The Alpha's Desire 5 (9 page)

“I’m sorry,” he grumbled, as we froze in our movement. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. What the hell is that now?”

“It’s fine. Listen,” I prompted, needing this to be some drunk guy having fallen down, or some neighbors in a domestic scuffle so we could resume our activities.

All we heard at first was everyone outside of the bathroom grow silent as a few scurried around. Voices murmured as a door slammed open. I felt my inner walls contract around him, his cock jolt in response inside of me as my body did not get the pause. A slur of curse words were the first thing we could make out in Nira’s voice.

Pushing away from each other, we scrambled to get dressed and get back out into the living room. By the time we got there, we pushed through the tight crowd to see Nira holding a box. The heavy, wooden square had a nice dent in the side corner from being launched against something. By the looks of things, the door specifically as it was open, and the nice hole in the front of it, the box had hit the front door, been thrown against it hard, by someone not merely human. Josh threw his body against the hollow plastic door, closing it, using his more stable frame to keep whatever threw the box outside.

As Nira moved the box around, checking it out, I noticed that it was not detailed in any way. With no engravings or anything by way of decoration, this was a small, rough wooden box with two rusty hinges on the back. They gave a small whine of protest as Nira cautiously opened the top. I stood rigid beside Lex, who had his hand on my back, as we waited to see what was inside. Basically, we waited for the next shoe to drop. Whatever the message inside, I feared it not good, just given the delivery, the night. As a rule, good news people offered up orally, easily, bad news traveled in other more sinister, sometimes more elusive ways, like nondescript wooden boxes hurled at a door.

They’d found us, discovered our safe house. I looked around wondering if the box’s only purpose stood as a ploy to distract us while they blew up the house. From the distance I stood from Nira, I could see something that looked like a necklace being pulled out and hung from her fingers. Not a distraction, but a message. I hoped that someone here got it. My friend then turned to look at me, giving me a concerned and confused look that matched mine. My stomach dropped to know instantly that this had something to do with me by the soft, sad eyes under furrowed brows on Nira’s tight face.

“The note attached to this necklace only says, ‘For Christina,’” Nira muttered, slowly stretching out her hand towards me, making the necklace dangle there like an ominous warning, not the waving of a white flag, but just the opposite, the threat of something bad to come flickering in the distance, not yet clear but grave.

I pushed through the crowd who was trying to get out of my way. They had tried to part like the Red Sea, but the tiny room, the amount of bodies huddled inside it, made them only bump into each other in an awkward attempt at giving me room. Hands touched me, helping me forward, the effort only hindering my way, yet they meant well. By the time I stopped in front of the necklace, the metal glinting in the poor lighting, my heart dropped. This was Chloe’s charm necklace.

A delicate silver C dangled from my friend’s aquamarine birthstone. I had given the charm to Chloe when she’d turned eighteen. I’d saved my money from my first job to get such a personal gift for my friend, the one person who through thick and thin had stood by me my whole life. The fact I’d not done the same for her in return, had all but abandoned her to go after a new life, hit me, made the room around me spin. Hot, and short on air from the crowds, from my rush of nerves, I swayed. The cold hard facts came crushing down on me like a barrel over a waterfall as Josh grabbed me, held me up as Lex made his way through the crowd. They looked like a can of wiggling sardines.

That Chloe’s necklace now hung from Nira’s hand, taken from a strangely delivered box on the night that I had killed Daniel, screamed volumes of horrible possibilities. I wondered how that beautifully slim neck of hers fared without it. She had to be alive. Surely they wouldn’t kill her. They hadn’t Lex. Yet, at that time, I hadn’t killed Daniel. Deadly retaliation or not, they would expect me to come running to her rescue. I would whether it came with a damn map or not.

Pushing the whirlwind of thoughts aside, what struck me, what made the hot tears in my eyes spill over onto my lashes to stream down over my cheeks, was the fact that Chloe had still been wearing the necklace despite our strained relationship the past seven months. As sobs started to form, shaking my shoulders visibly, Lex pulled me towards him, wrapping his thick arms around my chest as he pulled me into his. I fell against him. His grip on me was the only thing that kept me standing as the scenarios, one by one, one more dreadful than the next, spilled into my head, wave after wave of terrifying images that could be a possible reality right now for my friend.

The only thing I knew for sure was that the pack had taken Chloe, and that it was my fault. My friend was in danger due to retaliation for their leader Daniel’s death. They truly would stop at nothing. They may have been grasping at straws at what to do next, but I’d drawn the short one this time, and they again had the upper hand. At this moment, as Lex led my crumpling body down to a mattress on the floor, still holding me strong against him, I feared this battle the true werewolves and the Royal werewolves were locked in would never end.

I feared my entire life would be battle after battle, losing one person after another that I cared about until my own death at their hands. They’d use me first, but then eventually, I’d die when my purpose had passed. Watching the rest of them die first would be the worst of it. My thinking took a final turn for the worst. Rather than walking to the cliff, I looked over and took that final leap. Darkness consumed me, took my sight completely as worst case scenarios ran through my head. I gave myself two more seconds only to stumble down that path before I would pull it together, do whatever I had to for Chloe.

A hot mix anger and fear with a large hunk of guilt added in seized me. Butterflies danced around the knot in my stomach as my shaking hands moved, gripped into tight fists in defense against a currently unseen foe. Hyperventilating, struggling for each breath of air, I let myself cry for a moment, locked in Lex’s arms, before my hands shot up, breaking me free easily as I’d shocked him with my sudden movement. As he backed away to look at me, surprise on his face, his hands now gripping hard my upper arms, I pounded my fists against my thighs as a primal scream erupted from my throat. His hands quickly moved to cover my fists, pressing them to my thighs, as he squeezed them trying to calm me.

“You recognize this necklace then,” Nira said having crouched down beside me. “Who does it belong to? Who did they take in retaliation for tonight?”

“Yes. I know the necklace. It belongs to my best friend Chloe,” I managed to answer back through my sobs, choking on my own tears, though my voice hissed with my rage. “What could they have done to her? What if they took her to that warehouse? What if they tied her up in magical chains and are cutting and torturing her as they did Lex? She’s not as strong as he is. She’s just a human, and she knows nothing about this world. She thinks werewolves and vampires are fiction, and she doesn’t even like them that much in books or in the movies. She only tolerates them for my sake. She can’t handle this, any of it. I can’t handle this. What if she’s already dead? It would be a blessing though…” I left off, the thought of Chloe being gone ending my psychotic rambling.

I couldn’t continue talking as my body tightened up to the point of pain and nausea. The wine I’d sipped and crackers that I’d nibbled on earlier threatened to rise up. Images of my friend, memories, mixed from my smiling face to the way I looked when I cried. Flashes of her body frail and injured were created by my tired imagination, which fused right into images of Daniel’s body with his neck broken as I had done to him tonight. It all went through my brain, becoming a surrealism painting of the worst of my past, the worst of the possibilities of my future, until my entire body quivered, trembled violently against Lex witnessing what my mind dished out. Violence had begotten violence, and I had no one to blame but myself. At least, at this moment, it was the only place my brain put the blame.

Nira had taken to rubbing her hands up and down my arms, now sitting behind me, trying to quiet me, trying to say soothing words that didn’t register, didn’t work, though I heard them. All I could think was that Chloe was in trouble, and that my friend was in trouble because of me. All I’d done these past seven months had been to abandon and then lie to Chloe. And this was what my friend got for being loyal and caring.

“We have to find her,” I pleaded to Lex, then turning to Nira. “We have to find her as soon as possible.”

“We will,” both Nira and Lex said at the same time, although the stereo of their two voices in my ears seem to buzz, make me dizzy.

I clutched at my stomach and curled into a fetal position just to hold it together.

“That means we have to find them,” I cried out. “We can’t just wait here to find out where their next attack is going to be this time. I can’t just sit here and wait to find out if they’ve killed her. I can’t let her be tortured another minute if that’s what is happening.”

“We won’t,” Nira said. “Just give me a minute to consider our options, to think about what we should do.” She turned to the room then, and continued in a harsh tone at a hurried pace, basically yelling the command, “If anyone has any ideas please say so now.”

Chapter Nine

Without a plan established, in minutes, the group headed back out to the SUVs. Josh and Nira took the lead vehicle putting Lex and I in with them. The best trackers of the vampires and werewolves had smelled the necklace, getting just enough of Chloe’s scent from the rope that the charm hung from to start looking around the city for her. They’d also picked up a scent of the true werewolves from the box, not that anyone there didn’t know that it had come from them. A few had gone on foot, a few vampires paired with the best of the Royal werewolf trackers. Each one had a phone to contact Nira.

It didn’t take long, thankfully, for her phone to ring as we were headed out of the city and back towards the cabins again. Nira had been taking the turns of the old backroads fast, forcing me to hold onto the seat in front of me not to be thrown on the floor, though I appreciated with all my heart my friend’s driving abilities and earnest efforts. Buildings and trees, other cars, they all blurred together into a nondescript background, like a green screen, for me to see images of Chloe on. Like my life flashing before my eyes, I witnessed our life together one memory at a time.

They didn’t come in any order. I watched us laughing in a dressing room as Chloe tried on dresses for prom, ones her mother would never let her wear out in public, would have died if she had even come out of a dressing room in one of them. Yet, she had the body for the low cut bodices and high cut slits. I had to look as if I were losing my mind as I smiled through my tears, then grimaced as another moment in time played out. This time Chloe had been my fierce protector, literally punching a bully in the mouth who had dared to mention my weight. I owed her. God, did I ever owe her.

“I’m sorry,” I mouthed, though no sound came out. Still, Lex had squeezed my hand, answered, “I know, babe. But I don’t blame you in the first place.”

I flashed a half smile and nodded though I didn’t even believe myself, knew he wouldn’t either. Going through the motions. That was all this was until I could see Chloe again, tell her how sorry I was in person. I’d rip anyone to shreds that stood in my way, and that, I knew, was Chloe healing me all over again. At this moment, people like Daniel deserved whatever befell them. Call me karma, I was ready.

As they raced back to the scene of my earlier crime, I couldn’t think about Daniel’s body and whether the wolves had taken it or left it there anymore. I didn’t care. The momentary thought made me want to spit nails just to have given them a moment of my time, an ounce of my guilt. All I could consider was Chloe and knew that I’d do whatever was needed to be done to save my friend if there was still time. Hopefully they were using me as bait, not an eye for an eye scenario. That was all that mattered now.

“They have her at the warehouse,” Nira announced as she did a U-turn that made the tires squeal to head east rather than west.

Directing the vehicle back towards the factory from the cabins, in my harrowed mind we were running from one horrible memory toward another only to find a new horror awaiting us. If there was a time to justify a psychic break, this would be it, and yet, all I could do at this point in time for Chloe was to keep it together. Grasping onto a sliver of hate did the trick, kept me focused on the newest mission at hand.

In-between hanging on, I fidgeted, anxiously, with everything my fingers could get ahold of from my seatbelt to my hair, and even when Lex tried to make me stop, I played with his hand, either tapped my thumb to an uneven rhythm on the back of it, or rubbed the same digit back and forth over his palm. We were going back to where Daniel had taken Lex before. I held onto the frail hope that they had done this just to scare me, to give me visions of Chloe in the same predicament they had created for Lex. It had worked, certainly, I suffered through the mental images. I just held onto the frail hope that only I did suffer. Somehow, I wished a situation where Chloe magically slept through it all.

As improbable as it was, that thought at least gave me something to concentrate on. Though I couldn’t even come close to calm, not to save my own life, I struggled to find some for Chloe, gave it everything I had. Ironically, I stressed over finding some peace, in an attempt to connect with my friend, to throw some magic my way that would at least help me to calm if nothing else.

I didn’t have the connection with Chloe that I had with Lex, so I had no way of knowing what was going on with her, if she screamed with fear, if she cried due to pain, or if she just wished whatever suffering she was going through to end. I knew my friend to be courageous, self-confident, and strong, all the things I had lacked before. Yet, in the face of the unbelievable, creatures that shouldn’t exist appearing before you, or in the face of torture, people broke, even the best of them. Chloe was the best of them, so for her, I continued on, sent any positive energy brewing inside me to my friend.

Sadly, this only worked to at least give me focus, a purpose to play out as we sped toward the factory. I tried hard to hold it together, for Chloe I continually repeated in my head like a mantra as I gripped Lex’s hand in mine as he wouldn’t let mine go. Still, the new scenery rushed by me in a blur. Just the same, with my friend on my mind, memories with Chloe continued to rush through my brain, only now like a music video montage, in faster, shorter clips. The comparison brought to mind the two of us, countless times, dancing around in Chloe’s room, the music too loud, laughing and just enjoying life by throwing around our limbs in an aimless manner.

One of the songs playing in my head turned my reminiscing to seeing us as little girls in kindergarten working on spelling with a movable alphabet on a carpet on the floor of the classroom. For brief seconds, every tiny detail came to life from the pink ribbons that decorated Chloe’s pigtails to the red and blue striped carpet we’d worked on. I remembered the way that Chloe had helped me then, and thus how she had saved me so many times in school and in life, everything from having the pencil I didn’t have to talking all night to heal my broken heart. Chloe been the one there when my dad was too drunk after my mother died to pick up the pieces. This was how a friend of mine got payback for those many, many kindnesses.

When we pulled up to the warehouse, the clouds had thickened, turned the sky almost pitch black leaving the building mostly shrouded in darkness. This time there weren’t even fires in trash cans to light our way, just a simple haze of moonlight that fought through the density of the gray puffs above them threatening rain. A shiver went down my spine that had nothing to do with that damp chill in the humid air. Just being back at this site where so much trauma had happened along with the desolation of the area this time gave me the creeps.

I didn’t know why the homeless were no longer sleeping here, but if they had fled based on what happened last time the vampires and werewolves had battled here I couldn’t possibly blame them. I couldn’t imagine what their fighting had sounded like especially to humans. To have vampires and werewolves fighting to the death especially with their supernatural powers, their speed, and their strength increased had to have sounded like a small war inside that building. Anyone in their right mind would have moved on and found another place to stay. Sleeping under a noisy bridge would have been a far better option than being here.

I couldn’t have agreed more. That horrible memory flooded back. The fear made my feet want to freeze to the gravel beneath me. I looked to my side, to Lex who stood there strong, looking ahead to the building even though his face was tight, lined with worry. His mouth formed a flat line with his lips pursed with anger. I grabbed for his hand finding it warm despite the temperature around us. He squeezed mine back, maybe a little too hard, but the pain let me know that he was there. He was alive. He was no longer trapped inside the building. He had survived his ordeal with Daniel. It had been months since he had, but an image like that never left one. Chloe would survive this too.

I couldn’t know what tonight held for us, what dangers lurked inside that building, but I couldn’t see Chloe hurt as I’d seen Lex, and I couldn’t let them hurt Lex again either. I could barely breathe, near hyperventilating, as I thought of the vampires around me as well. Nira didn’t want any more losses. I’d suffered enough too. Each wave of guilt knocked out by another bout of fury served as another punch in the gut as my stomach coiled over the pain, and my body tightened everywhere else.

This time there was no hesitation. The group didn’t have a plan, but Nira wasn’t in the mood to mess around either. Everyone just wanted this done. We walked straight to the side of the building, stopping only to press our backs against the bricks and listen for who or what waited us inside. Even still in human form, I sniffed. I’d found during my training that since being turned into a werewolf many of my human senses had increased. I could smell Daniel, even though he couldn’t possibly be here. I could smell human and wolf blood although it was old. I had to go in there and help regardless of what needed to be done. It wasn’t an option to flee, to give into my need to never step into this place again. For Chloe I had to face whatever was on the other side of that wall.

This time we wouldn’t have to climb the stairs to find them. As soon as we entered, right there on the first floor just across the room, Chloe was tied to an old machine much like Lex had been tied to the wall in chains. In my mind, even though I saw Chloe’s face, it flashed to Lex’s and back again like flashbacks over reality given the horrendously familiar situation. As memories hurtled through my brain, causing it to throb, my body spasmed, my wrath became something that dripped from my pores. My hands gripped to fists, needing to hit someone, to grab someone, to hurt someone. Who could blame me or say they wouldn’t feel the same bloodlust given this was the second time someone I loved had been taken here and chained to something like a useless animal?

When I was done rescuing Chloe, I wanted the building demolished. I didn’t even want the thing to stand here regardless of the outcome. I wanted every bit of it to be turned to rubble, to become nothing but dust and ashes on this landscape, as I wished I could turn my memories, along with the ones I was making now.

I rushed to Chloe, kneeling down before her. I’d not seen any werewolves around, but that didn’t mean they were not lurking in the shadows waiting to attack. I winced, awaited the bright lights like they’d turned on us last time, momentarily stunning my group putting them at a disadvantage. Still, I’d rushed foolishly forward. Let them try to stop me.

Looking into my friend’s face, her eyes were closed. She didn’t appear to be conscious, just as I had wished on the way here, though I knew this state had nothing to do with my magic. Chloe didn’t appear to be hurt. At least not outwardly. I ran my hand over my friend’s beautiful hair, before letting it run gently along the curve of her neck and down over her arms and legs. Nothing seemed to be broken. Every part of my friend appeared to be unharmed save for the fact she wasn’t conscious. There was no blood. There were no cuts. There were no bumps or bruises. Yet, her arms were tied above her head, and she just hung there with her eyes closed, lightly breathing in and out at a very slow, deep-sleep pace.

“She doesn’t appear to be hurt,” I said to Nira and Lex who were standing right behind me but looking around them as I should have done first. “But who could sleep so soundly with their arms half pulled out of their sockets like that? I know she is sitting, but her body weight still will damage the tendons or muscles or something. It has to at least ache even if she is a skinny little thing.”

“She appears to just be sleeping,” Nira said. “Maybe they drugged her. At least she isn’t hurt, hanging here suffering and afraid. She’s alive. Her heart beats. There are many completely harmless drugs that can cause such a state, make a person oblivious to everything around them. It is a blessing.”

“Then maybe she doesn’t know there are werewolves at all,” I muttered with the deep sigh of relief. “Maybe they took her in human form, just drugged her and then tied her up. I can only hope, for her sake. She doesn’t deserve this.”

I didn’t want to have to explain my life, everything about it to Chloe, even though until a few months back, I had shared almost everything with her. Not that I wanted to keep it from her. In fact, it would be a relief to tell her the whole unbelievable truth, but I was nervous about the way Chloe might react to me after. Even more, I feared that Chloe might not believe me, would think me insane.

She’d probably think that Lex had made me join some sort of cult that relied heavily on drugs. Or worse, she might just disregard it all and walk away from me forever. Not that we had been close these few months, but somewhere in the back of my mind, right or wrong, I’d always had the comfort that Chloe was there, would be there for me if I needed her. At this moment, it struck me in a profound way how selfish that was, how selfish I’d been. I’d wanted a new life, and I’d wanted the comfort of knowing my old one waited for me if I needed her.