Twin Alphas: Claimed (A BBW Werewolf Romance) (3 page)

              Amelia cursed as she jolted over potholes on the narrow, winding country road. 

              She was winding her way through the mountains, taking a rural route which would have taken her hundreds of miles out of her way if she was really headed to San Francisco like she’d told her sister.  It was the only way out of town these days, with the main road still impassable. The highway department didn’t seem to be in any hurry to repair it.

              She’d lied to Karlie, however. She wasn’t headed out of town to meet up with her new department head. She was stashing her car so she could sneak into Clair De Lune for a few days.

              She saw Virgil Swanson’s car up ahead and breathed a sigh of relief.  She quickly pulled off the side of the road and parked behind him.

              Virgil was her savior, the dean of the anthropology department at the University of Upstate New York, the one who’d made her the job offer and handed her the very fat, generous check. She’d been dazzled when he’d approached her; she’d recognized him instantly, one of the biggest names in the anthropology field. 

              Virgil was pacing by the car, running his fingers through his thinning gray hair. He was a tall, thin man with an anxious demeanor. He dressed like a man from an earlier era; he even wore a bow tie.

              “Amelia! So glad you could make it!” he said.

              He’d brought his assistant Malcom with him, so that Malcom could drive her car.  Malcolm, an assistant professor who looked more like a young crewcut weightlifter than an academic, waved cheerfully as she walked towards them.

              “Good to see you both, I appreciate you taking care of my car for me while I’m gone,” she said to Virgil. “I don’t want to tell anyone that I’m crossing over before I go, not even family. They’d have a heart attack.”

              “I completely agree,” Virgil nodded. “And you’re sure that you can safely cross back and forth?” The row of four horizontal lines on his forehead puckered with worry, and he wrung his hands.  “I feel badly about this. I hope we’re not sending you to do something too risky. It’s just that the value of the research would be so incredible…”

              “Like I said, my family’s been doing it for generations. I’ve done it dozens of times. Haven’t died yet. Not even a minor cold.”

She handed him the keys to her car. The arrangement was that Virgil and Malcom would take her car and park it safely out of sight for her. Then Malcom would come back every day in his own vehicle and wait for her at 2 p.m., in case she needed to leave earlier than expected. He’d wait for two hours.  She hoped to stay on the other side for three days, but it was best to have a backup plan.

              “I wish there was a way to contact you there,” Virgil muttered.

              “Cell phones aren’t working at all in Cedar Heights, much less across dimensions,” she pointed out.

              “True.”

              “I do miss my cell phone. What’s it like out there in the parts of the country that aren’t flattened?” she asked wistfully. “I’d kill for an internet connection.”

              “I hear you,” Malcom nodded sympathetically, patting the pocket of his button-down shirt. “My cell phone and internet connection died about half an hour ago, and I’m already going through withdrawal. I can’t imagine six months. Don’t worry, your town will be rebuilt someday, and you’ll be able to rejoin the 21
st
century.”

              “I don’t know,” she said with a heavy sigh.  “To rebuild our infrastructure, they’d need to be able to move in heavy equipment, which they can’t do on these little narrow country roads.  The gap on the main road is so wide that they’d have to build a bridge over it, and we’re one little tiny town in the middle of nowhere. We’re not a priority.”

              “Maybe once you’ve published this paper, people will see how special Cedar Heights is, and you’ll become a priority,” Virgil said encouragingly.

              She managed a smile. “Here’s hoping.”

              Then she gave them a jaunty wave. “Well, I’d love to stand around jawing all day, but I’ve got werewolves to observe.”

              She turned and began trudging through the woods.

              As she walked, she made a mental checklist of her preparations. She’d brought cans of soup and granola bars with her.  She didn’t know what kind of food they’d have over there, and, although she’d tucked a wad of cash into her purse, she doubted that they used the same currency on the other side. She had a camera with her, which should be okay; some of the werewolves who’d wandered over to their world had cameras, so she knew they had them over there. She had her notebook and a few changes of clothing. That was it; she didn’t want to bring in too much stuff with her, in case she accidentally brought something which didn’t exist over there.

              Her plan was to walk to the nearest town and observe as much as she could without attracting too much attention–she hoped. She’d also brought binoculars so she could check them out from a distance, if necessary.

              She knew what a disadvantage she was at. The only knowledge that she had of their world was what she and her sister had picked up when they’d sneaked over as children, and also what little knowledge  humans had time to glean from the werewolves who’d accidentally wandered into their world after the Breach opened.

              She did know that their world appeared to have evolved on a parallel track to her own, and their lifestyle over there appeared, superficially at least, to be almost identical to that of humans on her side of the Breach–except that their machines, their cars, televisions, cell phones and airplanes were powered by some kind of magic energy. She knew that werewolves were all male, that that they lived side by side in harmony with humans.  Apparently they were able to mate with human females; they must be, or their race would have died out.

              She didn’t know much more than that, so she could only pray she didn’t get caught while she was over there.

              She reached the spot she was looking for pretty quickly. It was one of many spots that were scattered around, that only she and her sisters could see. 

              There was a bluish spot in the air, about ten feet across and twenty feet wide, and the air around it rippled like the heat shimmer around a roaring fire.

              When she and her sister were younger, they’d wandered through one of those spots and discovered the alternate universe.  They’d seen people turn into wolves.  They’d looked up at the sky and seen two moons, a big one and a little one.  They’d raced back home to tell their family what they’d seen.

              Their grandmother and mother had gone pale as ghosts. They’d had the same experience when they were children. Their great-grandmother had too. She’d warned her daughter that if she told anyone about it, they’d think she was a witch.

              Amelia and Karlie’s mother had more modern fears. They were afraid that if anyone knew about their family’s ability, they’d be taken away to some government lab and experimented on. Amelia and Karlie had been sworn to secrecy, and they’d always kept that promise, but now, circumstances had changed.

              After the earthquake had struck, and the dust settled, the massive Breach was revealed, and it was visible to everybody.  Humans and werewolves had casually wandered through, driven through, even bicycled through…not realizing that they’d never be able to return.

Now, there were soldiers stationed along the entire length of the Breach – every part that they could see, anyway.

              But the odd spots where the fabric of reality between the two words stretched thin, that only Amelia’s family could see…no soldiers were stationed there.

              Of course, most of the spots were clustered on Amelia’s family property, but she couldn’t walk through there–she had to carry on the pretense that she was leaving town. This spot would do just as well.

              In the distance, through the blue, Amelia thought she could hear voices. People on the other side. Crud. She’d have to pray that nobody saw her walk through.

              She took a deep breath, and walked into the sparkling blue.

              She felt that familiar tingling. Everything around her rippled as if she was underwater, and then it faded.  She looked around. The woods looked exactly the same.  She was standing next to the exact same blue oak tree that she’d been next to in her own universe.  There was the same twin pair of ghost pines that she’d just seen. In the distance were the Sierra Nevada mountains, jagged, white capped and spreading across the horizon.

This fit with the prevailing theory that the two worlds had evolved along mostly identical paths. The same trees, mountains, landmarks, the same physical features…except, of course, for the two moons in the sky overhead.

              There they were, as beautiful as ever, pale white against the deep blue sky.

              Oh yes. She was through.

              She glanced around. She could hear a woman’s voice close by, in the thick underbrush.

              Quickly, she pulled out her camera and snapped a picture of the twin moons.

              She heard the sound of someone thrashing through the forest, leaves and branches rustling.

              She ducked behind a tree, and saw a woman running, with a wolf loping after her.  She pointed her camera at them and turned on the video recorder.

              Yikes. The wolf jumped on the woman and knocked her down, and stood over her, panting. Was he going to kill this woman? Should she run towards them, yell at them, hopefully scare him off?

              Just as she was about to rush forward to help, the wolf morphed into a naked man. A hot naked man. The woman laughed and pulled him to her.

              “Slow,” the man teased.

              “Only because I wanted you to catch me.” The woman laughed, and the wolf-man began pulling her clothes off.

              Amelia quickly switched the video off, shoved the camera in her pocket, and began making her way through the woods, towards a clearing that she could see up ahead.

              The resemblance to Cedar Heights had ended. This area had been developed and cleared, where in her own world, it was nothing but forest.  Here, she came through the woods into an area where, apparently, some kind of county fair was taking place. There were incredibly handsome men strolling around, and crowds of women who were dressed to the nines.  She could hear music blaring from speakers hung on trees on light poles.  Off in the distance, she could see tents and booths set up everywhere.

              The men all wore necklaces of different colors, with various talismans and tokens strung on them. She was pretty sure that this meant they were werewolves, rather than human, and the tokens and talismans had something to do with their packs.

              She didn’t see any human men at all here, she realized. Only werewolves.Hot, handsome, sexy werewolves.

              She saw a woman pull out her cell phone and take a picture of two other women, standing in between two werewolves.As she watched, the men partially shifted, so their heads went wolf but their bodies remained human. They threw back their heads and howled.

              She pulled out her camera and snapped pictures for a minute, then put the camera back in her purse and looked around, debating what to do next.

              One of the men suddenly paused, tipped his head back, and sniffed the air. She quickly stepped back into the woods, dodging behind a tree.

              “Did you smell that?” she heard the man asked.

              “What?” another man answered him.

              “I swear to God, I think it’s…silver.”

              “What? No way! Come on, man, no freaking way would somebody bring…hey, you might be right. I think I smell it too.”

              She went pale. Silver was bad? She was wearing sterling silver hoop earrings and a sterling silver bracelet.

              She turned and ran full tilt into the woods, quickly yanked off the earrings and bracelet, dug in the dirt with her hands, and buried them.

              Feeling discouraged, she brushed the dirt of her hands, trotted back into the clearing and glanced around uneasily.  How many other things were that she didn’t know, that could get her into huge trouble?

              An incredibly handsome man, blond with a scruff of facial hair, winked at her, and she blushed and looked away quickly. He’d probably been winking at somebody behind her, she decided.

              Maybe the safest thing to do was sit in the woods and observe through her binoculars, for now.

              As she turned to go, she bumped in to a chubby, cheerful blonde with a big mop of blond ringlets.             

She was wearing a red and white handkerchief print skirt, a white peasant blouse with red flowers stitched along the neckline, and red sandals, and carrying a big red purse.

              “Hey! You look lost. First time here?”

              “Sorry?” she glanced around at the parking lot.