The Lone Alpha Unleashed: A Big Girl Meets Bad Wolf Romance (6 page)

Except what I actually said was:
“You won’t get away with this. They’ll find me sooner or later.”

“Well, it’s been what,” the
Doctor reached out and briefly laid a hand on my belly. My big, round, pregnant
belly, “almost nine months now? I’m putting my money on later.”

He quickly stepped backwards,
away from the bed as I… or Miss Derry strained against her bonds. But there was
some kind of twisted longing in his eyes as he looked at me… her… whoever. His
eyes had lit up when he had touched my… our… belly.

What the hell? What the hell?
What the hell?

I didn’t speak, but my mouth
moved and words came out, “I’m going to kill you.”

What the hell?

“Excuse me. I didn’t quite catch
that.”

“I said I’m going to kill you.”

I saw just a the faintest
flicker of fear in the eyes of the man who may or may not have been a doctor,
but was almost certainly a lunatic. I really had no idea what was going on. It
was like I was trapped in some kind of dream or vision. Whatever was happening,
I was obviously just a passenger. Miss Derry, whoever she was, was at the
wheel. And apparently Miss Derry was a bit of a bad ass. A very, very pregnant
bad ass, but a bad ass nonetheless. That gave me a glimmer of hope, even though
I still had no idea what was going on.

“I’ll take my chances Miss
Derry.”

“Just let me out of here you
sick son-of-a-bitch, let me out of here or I’ll fucking k…. unghhhh… Jesus that
hurts.”

Miss Derry strained against her
bonds and groaned in pain as what I assumed was a contraction hit. It was odd
though, I could feel the coarse straps biting into my wrists, I could feel the
starchy fabric of the hospital gown against my skin, but not the contraction.

The doctor (or serial killer, I
was still on the fence about that one) looked excited as he approached the bed
once more.

“Well, well, well… You’re about
a week early but well within the parameters for a healthy…”

Without warning the body I was
riding shotgun in lunged forward and I yelped silently in surprise as my
forehead crashed painfully into the doctor’s. It was done with so much force I
expected him to be sent flying backwards. But instead he fell forward on top of
us and I tasted blood and snot and...
Oh, that is so gross
. Miss Derry
had her teeth around the doctor’s nose so tight she’d broken the skin.

“U-oo i or i ie oor ose oh”

She clamped down harder to show
him she meant business.

“U-oo i!”

I could barely decipher the
words, but her meaning was clear. He got the message and undid one of her wrist
straps. Her teeth remained clamped around his nose as she fumbled at the other
cuff. When her other arm was free she finally released him. He looked nervously
around the room like a startled rabbit as she took his head between her hands
and pulled him close once more.

“Now call for a guard.”

He shook his head between her
hands. And she gently placed the end of one of her thumbs against his eyeball
as she repeated her request.

Oh no no no no no. Please don’t.
Please don’t. Please don’t.
The worst part about all of this, well aside
from pretty much everything, was that I had no control over what I saw. I
literally couldn’t look away.This was all far too similar to the sort
of movie I’d usually watch with my eyes closed. Except now I was right in the
middle of the action and I couldn’t shield my eyes from the sort of images that
I couldn’t stomach.

The Doctor groaned as she
applied pressure. I just wanted to wake up. I really didn’t like this kind of
stuff. Thankfully Doctor Creepy gave in to her demands before his eyeball gave
into her thumb and I was spared 
witnessing anything too disgusting.

I wanted to run and hide, but I
couldn’t. I was trapped here, front and center, an unwilling participant in
some kind of warped horror film.

“Guards… guards help! She’s
escaping. Guards!”

She released the doctor and he
stood and watched as she undid the straps at her ankles. She groaned as she
stood and paused for breath. I could feel atrophied muscles screaming with agony
as the blood rushed back into them. She dry-heaved, but managed to keep it
together. I would have thrown up half a dozen times by now.

“D… d… d… don’t…” The Doctor
reeked of fear and urine.

“You know when I said I was
going to kill you?” She took him by the arm and held him close as the door
began to open, “I was only half right.”

She threw the doctor at the
guard as he entered the room, his weapon drawn. There was a muffled gunshot and
a bright red flower appeared on the doctor’s white coat. Before the guard could
react Miss Derry, who I was beginning to suspect was some kind of elite
super-ninja, grabbed his wrist and twisted. I heard the crack of bones and a
second, louder gunshot that ricocheted of the tiles before smashing the screen
of the tiny television.

A vicious punch to the throat
and the guard crumpled, gasping silently for air. Miss Derry relieved him of
his weapon and my heavily pregnant surrogate made her way down a brightly lit
corridor to some kind of central control room.

She paused for a moment and took
a few deep breaths before heading to the desk, where she grabbing the handset
of a phone. She began stabbing at an old-fashioned keypad with her finger. It
didn't dawn on me until it was too late that I should have paid attention to the
number.

“Hello? Hello?”

“Jackson it’s me.”

“My God. My God Helena. You’re
alive.”

The voice on the other end of
the phone was familiar. It was someone I knew, but I couldn’t quite put my
finger on it.

“Barely. Listen… I’m being held
in some kind of facility, maybe a private hospital or lab. I’m not sure where.
It’s near the coast, I can hear the sea. And it’s warm... muggy. If you can
trace this call, come and get me. I don’t have much time I…”

I dropped the phone as I was hit
by a wave of pain in my abdomen worse than any cramp I had ever experienced.

Oh God. Oh no.

“Oh God. Oh no. Jackson? Hurry.
I don’t have much time.”

We sank to the floor as the wave
of pain passed, and grabbed frantically for the handset.

“Listen Jackson. If you’re not
in time… if you’re too late. Find the child. Find the child and look after it
as if it were your own. I love you.”

But the phone was dead. We were
talking to static.

“Miss Derry.”

A voice came over the intercom.
A clipped European accent. Not German, but something similar. There was
something else as well, something wrong with his voice. Something inhuman.

“That’s quite enough exercise
for one day Miss Derry. Any further exertions would be detrimental to the
health of your unborn child… as would a high velocity projectile travelling
through your abdomen. Please consider this when my men open the door and enter
the room in five… four… three… two..”

Defeated, we let the phone slip
through our fingers as half a dozen guards entered the room, their weapons
drawn. They were followed by an ugly, bald man and I immediately sensed he was
the almost-German who had been speaking. His pale complexion and sunken cheeks
almost made him look like a…

And then another contraction hit
and the whole world exploded in a bright white light.

- X -

“WhathehellNaziVampire!”

I awoke with a gasp and sat bolt
upright in bed. I felt woozy. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was. Or even who I
was. I still felt the remnants of Miss Derry… Helena, rattling around in my
head.

“Did you just say Nazi Vampire?”

I nodded.

There was a handsome man sitting
at the end of my bed. He spoke with a British accent. Was he with me? Alarm
bells were ringing in my head but I wasn’t sure why. Was I in a hospital? It
didn’t look like a hospital.

“I don’t know how you… but I can
see why you’d think that. He’s actually neither. There’s no such thing as
vampires.”

“And next you’ll be telling me
there’s no such thing as werewolves. Who are you? Where am I?”

I instinctively reached out with
my senses, trying to read the man I was alone with. I felt something. Something
that drew me to him. He was a shifter! Like James, but not like James.

I was embarrassed to feel my
nipples stiffening and a growing dampness between my thighs. Just for a split
second I wanted him… and then my memories came flooding back. Although I was
drawn to him it wasn’t the same as it had been with James. It felt purely
animal. Lust, but with no emotional component.

“Wait…”

He shifted uncomfortably on his
chair, unable to disguise an impressive, yet somewhat lewd, bulge at the crotch
of his trousers. He felt it too. This attraction. He’d felt it before… at the
club.

“Edward? Wait… what the hell is
happening? Did you kidnap me?”

I tried to shake the wooliness
out of my head. I was sure I’d been drugged. Drugged and kidnapped and taken to
who-knows-where.

“Kidnapped is an ugly
word. Let’s just say I claimed you. You’re very important. More important than
you realize.”

This was not happening
.
My head was spinning and I tried to get a grip. I should have been freaking
out. I should have been screaming. But for some reason I felt
uncharacteristically calm.

“He’ll come for me.”

“Hmm?”

I crossed my arms defiantly and
held Edward’s gaze with my own.

“He’ll come for me. He’ll find
me and he’ll come for me.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

That was not been the response I
was expecting. Edward clearly knew who I was talking about and he didn’t seem
to be impressed.

“I doubt he’ll be here for a
while though. In the meantime, you’ll be staying here. Unless you want to…”

“What?”

“Oh, dinner perhaps? A walk? The
sunset through the pines is spectacular. Or if you’re not really into all that,
my room is just down the hall and we could…”

Despite the circumstances there
was some kind of quirky charm to his clumsy advances. Maybe it was the accent.
That, combined with the way my body was responding to his presence, almost had
me considering his offer. But it was insane. The man had kidnapped me.

“Are you kidding me?”

He shrugged, “another time
perhaps. There’s a guard outside the door, so don’t try and escape. You’ll be
here another couple of days at least. I’ll try and find you some magazines or
something. Do you like fishing? For some reason there’s a shed out back
completely full of old fishing magazines.”

“And then what?” The matter-of-fact
way that Edward seemed to address my captivity was beginning to grate on me.

“And then I’ll kill James and
we’ll finally be together.”

Kent handed me his binoculars
and I peered down at the cabin. It was larger and far more luxurious than the
place where Carrie and I had first encountered each other what seemed like a
lifetime ago. I wanted to catch a glimpse of her, to see that she was safe. I
could feel her presence and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, but for
now she remained tantalizingly out of reach.

However, I didn’t completely
trust these feelings. As a shifter, I was used to depending on senses other
than sight, but sometimes even that wasn’t enough and you just had to see
something with your own eyes.

“I’ve seen two goons patrolling
the perimeter. If they’re working in shifts that means three or four minimum.”

I grunted, “more like six. I can
smell them from here. Shifters… wolves.”

“Six wolves and Edward,” Kent
sucked his teeth, he knew this didn’t look good.

 I’d never seen Kent in the field before. In a suit he was an
asshole and at times I’d wondered if the sarcasm and constant needling was all
a big act. Either way, I’d often found myself questioning his competence. That
too, may have been a deliberate ploy. It was easier to surprise an opponent if
they underestimated you.

Out here he seemed to be in his
element… or as in his element as a human can be in the woods. Even in human
form, the stealthiest non-shifter was clumsy to our kind. Despite Kent’s
precautions, the ridiculous camouflage and all the crawling around, I suspected
the wolves below already knew we were here.

I glanced at the man that
circumstances had forced on me as a partner, he was sporting an impressive
black eye. The next time he wanted to tell me that the only woman I’ve ever
truly loved had been kidnapped by a psychopath from my past he was probably
going to do it by phone. My reaction had been instinctive and, in hindsight, a
little excessive.

“Why me? Why not send in the
cavalry?”

“This is a matter beyond the
scope of my official employers.”

“And your other employers?”

I still wasn’t sure
exactly who Kent’s employers were. He had implied he worked for, or was a
member of, the Daughters of Diana, but that didn’t make sense. I’d spent my
whole life believing they were the bogeymen. A force intent on destroying all
shifters. Now Kent was claiming they acted like some kind of benevolent
guardian angel, protecting us from legions of obscure enemies that we weren’t
even aware of.

“They’re stretched a little thin
at the moment… and this whole operation is somewhat
off-the-books
as it
were. What about your sorry excuse for a pack?”

I gave him a noncommittal shrug.

“There’s one more thing.”

“Of course there is.”

“Edward asked for you by name.
Made it perfectly clear where he was going to be and when. Even brought her
within spitting distance of your mountain just to make it more convenient. You
and no one else but you… or he’ll kill her. I’m guessing I don’t need to point
out the obvious, but yeah, there’s a slight chance it may be a trap.”