Desert Heat (Complete)

{Jedediah’s P.O.V.}

His response hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The one document Dorian said was an absolute law that packs had to maintain, and Zach burned the one for Red Mountain? I guess it was naive of me to think that finding out the truth would be so simple.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY’RE BURNT TO ASHES!?” Dorian roared.

“Do I need to spell it out for you, pup?” Zachary retorted, enunciating the last word. This was the first time he had ever called Dorian a pup. In fact, it was the first time he had been disrespectful to another Alpha.

“What did you call me!?”

“Oh, come off it. You think that just because you run a pack larger than mine, you’re better than me? Get off your high horse, Dorian Shaw, I’m not afraid of you!” Dorian took that as a challenge and was about to give Scanlan a piece of his mind when I stepped in. Dorian growled at me, but I looked at him and shook my head. It was the first and only time I’ve used my rank against him. Dorian was shocked to see what I had just done.

“What the f**k?” he mustered out.

“I’ll explain later. Let me handle this, please.” Dorian looked at me, carefully considering my reaction. His eyes darted to Scanlan, then back to me before he nodded his head and backed off. He went to stand with Brandon and Andre in front of the door. I took a deep breath and turned to face Scanlan, who was also visibly shocked that I managed to get Dorian to back away.

“What? Surprised that my Alpha listened to me?” I confronted him. He looked me up and down and didn’t say anything. “Why did you burn the records?” I asked him with finality in my tone. “And I want the truth.”

“The truth? You want the truth!? Fine, you arrogant piece of s**t, I’ll give you the f*****g truth since it seems that you already know all of the answers!” he shouted at me and flailed his arms. I looked down at Vivienne, and she met my gaze at the same time.

“Who are you, and what the f**k did you do with Zachary Scanlan!?”

“What? Surprised to see that I’m not the respectable and introverted Alpha that everyone was manipulated into believing!?” he mocked, his tone full of sarcasm. I took a step back and looked him over. I was so confused. “Goddess, it feels good to just be me for once! I’ll tell you the truth, Jedediah Brinkley,” he spoke my name with such provocation. “I burned the records because I wanted to restart it!”

“What do you mean by restart it!?” Dorian fumed from the door. “You can’t restart the records!”

“Oh, but that’s what I did. I restarted the records by making sure that Scanlan was the first Alpha on record. And that Scanlan was my great, great, great, grandfather!”

“You falsified the records!?” I uttered out in disbelief.

“So what if I did!? What are you going to do about it!?” He sounded like an immature child.

“Why would you do that?” I pressed him.

“I don’t know why you’re asking me all these damn questions, Jedediah, you already know the answers! Isn’t that why you came here!? To confront me for taking the Alpha throne from the rightful Alpha!” he bellowed at me. I was completely shell-shocked to hear him admit it in his own words. Vivienne grabbed onto my arm with just as much surprise. I couldn’t help but turn to look at Dorian whose arms had fallen to his side, and he looked completely appalled at the revelation.

“Wow, you’re a f*****g i***t,” Brandon directly insulted Scanlan.

“What did you just call me!?”

“An i***t. You know, stupid, dumb, dull, dimwitted, dense, unintelligent, empty-headed—”

“Do you have a death wish, you sorry excuse of a Beta!?” Scanlan threatened.

“You asked a question, and I answered you. I highly doubt that calls for a death threat,” Brandon taunted him even more. Scanlan was huffing with rage at being taunted while the rest of us were trying not to laugh, even Dorian. Brandon really knew how to press buttons when he wanted to. “Stop huffing and puffing like the big, bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. You’re not strong enough to blow this house down,” Brandon ridiculed him even further by flexing his biceps and kissing them. Scanlan looked like smoke was coming out of his ears, and he was going to blow his lid. He was about to open his mouth to say something, but Brandon beat him to the punch. “Anyway, like I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” Brandon cut him off, causing Vivienne to giggle into my chest while Dorian turned his head to hide his smile. “I called you an i***t because, well, you are one. You see, we came here just to ask a few questions and, hopefully, get a few honest answers along the way. But you’re just so f*****g full of yourself that you thought we had all the answers, and we just wanted to f**k with your head. Which we kind of did because you just told us what we actually needed to know,” Brandon explained and gave a cheesy smile that made all of us just burst out laughing.

B-rod, you’re a f*****g d**k. I said to him in a mind-link. He smiled even bigger at me and nodded his head as if he were proud of it. Which he probably was.

I turned my attention back to Scanlan who looked like he had just been smacked across the face with a book for dummies as he opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water.

“How?” I asked. He stared at me in a daze.

“How what?” he finally responded.

“How did you take the Alpha title from the rightful Alpha? There’s no way you could have beaten him! Not when you’re just a mid-level Alpha!”

“I didn’t need to challenge him. Not when I had leverage,” he replied with a dickwad smirk.

“What leverage?” I demanded, but he didn’t respond. He only smirked again.

“His son,” Dorian said.

“What son?” Scanlan disputed. We all looked at him confused. “Ricard didn’t have a son. He didn’t have any children.” I looked at Dorian and the others, and they were just as lost as I was.

“What did you leverage then?” I asked him.

“His mate, of course.” I could feel Gunner’s hackles stand straight up.

“Because an Alpha’s biggest weakness is his Luna,” Dorian stated.

“Exactly,” Scanlan said while clicking his teeth and winking at Dorian.

“Did you say that his surname was Ricard?” Andre clarified.

“I did, what’s it to you?” Scanlan sneered as he sat in his chair at his desk and propped his feet up like he didn’t just admit to breaking multiple laws.

“Vivienne!” Andre exclaimed.

“Oui, I know!” Vivienne gasped and looked up at me. Her eyes were filled with nothing but admiration and hearts. She straight up had heart eyes. “Mon Coeur, why are you looking at me like you want to jump my bones right now?”

“Jed.” I turned to face Andre who had the biggest smile on his face.

“Dude, why do you look like you want to jump bones too!?” I shouted at him.

“Ricard is a French surname, which means powerful and/or strong,” he explained.

“Okay?” I said, looking between the two of them and then to Dorian and Brandon, who just shrugged.

“Mon Loup, Ricard was the surname of the most powerful werewolf in France during the French Revolution. Legend has it that he had twelve sons, each one named after the disciples of Christ and in the same order that they were found,” Vivienne added.

“What does a stupid French legend have to do with anything?” Scanlan mocked. I looked back at Vivienne, and she was all smiles.

“J.D., according to the legend, the Ricard bloodline is supposed to be one of the purest in werewolf history. It does not matter who a Ricard is mated to because their mark would give their mate the power to shift, regardless if they were turned or not,” she concluded. I furrowed my brows at her, and she smiled even bigger.

“Wait, why are you guys telling me this?” I objected. Vivienne c****d her head at me and gave me a look like I was the i***t in the room. That’s when I realized what she was insinuating. “You don’t actually think—”

“Only one way to find out,” Andre insisted as he patted my shoulder and stepped back. “Vivienne, do it.”

“Do what?!” I looked at him and then back at Vivienne. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Wait, what are you doing!?” I protested. “Won’t that hurt—”

“No, it won’t,” Dorian insisted. “It’s still early enough. This might be the one and only time she can do it, but she needs to try.”

“What the f**k is going on!?” Scanlan yelled at us, slamming his fists onto the desk. Before I could even entertain him, I heard the cracking of bones. I snapped my head towards Vivienne, and sure enough, she was starting to shift. “Why is she shifting in my office!?”

“To prove a theory!” Dorian shouted at him. Even though it was her first time and she was currently pregnant, she was handling the pain quite well and shifting remarkably fast. Before we knew it, Vivienne had fully shifted into Tempest.

“Whoa,” Brandon gawked.

“Holy f**k,” Dorian ululated.

“C’est Magnifique!” Andre cried out with pure excitement.

“What in the world?” Scanlan muttered, standing to his feet. Tempest walked up to me and licked my hand.

Hello, mate.

Tempest?

Yes, it is I.

Wow, you’re beautiful!

Thank you, Mon Loup. May I call you that?

Of course! You’re my mate as much as Vivienne is. You’re actually in wolf form!

Yes, and it is all thanks to you and your mark.

Hold on, are you telling me that …

Oui, mon amour, you are a Ricard. That is why you are a Supreme Alpha.

I couldn’t stop the smile that took over my face, seeing Tempest for the first time. I just scoffed in complete shock and surprise.

“Dude and I thought our wives had crazy fur colors,” Brandon declared.

“I have never heard of a mint green wolf,” Dorian replied. “Allie is going to f*****g kill me when she finds out about this and didn’t get to witness it herself.”

“Oh yeah, Gizmo’s favorite color is mint green.”

“So is Monique’s,” Andre grumbled.

“What the f**k is all of this about!? Why the f**k did your mate shift in my office!?” Scanlan shouted. I had totally forgotten about him.

“As I said, she was proving a theory. And now that it’s been proven, you have a lot of explaining to do, Scanlan!” Dorian growled at him.

“I will not tolerate being disrespected in my pack!”

“It’s not really your pack though, is it? I mean, you admitted to using the rightful Alpha’s mate as leverage,” Brandon chimed in. “What did you do with her?”

“Kidnapped her, obviously. I made sure to knock her around a few times to prove to Ricard that I wasn’t kidding around when I told him that I would rip her heart out from her chest if he didn’t give up his title to me,” Scanlan answered with zero remorse.

“You physically hit a woman!?” Dorian snarled.

“Please, I’d hardly call her a woman. A w***e is more like it.” I couldn’t stop the snarl that came out of my mouth. “Oh, spare me the theatrics, the two of you are acting like women are actually worth the trouble.” I was so disgusted by him.

“You have a daughter!” I shouted.

“And she’s the biggest pain in my a*s! She’s spoiled f*****g rotten and is a w***e just like her mother was!”

“Her mother was your mate! And the Luna of this pack, regardless of how she f*****g ended up as Luna. Have a little f*****g respect for the dead!” I hollered.

“Respect for a woman? Why? The only thing they’re good for is reproduction, and my mate couldn’t even get that right. I told her we’d have one pup, and that she had to give birth to a son. But instead, she gave me a f*****g daughter, and she turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. The fact that I have to constantly coddle her and pretend that I actually love her makes me sick! Why she had to be a spoiled b***h and reject you, I’ll never know! But then you had to go and get a second chance, leaving her here with me! Then she was dumb enough to follow you to Desert Moon and pissed off the Luna there, ruining any chance I had of getting Shaw here to sign a treaty with me!”

“Are you serious right now?” Dorian spat. “You thought that just because Jed came to my pack, it would automatically give you an in to become my ally?!”

“Of course, any self-respecting Alpha wants to be allied with one of the richest packs on this side of the country.”

“Self-respect? I really hope you’re not talking about yourself?” Brandon retorted. “You beat women and think that they’re only good for giving birth. You kidnapped another man’s mate, physically harmed her, and threatened her life to steal his Alpha title. There is not a single milligram of self-respect in you. You’re the most despicable Alpha I’ve ever f*****g seen.” Scanlan declined to respond. He just scoffed and turned his head. There was still one nagging question that I had.

“When did you take the title?”

“When?”

“Yeah. When?”

“Mmmm … I would say about four months before she came home with you,” he replied.

“What? What do you mean by came home with me!?” I gaped.

“Hm, I guess you don’t know that story either. Oh well, I might as well tell you since it doesn’t really f*****g matter anyway. After I became Alpha, I met my mate, Michaela’s mother. She went out into the mountains for her daily walk in nature. I didn’t care what she did as long as she didn’t bother me. I was too busy trying to make this pack mine. She came back later than usual, but when she came into our room, she had a f*****g baby in her arms. I, of course, asked her where she got it, and she said that she found it by a tree right outside of the border. Someone had abandoned it. And her being the disgusting kindhearted wolf she was, she wanted to adopt it, but I said no. I didn’t want a filthy rogue in my house, so I bummed it off to the Brinkley’s who were having trouble conceiving.”

“What?”

“That’s right, Jedediah. You were that abandoned baby. You were the rogue that my stupid mate brought in off the streets and into my pack. I got rid of you without having to kill you, but then the Brinkley’s had to go and die during a rogue attack which gave my mate the opening to bring you back into the packhouse. I wanted to get rid of you since you were a few years short of turning 18 anyway, but she convinced me to turn you into a warrior for the pack, so that’s what I did. You’re welcome.” I scoffed at what an utter a*****e he really is. I didn’t know how to respond to any of this. I just wanted to take Vivienne and leave because I didn’t want to challenge Scanlan for the pack, even if I was the rightful Alpha to it.

“You said that your mate found him a few months after you had taken over?” Dorian asked.

“Are you deaf or dense!? Stop making me repeat myself!” Scanlan grumbled like a senile, old man.

“I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Alpha Ricard,” Dorian asserted while raising eyebrows with curiosity.

“How the f**k am I supposed to know what happened to that mongrel?”

“Well, you took his title from him and beat his mate. I was under the impression you had them killed.”

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t order his death. He promised to rescind his title to me and leave Red Mountain if I promised to release his mate alive. I couldn’t promise that she would be unharmed because, well, she was anything but unharmed. But I agreed to let her live, and he left with her that same night. We stood in front of the pack, and he handed his title over to me, in an Alpha hand-down.”

“Wait, a hand-down?!” Brandon exclaimed. “Not a hand-over?!”

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. Brandon looked at Dorian, and he nodded.

“Hand-downs and hand-overs are very different, Jed,” Brandon explained to me. “Hand-overs are what happens when an Alpha has no choice but to give his title to a challenge winner or like in most cases, when an Alpha gives it to his successor, like his son. A ‘hand-down’ happens when a lower-ranked wolf is given the Alpha title because the current Alpha can’t or won’t execute his duties.”

“I do not understand,” Vivienne replied, taking the words right out of my mouth.

“Are you going to tell them or should I!?” Brandon shouted at Scanlan. I had never seen Brandon so irritated or angry before. Scanlan scowled at Brandon and turned his cheek like a little schoolgirl. “Fine.” Brandon turned to me and Vivienne. “Scanlan was Ricard’s Beta.”