Winning the Alpha Read online

  “Are you calling me cruel? Are you insinuating that I have no compassion?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am. You’re a cold-hearted bitch. Let’s have a slap fight.” Well, that would get beeped out, which was fine given that my mother wouldn’t exactly want to hear such language out of me.

  Julia and I laughed. “They’ll cut that off before we laugh, you know. Everyone’s going to think we hate each other.”

  “Well, we can let the viewing audience figure out why, if we hate each other so much, we always hang out together.”

  “I don’t have high hopes that they’ll piece it together.”

  John came in then and gathered us around him using the usual “Ladies!” summon. Each woman was told to hold a glass of champagne as they stood around listening attentively to their leader.

  “Craig will be entering the room in just one minute. I would encourage you each to spend a little time with him and get to know him. Tonight is very important, since thirteen of you will be sent home.”

  There were gasps from around the room, and I looked around, slack-jawed, wondering if I was the only one who knew how these shows worked. We all knew there was no way they were keeping twenty-five of us around; the house was probably not even big enough for half that; besides which, we’d been told in the emails and paperwork. Then again, it was more than likely that many of these women hadn’t bothered reading any of it.

  But maybe the stunned reaction was just an act; we’d been told to exaggerate all our emotions, after all. The smallest shock became a huge drama. Perhaps I didn’t give the girls enough credit as thespians.

  “And now, ladies, please welcome Craig,” said John, who signaled for the man to enter.

  When Craig came into the room the women let out screams and cheers as though Elvis had come back from the grave and was now standing in their midst. Somehow this man whom they’d never met before a few hours earlier was worthy of applause simply for existing. Jesus. I had to find a way to get interested in this game.

  “Hello, ladies,” said Craig. I wondered when these two men would come up with a new word for us, but I supposed it would be frowned upon if they called us “chicks,” “bitches” or “hot lips.”

  “Hi, Craig,” said a chorus of women. I didn’t participate, not being a sheep, though I realized it was expected of me.

  “I’m so excited about this journey we’re about to take together. I hope that somewhere in this room is my future mate.”

  “Awwww,” said the choir. Simple math seemed to dictate that most of them would be awfully disappointed.

  I stood to the side, wondering about Craig’s odd choice of wording. I understood that he probably didn’t want to use the exact words of other reality shows, but to talk about a “mate?” It sounded an awful lot like he was referring to a herd of animals and was considering eventually mounting one of us, rather than going for the usual “woman of my dreams,” “my future wife” “my life partner” or even “fuck buddy.”

  John walked forward now and clapped his hands together, interrupting my thought process. “Now, ladies,” he said (Jesus Christ, have the writers never heard of a thesaurus?) “As you know this show is meant to be full of twists and turns and we won’t disappoint you.”

  I watched as several cameras turned towards the women, no doubt to catch any reaction that would come with whatever announcement he was about to make. Would we be wrestling in pudding? Knife fighting? Maybe we’d have a contest in which we’d slap each other with raw chickens.

  “By now you’ve all met Craig and you know that he’s a rather strong physical specimen. But you don’t know everything about him or his rather interesting genetic structure.” This reminded me of the mate comment in its odd wording. Were we part of a biology experiment that we hadn’t previously been made aware of? My curiosity was piqued, anyhow. The evening was getting more interesting.

  “Craig, I’d like you to step forward. Ladies, if you please, back up a little.”

  The women, who were all standing in a semi-circle, opened up the space, reluctant to put distance between themselves and Craig. I remained where I was, as far away from the man as I could get while remaining in the same room.

  Craig, meanwhile, stepped forward and smiled his big, slightly goofy grin.

  “I’d like you to show these ladies who you really are,” said John.

  Julia, who was standing next to me, whispered, “God, I hope he pulls off a rubber mask and reveals that he’s a shrivelled old woman.” I stifled a giggle.

  All eyes were locked on Craig. I knew that, whatever was about to happen, there wouldn’t be a second take. This would be the moment in which the big twist occurred. It had better be good.

  Craig did something then that none of us expected, regardless of how active our imaginations might have been.

  He got down on his hands and knees. Nervous giggles erupted from the crowd, as well as mumbles of confusion. But within a few seconds the confusion changed to another emotion. Before our eyes the man altered into something else.

  Five:

  Shifters are Real

  I heard a sort of a cracking sound, as though kindling were burning on a fire. Suddenly Craig’s suit tore apart at every seam and his body seemed to expand in every direction. Fur burst through his flesh, coating the form which otherwise would have been naked and mutated.

  His face was the most remarkable part of him, however. It shifted from its handsome model-boy visage into something that could and should be horrifying: the snarling face of a large grey wolf.

  From the crowd came a chorus of shrieks, gasps and indefinable sounds, and I must admit that my voice was no exception. At first I simply didn’t believe what I was seeing, and wondered if it was possible to do something like this using special effects or CGI. But no, it was happening in the same room as us, in front of our eyes. Shifters were real after all.

  A familiar scent filled the air: musk, animalistic headiness mixed with the strong aroma of a human male. It was like what I’d smelled when Tristan had approached Kate and me in the mall. I realized that I was smelling Craig, whose scent apparently became all the stronger when he’d morphed into a wolf.

  One woman to my left drooped to the ground like a rag doll and I realized that she’d fainted. Some of the girls surrounding her reacted quickly, some not at all. Looking at the faces in the room I was aware that the principal mood was shock.

  “Ladies,” said John as Craig, in wolf form, stood panting on the floor, “Welcome to our new show, ‘Competing for the Alpha.’ For the next several weeks, Craig will be searching for his true mate among you.

  “Now, I realize that this must come as a shock, and that some of you will not want to remain here after tonight. Shifters have long been thought the stuff of legend and in fact are part of a very exclusive crowd. This show, its very existence, is a risk to our kind.” (Our kind. So John was in on the game; he was one of them.) “But it’s time, we think, to shine the spotlight on us. For centuries, we’ve had to avoid media attention, to deny our existence. But we are part of society like everyone else.”

  The night had become far more intriguing all of a sudden: we candidates were now a part of history.

  I imagined the women watching this show from the comfort of their living rooms, expecting a cookie-cutter football player dude for a star and ending up with a wolf man. I was absolutely loving this.

  I turned and smiled at Julia, who seemed just as entertained as I was. I could tell that she wasn’t going to go anywhere; after living on the streets this wasn’t frightening in the least.

  “Anyone who would like to leave is welcome to do so,” continued John. “When you do go, we only remind you that you’ve each signed a non-disclosure agreement about anything---and I do mean anything---that occurs here until the show has been aired. Failure to adhere to this contract will result in a fairly massive punishment.”

  “I imagine he means ‘your throat will be torn out by a huge, angry wolf,’” whispered Julia
. “Awesome.”

  I didn’t doubt that she was right. Something in John’s voice was menacing suddenly, unlike the put-on friendliness that he usually exhibited, and I could tell that he was instilling fear in the others. I didn’t feel too comfortable either, truth be told.

  “I ask that anyone who wishes to leave do so now. You will be given all of your things and escorted out.”

  At this point, several women moved towards the door. The one who’d fainted had regained consciousness and was now making her way out as well, her back to the wall as she nervously eyed Craig.

  The others, who included Brittany and Noelle, remained where they were, the same determined looks on their faces that had been plastered on since I’d first seen them. I wasn’t surprised; women like that wouldn’t have cared if they’d discovered that Craig had scales and devil horns. They were here to compete and to win, to prove their superiority; not to fall in love.

  “And now Craig will retreat upstairs where we have a set of new clothes for him, and then he’ll join you for the rest of the evening.”

  Craig paced out the living room door and up the stairs, his paws lightly padding as he went. There was a gracefulness in his movements that was quite beautiful.

  “I like him better as a wolf,” I admitted to Julia when I was confident that the cameras were far from us.

  “I think I do too. It’s kind of a shame that he won’t stay like that.”

  The camera crews were gathered now around the women who seemed most hysterical. I noticed that even Brittany and Noelle, the evil Botox twins, were putting on airs of over-excitement and freaking out when they saw that the airtime would go to the others if they didn’t step up their own over-dramatic game.

  “Can you believe it? It’s terrifying,” said Brittany. “I mean, what will happen? We could all be killed on television.”

  Somehow I didn’t think death was a worry of hers. Being brutally murdered on TV would ensure her some sort of fame and she’d never turn that down, even if it meant being deceased.

  I was a little surprised at my own cool reaction to the whole thing. “I wonder if I’m in a state of shock,” I said to Julia. “Somehow this isn’t making me lose my mind like I would have expected.”

  “Me neither. I don’t know why. Well, that’s not entirely true: my grandmother told me about shifters when I was a kid and it never occurred to me not to believe her. She didn’t make it into a Santa Claus sort of story; just said it like it was all true and so to me it was this thing I just knew. I never spoke to anyone about it, though, because I figured they’d think I was nuts. There have always been those people who just refuse to believe they exist.”

  “I heard stories when I was a kid,” I told her. I didn’t see any reason to keep my own history a secret when she’d opened up to me. “The other students in my elementary school even claimed that my father was a shifter. My mother never speaks about it and when I was about nine I asked her if it was true. She didn’t deny it but I left the subject because I felt like I was hurting her, somehow.”

  “That’s kind of crazy,” said Julia. “I don’t mean to say that you are. Just that if you’re part shifter…”

  “I’ve never really known if I should believe it. It’s not like I’ve ever had an urge to turn into something else.”

  “But it makes me wonder if maybe there’s something about you that made Tristan choose you.”

  I balked at this. What did she mean? All the other women were chosen for their looks and I was chosen because I smell like a giant dog?

  Julia could see that I wasn’t pleased by her assertion. “It seems to me that Tristan has a special thing for you, Nikki. I know you’ve seen it in him.”

  “If Tristan chose me because I have shifter blood, he must know how…”

  “To pick out someone with the genetics of a shifter? Seems to me that that’s about right.”

  “Do you think everyone on this show’s a shifter? I mean all the producers and so on.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. Look, they’d have to keep it secret. How better to do that than to keep it among their kind?”

  “Did Tristan recruit you?”

  “Me? Nah, I answered an ad I saw. I thought it would be fun. I suspect that’s how most of the girls ended up here. The only time I’ve heard of Tristan recruiting a girl it was you.”

  I felt it again; that rise of goosebumps on my flesh. Tristan had found me, somehow, among thousands of women. Something about me had called out to him. I was beyond eager to see him now, to understand better, and I wondered how I could manage it.

  My question was answered when he found me few minutes later. There was a lull in the action and the cameras had stopped rolling.

  “How are you doing with all this?” he asked as Julia walked away, flashing me a knowing smile.

  My heart was racing. I didn’t know where to begin.

  “I’m fine. But Tristan, I need to know: why did you choose me to come here? I mean, are you a shifter too?”

  His piercing blue eyes stared into mine and I knew the answer before he spoke. The charming smile was no longer on his face; it had been replaced by a deeply serious look. He put his hand on my arm gently but firmly and pulled me into the next room, which was a small sort of storage space full of electronics and extra gear. We were away from prying cameras and microphones, at least.

  As he stood close to me, I smelled that strong musk again that made my legs go weak. Why couldn’t this be the man I was supposed to pursue? But no, I wouldn’t have wanted to compete for him; I simply wanted him for myself.

  “I am a shifter, yes,” he said quietly. “That’s no secret and it would have come out eventually that everyone working on this show is, or at least has close connections to our pack. As for why I chose you…that’s a hard question to answer.”

  “Well, try. It’s important.”

  “I was drawn to you. It’s not easy to explain. Attraction works differently for us. All I know is that I couldn’t leave you there. I couldn’t let you go. I needed to find a way to bring you close to me, even before I spoke to you.”

  “Ever hear of asking a girl on a date?”

  Tristan almost cracked a smile now. I got the impression that he wished he could have done just that.

  “I knew it couldn’t work that way, not right now, not when I was leaving town to come here. But I wanted to find a way to pull you into my world. Again, I can’t quite explain it. You are…oddly important to me.”

  “I don’t understand why you’d set me up with another shifter if I’m important to you.”

  “Because he’s the designated alpha.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Craig is the leader of the wolf pack in this region. What this means is that he’s the dominant one, physically, even mentally in a way, though I know from watching you earlier that you won’t believe me on that count. His instincts are generally strong and he knows how to defend his pack. He’s more or less earned his position. What he doesn’t have, though, is a mate. To say that Craig isn’t good with women is something of an understatement.”

  “And you thought that setting up a reality show was the way to get him one? Isn’t there an online dating site? Werewolf-finder.com? Matchmater?”

  “Don’t think we haven’t tried. But time’s running out for him---he needs a mate, and soon. All alphas do. And these women have been carefully selected for all sorts of criteria. To be honest with you, we’ve accessed medical records and studied their genetics, so that we know they’re potential mates, even the one who fainted and the others who left. And the fact is that each has the potential to become Craig’s true mate, his for life. He simply needs to find her and claim her.”

  “Everyone including me has that potential?”

  “Including you.” Tristan seemed sad as he uttered the words. But how could I be Craig’s true mate? I felt no connection with him.

  “I have to get back to work,” Tristan said abruptly, and he left
the room. He didn’t touch me, though I felt a tingle run throughout my body as he walked away, as though the breeze in his wake was enough to stimulate each of my nerve endings. All I knew was that, whatever happened, I needed to stay in this game; in this house. I had to find a way to convince Craig to keep me.

  Six:

  Acting Like I Care

  When Craig came back downstairs he appeared to be a simple man again, dressed in a suit that was extremely similar to the first. I wondered how many they’d have to supply him with over the course of the show’s episodes. If he planned to turn into a wolf often, it seemed like he’d be needing a lot of them. Surely they could design some kind of ultra-stretchy suit? A wolf in spandex. The thought intrigued, amused and horrified me.

  “I’m sorry if that shocked any of you,” Craig said to the crowd who’d gathered around him again, though we were now short four women. “But the fact that so many of you have stayed shows me that you’re serious about this, and I appreciate that. It takes a strong woman to want to take on the role of mate to a shifter. Now, if you’ll join me for a toast, I’d like to welcome you all properly.”

  The crew had poured us all fresh glasses of champagne and we raised them in unison.

  “Welcome, ladies,” Craig said, smiling broadly again. His teeth flashed sparkling white and took on a new dimension now that I’d seen them in lupine form.

  After the toast he approached Brittany first, and the show proceeded as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

  “May I take you outside to talk?” he asked. I knew that this would go on for hours; each woman would be given a chance to chat with Craig for a few minutes. I wasn’t about to interrupt his conversations so I figured I’d just wait my turn. Meanwhile, I sipped my champagne and pondered my tactics to ensure that I’d be remaining in the house.

  Julia was talking to Diana, the nice, dark-haired woman we’d met earlier. I approached them and said, “So, what’s the plan of attack?”