I Am The Alpha (8 page)

I went flying back through the air, across the room, sailing clean over Chloe and the bed to land against the wall, sliding down it onto the ground in a heap. That fucking sucked. That sucked hard.

“You should know better than to steal from us, William.” The voice was deep. Exceptionally so.
Darth Vader eat your robotic heart out,
kind of deep. I pushed myself up so I was sitting against the wall, using it at my back to support me while blood streamed down my face. I shook my head to clear it but all that did was set off white sparkles, flitting at the edges of my vision. I scrambled to my feet and over the bed, putting myself directly between Chloe and our visitors.

I towered over Chloe but the two men that entered the room towered over me to an even greater degree. Over six and a half feet tall each, they both wore oversized pants and boots like me. Instead of jackets though, they each wore white hooded sweatshirts with the sleeves torn off, mostly because sleeves wouldn’t have stretched far enough to encompass their massively muscled arms. They wore no shirts underneath the open zip-up hoodies, and as they stood shoulder to shoulder between me and the door leading out into the night they tossed back their hoods in unison. I always wondered if they practiced that shit in a mirror somewhere to get their timing right.

Square jaws, high cheek bones, short cut hair spiked up in the front like a couple of Jersey Shore douchebags, they had eyes so dark they could have been black. They were identical twins, monstrous of size and the cold look in their eyes told me in no uncertain terms that the blood I had already lost would be the least of my worries in a moment.

“Chloe,” I said quietly. “I’d like for you to meet my brothers, Romulus and Remus.”

“Is kidnapping something of a family business?” She snapped. She tried to be angry, she really did, but I think she’d realized that we were in the middle of something seriously dangerous and fucked up. She didn’t know that any attempts at her seeming nonchalance were totally ruined by the scent of her fear. I didn’t want her to know that though. I needed her to be brave right now.

“Not exactly,” I muttered, never once taking my focus off of the twins. “You might want to get your stuff together, put some clothes on or something while my brothers and I… talk.” I noted that she was moving behind me, pulling on clothes before I could even make the suggestion and that, for once, she’d followed along with what I’d told her to do without complaint. Yep, the girl really did have some smarts, for all I’d been calling her stupid all this time.

“Give her to us, Baby Brother,” one of the twins ground out, damned if I could ever really tell which was which. “Give her to us and we might just let you live through this. Father’s death demands blood.”

“And I will be the one to provide it, should it come to that,” I grated.

Rom grinned, at least I was guessing it was Rom. “Little Cub,” Yep, it was Rom. He was the only one that called me Cub like that. Derisive, insulting. “What chance do you really think you have? The two of us next to you? We’re stronger. We’re older and we’re more experienced. We’ve killed many that have threatened us and you? You’ve killed none by comparison. The Pack will accept one of us as Alpha over you. Can’t you see that?”

I was silent for a moment, reaching for that animal that resided inside me. Praying I still had the edge I would need to survive this.

“You might be bigger and stronger and have more experience than I do Rom,” I admitted. “But you constantly underestimate me, and you always forget, I’m faster!” My voice deepened as I spoke and the two giants before me seemed to shrink as I grew. My skin darkened, covered quickly in short hair from head to toe as my fingers and toes grew longer, each tipped with a razor sharp claw. The bones inside my body cracked and shifted sickeningly as my body changed and my jaw mutated, pushing out into a short muzzle, mouth filled with two rows, top and bottom, of wickedly sharp teeth.

As the transformation finished I stood in the center of the room, seven and a half feet tall, stooped because of the ceiling, and I knew I looked like something out of a horror film. Behind me I could hear Chloe screaming, almost hysterically. I glanced over my shoulder at her, one gleaming amber eye meeting hers.

“Run,” I rumbled and then I took my own damned advice. I ran, right at the twins with my arms held out to my sides to catch them, and hold them from Chloe. As I slammed into them I grabbed tight, digging my claws into whatever flesh I could reach and I kept going. The door and the frame around it, cracked and erupted in plaster dust and splinters. The second floor, thin metal railing of the open air breezeway on the motel did nothing to slow our progress as I carried them both out and through it, into thin air.

A single story drop doesn’t leave a person a lot of time for thought, so action took its place. I pulled with my right arm and tucked in my knees. Just as Rom was about to hit I shoved hard. The force of my kick propelled him down and Rem and I were launched back into the air. A Jeep took the impact of Romulus’ body, hood caving in and the windows shattered in a pretty spectacular explosion of glass. While that was going on, I grabbed hold of Remus with both hands and threw him toward the ground as hard as I could.

He landed, part way through his own transformation, head and shoulders first with a sickening thud that cracked the asphalt beneath him and with any luck, his skull right along with it. By the time I landed, lightly on my feet, both of them were standing and almost fully transformed as well. I’d always been able to shift faster than the both of them, but now, the advantage I had gained in size and strength vanished in the face of
their
hybrid states.

The twins were well known throughout the Pack for being two of the biggest, most powerful of us all. I was in trouble. Lightning quick they rushed me, low to the ground and all teeth and claws, bloody intent in their eyes as their toes dug deep lines in the blacktop. I leapt just as they reached me, desperate to keep out of reach. Just as I cleared their heads I felt long fingers wrap around my ankles, sharp claws dug into my leg and a hard tug sent me slamming into the ground. A pained howl ripped its way from my throat and I kicked instinctively. I caught a piece of one of them, not sure which, or what piece but whatever it was; it counted for something. The grip on my leg loosened and I managed to roll free.

I stood in the middle of the parking lot as human voices rose in the otherwise still night. Lights turned on in several of the rooms but all I dared focus on were my brothers as they circled me.

“Don’t you remember this game, William?” Rom growled as they moved. “Father used it to teach us to fight.”

“And you never were very good at it,” Remus added. I kept my head on a swivel, swinging back and forth, feet moving in a tight circle constantly to keep them in sight as they moved. They were right though. I never did very well at this game. When your life is spent in constant battle you always want your opponents to underestimate you.

Without a sound Remus rushed me from behind. The same tactic as always. A feint from one of them to draw my attention and hide the real attack. I ignored Remus, and took the glancing swipe of his claws to my shoulder as I kept my focus on Romulus. When he rushed in I grabbed his extended arm, turned and threw him over my shoulder.

He let out a startled yelp as he crashed into his brother and the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs and claws. The revving of a car engine drowned out their growling roars and Chloe, beautiful Chloe, raced up in my car, the headlights cutting through the gloom.

She slammed on the brakes in front of me and I leapt, leaving the ground, and the tangled wolves behind. I latched onto the passenger side of the car, yanking open the door and by the time I tumbled into the passenger seat, I was back to looking human. The cuts to my shoulder and puncture wounds in my leg, which had been stinging annoyances at first, became painful wounds, burning like fire and had me groaning pitifully. My shoulder roared in agony as a series of blows landed against it.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Chloe! Quit hitting me goddamn it!” I roared, doing my best to fend off her wildly flailing fist.

“Get out!” she screamed. Her eyes were wild, knuckles white on the steering wheel as she continued to hit me with her right hand. Her foot slammed on the brakes again, probably to try to force me out of my car.

“No! Don’t stop!” I ignored her still flailing arm, leaned over until I was practically lying in her lap and reached down to shove my palm into the gas pedal. The car shot forward and she screamed, both hands now on the wheel as she steered. “Don’t stop, don’t slow down, just get us the fuck out of here!”

Behind us a pair of voices rose in animalistic howls that rapidly faded away as we sped off into the night. The twins’ hunt had to begin anew.

It took a good half an hour to get Chloe to calm down. I wasn’t surprised though, she had seen something rather disturbing. Something she had never been exposed to, and I whole heartedly believed that now. She didn’t have a freaking clue about her father’s true line of work. Luckily, she had enough sense not to try to stop again after her initial attempt to get me out of the car. She had also stopped trying to hit me.

She got back on the freeway heading east, back the way we came, but there was little I could do about that at the moment, so while I waited for her to calm down and start asking questions I pulled a bottle of water out of the glove box and downed two of the same Vicodin that I had been giving her. My ankle wasn’t too bad, the four deep puncture wounds had already scabbed over. My shoulder was worse, but it was still healing nicely enough so I wasn’t overly concerned. Of course with my metabolism the two pills did little more than a couple of aspirin would for a human. Still, something was better than nothing until my body could repair itself.

“What the fuck are you?”

Chloe’s speaking surprised me and I glanced away from the road to look at her. She was a mess. The bruising on her wrists stood out sharply against her pale skin, her hair, a tangled wild mass surrounding a face that screamed she was still in shock. She was a whiter shade of pale, her eyes sunken, almost hollow despite how wide she held them. Her lips were pressed into a tight line, whether to keep from crying or screaming or both I couldn’t say, but maybe I could head some or all that off at the pass. She seemed to operate better when she was pissed off.

“I would think that was fairly obvious,” I said, laying thick the patronizing tone. “I’m a man that turns into a wolf like creature. You’re smart, I’m sure you can put two and two together.”

“That’s bullshit,” she snapped, some of that fire I first saw coming back, which was much preferable to the sad and subdued version of herself from the last day or so. “Werewolves? That’s a fucking fantasy.”

“We prefer wolf-kind, but you’re more or less correct. Werewolf does fit the bill, we just don’t like the term.”

She took a deep breath. “And those were your brothers back there?”

“Not by blood. They’re the biological sons of my adoptive father, the Alpha of our Pack. The man that made me wolf-kind in the first place.”

She laughed, a high pitched, hysterical kind of giggle for a second before she bit her tongue or the inside of her cheek, pressing her lips closed again. I could smell the coppery tang from the small, self-induced injury. Hard to miss in the close confines of the car. My stomach clenched and it reminded me how much energy I had burned in my transformation. I needed to eat, but we needed to put more distance between us and the twins right now, more than I needed to fulfill the need to refuel. Food could wait.

“Are they the ones you were talking about?”

“What’s that?”

“Back home, before we left. You said there were other people looking for me, and that they weren’t as nice as you. Are they who you were talking about?”

I nodded even though I couldn’t be sure if she could see it. Her eyes were locked onto the road, as if the highway’s centerline were a goddamn lifeline, pulling her through the darkness. “Yeah. My brothers aren’t exactly the most stable of individuals. I may threaten you, but they don’t bother with making threats, they would just break your bones or slice your tendons so you couldn’t run. They would drag you along by your hair, kicking and screaming for
real
.” Subtle? Perhaps not. But I wanted to make sure she understood
exactly
the danger I had saved her from by kidnapping her. There was a method to my madness after all, even if it hadn’t been altruistic at the start.

She didn’t say anything for a few more minutes but when she did finally speak she was in better control of herself. Some more of the fire I saw before was growing back and she was less the broken girl I’d had to deal with yesterday. For some reason, that made me feel a little better.

“Answer me this, and no more fucking bullshit William, what the fuck have you gotten me into?”

“Honestly?”

“No,” she snapped, acidly. “Lie to me, I really like that. Turns me on like you wouldn’t believe.”

I bit back a chuckle, “I haven’t gotten you into anything, Sugar. Your dad did.” She opened her mouth, probably to yell at me but I waved her off before she could get going. “I know you don’t get that, I know you don’t understand or believe me but just bear with me, this is going to take a little bit of an explanation.”

She settled back in her seat, shoulders hunched angrily and knuckles white on the steering wheel but she didn’t look like she was going to start screaming at me any time soon so I took a deep breath and launched into it.

“It’s going to sound like something out of a movie or a TV show but I promise that what I’m telling you now is the absolute truth. There are wolf-kind in the world. Werewolves, loup-garu, whatever you want to call us. There are a lot of us, actually. Far more than you would guess. I’d be willing to bet that you’ve probably met a few in your life and never even knew it. By no means do we equal the human population, but there are a handful of us in just about every human community.

“Like real wolves, we tend to group into Packs. Most Packs are small, family units. Mom, dad, kids, uncles and aunts, that kind of thing. But occasionally, you get a large Pack. Large Packs are dangerous because the more of us there are, the more damage we can do if the Pack decides to get violent.”