, coaxing his tone to sound inspirational. The truth was, he must have rehearsed this speech a dozen times. Isa had seen this decision looming in the future for years. "We don't have the best domain, we don't have the best resources, hell, our den is an abandoned coal mine. We've tasted desperate worse than most packs, I'd guess. And you know what? We keep our heads high even through the worst of it." He paused then to allow the compliment to take effect. He got about half of them, and none of them female. It was a start, but it wasn't as good as he was hoping for. "This isn't gonna be any different. We aren't gonna do this like a bunch of horny pups, got it? I know a lotta ya don't like where this is going. Well neither do I. But an order from the Council is as good as law. Now, Isa and I have been working this for a while and on her request, I bought us some leniances. You all listen up because anyone who breaks my wishes on this is gonna find themselves in a world of hurt," he essentially barked. He had a good portion of the women behind him now, but still not enough of the more dominant pack members to help keep order.

"No one, and I mean no one, is gonna go out and just grab himself a woman like she's some deli special. This is our pack. All of us. Even the ones not here yet, and you will do well to remember it. I know a lotta you boys are desperate and excited all rolled into one, but you're gonna have about the next two or three hundred years to spend with your mate and treating her like some piece of meat or worse, a breeder, well, that ain't no way to treat your mate and it sure ain't the place I want my own pups grow'n up in." He had to stop to quell his own resentment before continuing. It was a fat chance he'd ever have a little family of his own and he knew it. There were so few women left; their species was on the verge of extinction. He could have had any female he wanted and she'd have gladly submitted to him, but, that was just it. Not only did Rhys think it looked bad for an Alpha to be pulling females away from the omegas, but he was also not even remotely interested in an omega female for his mate.

In truth, a lot of the mating practices of the omegas disgusted him. The males were overly forceful and coercive in choosing their mates and the females just rolled over and took it. It was as if the men were choosing the most defenseless and helpless females they could find just to stoke their egos, and the women were intentionally weakening themselves just to be more attractive to them. Anytime Rhys tried to make sense of it, he usually just got irritated more. Everything was constantly trying to bring Rhys and his pack down. A female who couldn't hold her own would just be yet another liability for him, and one which he had almost no patience for.

And so, at one hundred and six years old, Rhys was still without a mate. In his mind, he would end up being a bachelor for the rest of his life, and, given the Wylder Pack's obvious intentions, that wouldn't be that much longer anyway.

"What I bought us was time," he continued in his best General Rhys voice. "And I expect you all to use that purchase to do this right. We ain't barbarians; there will no human female turned without her explicit consent and if I find out some idiot took her by force? I'll have his testicles on a platter." Rhys got a little too rough with that one, but, he was picturing some mousy little human girl with rape or domination fantasies giving it up to one of the wide eyed Omega's before him and his stomach was churning at the thought.

"I'm putting Isa in charge of how to go about this. I'm gonna need extra security while this happens though. We need to look after our own and our domain, but the only thing standing between the humans in Riverton and the Wylder Pack is us. Patrols are to use extra caution for the next few years until all this excitement dies down."

"Are they going to start hunt'n us again?" Inquired a Gamma male in a concerned tone. "I mean, I'm behind ya, Sir, but... once the other packs start grabbing girls from towns... I mean... it just isn't gonna take anyone too long to figure this out and this isn't the dark ages anymore."

There was a general consensus in this concern expressed among the mid level males and again, Rhys silently swelled with pride. "That's why we've gotta be careful about this," he re-itterated. "We're going to slowly move into the town; fit in and become one of them. We're going to stake our claim to Riverton. Anyone kidnapping women from our town will have hell to pay." Rhys allowed a private and stoic smile to part his lips. "And those girls will never even know that we were up here keeping them safe. I want it to stay that way."

Isa stepped forward then. She was the only one in the tribe with the strength to challenge Rhys's will and almost certainly the only one who could actually remember the dark ages. It was then that she laid out the plan: The younger ones and children born in would get legitimate identities.

Others, like Rhys, would find a way to obtain false paperwork. Everyone, regardless of status, would be expected to get jobs, go to school, to church; whatever it took for the males to put themselves in positions where they would easily meet others.

The integral part of the plan involved the order. In a traditional pack hierarchy, competition for mating occurred at all levels and among both genders, flowing from the top down. It had been that way for centuries. Isa explained to Rhys privately, however, that these human women would not be strong enough to properly defend themselves. Even an Alpha would not have the strengths she required as a human to fight back.

This, of course, was an issue because all of the males would be interested in an alpha female, while only the omegas would be interested in their own.

The wisdom made a great deal of sense to Rhys, too, but for different reasons. If the omegas and other low members were satisfied first, there would be less likelihood for dissent among those ranks. Normally, Rhys wouldn't have cared, but there were considerably more omegas than higher level members in these days. Further, once mated, the omegas would be interested in appearing powerful to their mates. Omegas had a different concept of what that meant; not a one of them would be stupid enough to challenge Rhys or any of the Betas. Instead, that would translate into aggression, which was certainly going to be necessary with the almost certain increase in attacks he expected along their borders.

After the omegas were taken care of, they would move up the ranks in finding mates. With any luck, the omega females would produce some female off-spring, and with that came a chance that one or more were higher. Two omegas could produce an alpha just as easily as two alphas could. There was no rule to it, aside from the knowledge that the higher you moved in rank, the fewer members existed.

At times, Rhys thought about the pack like the military, though that was merely in structure alone. In reality, it was an enormous family; one which Rhys inherited when the last Alphas were killed some 75 ears prior.

The plan seemed like a solid one. With any luck, everyone would follow suit and the pack would be flourishing in no time. Rhys only hoped he could hang on long enough to glimpse the happiness to come...