Southern Alpha Book Three Page 5

  I could only hope that I wasn’t too late to save her.

  I lunged inside, my eyes meeting the Marquis’ back. Without hesitating, I wrapped my right arm around the bastard’s neck and yanked him backwards. We went tumbling against some piece of wood furniture, the weight of our bodies cracking it in half. The Marquis’ elbow smashed hard into my ribs once, twice, but I didn’t care. My eyes were locked on Sierra, who was on her knees on the other side of the room, hands around her neck, gasping for breath.

  Thank God she was alive.

  “Not smart, Patrick,” the Marquis hissed when I’d eased up on my grip. He slipped free of my arm and spun around to face me, those cold, dead eyes of his locked on my own like lasers intent on burning a hole in my skin.

  “You attacked a human,” I yelled, “in her own home. Don’t you dare talk to me about what’s smart!”

  “Human?” I heard a voice rasp in the distance, but I didn’t have time to explain to Sierra what was going on. For the moment, my only concern was getting a would-be murderer out of her place before he got a chance to finish what he’d started.

  “She has no business being with our kind,” he said. “You know it as well as I do. I smelled her on you last night, Patrick. I was doing you a favor by ridding the world of her. She’ll betray you. She’ll do it to all of our kind.”

  “Your…kind?” Sierra wheezed, pushing herself to her feet and backing against the far wall. “Will someone tell me what the hell’s going on here?”

  “Of course,” the Marquis said, twisting around to look at her. “Better yet, I’ll show you.”

  “No!” I yelled, reaching a hand out to grab him before it was too late.

  But by the time I’d moved, the monstrous beast inside him had burst out. Panting like a starving creature, he padded towards her on massive paws.

  His wolf had always been an ugly fucker. Gray-brown, covered with matted patches of fur. Angry black scars cut across his face more than a few times, like a trellis of war wounds. Those were his pride and joy, trophies from every battle he’d ever fought—and won.

  He was an awful, hateful legend, and I was all too pleased to know I’d soon get a chance to take him down in front of all of New Orleans’ shifters.

  “Oh my God!” gasped Sierra when she saw him. Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. She spread her arms against the far wall, hands reaching, searching for anything she could possibly use as a weapon.

  But there was no way she could ever fight him off. I had no choice but to act, and fast.

  Wincing, I let the beast inside me explode from my chest. Fully shifted, I shot across the room in one lightning-fast leap to sink my teeth into the Marquis’ shoulder.

  My enemy let out a blood-curdling yelp, twisting around to try to snap fierce fangs at my neck. I dodged his jaws, slipping easily to the side. He pressed his attack, lunging at me in a snarling fury. But I was too quick. I leapt backwards, teeth bared, head down. For a moment he mirrored my pose, raising his back into the air and letting out a fierce, guttural grumble. He circled me, sizing me up like he wanted to intimidate me, but I had no intention of backing down. I tensed my muscles, ready to pounce. He took a step back and gave one last low growl before springing past me through the French doors and leaping down to the street below.

  I shifted back into my human form and ran to the railing, my fingers gripping its edges as I watched him tear down the street to the sound of drunken tourists’ startled shouts.

  When I was sure he was gone for good, I walked back inside, closed the doors and locked them before turning to face Sierra.

  By now, she was grasping the base of a metal lamp in her hand like a baseball bat, shifting her weight from one foot to the other like she was about to try to hit me out of the park.

  I held out my right hand. “Sierra,” I said, “it’s okay.”

  “You’re…” she began.

  “I know,” I replied, my throat parched with worry. “Yes, I am. I know it has to be terrifying for you, and I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out, not like this…” I stared into her eyes, frightened that she might bolt. That she might leave me and never come back.

  My breath caught in my chest with the realization that I wasn’t afraid of her knowing about the existence of shifters. I wasn’t afraid that our secret would get out if she knew.

  I was only afraid of losing her.

  I half-expected her to unlock the front door and run out, screaming that there was a psychotic killer in her apartment. But instead, her body seemed to relax. Slumping down onto the floor, she set the lamp next to her and leaned her back against the wall, breathing hard.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice oddly controlled.

  My jaw dropped open. “Wait—why are you so calm?” I asked. “You do realize what just happened here, right?”

  “That skull-fucker turned into a wolf,” she said, rubbing her neck again. “Then you did. Yeah. I saw.”

  “Okay, so you do get it,” I said, stupefied. “So why aren’t you freaking out?”

  Sierra rose to her feet, marched over to the small kitchenette to her left, poured herself a glass of water, and took a long swig before spinning back around to face me. She held a hand up and fanned herself for a moment.

  She let out a strange, slightly maniacal-sounding laugh and started talking a mile a minute. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m actually not surprised. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the cemetery was crawling with strange people and giant dogs last night. Maybe it’s because you healed me with that magical balm. Maybe…” she narrowed her eyes to focus on mine, “it’s because your eyes glow blue for no reason that I’ve been able to explain, and I’m relieved just to finally understand what the hell is going on in this insane place.”

  I threw myself down on her couch and let out a long breath. “I fully expected you to tell me to get out of your life,” I said, my heart thundering in my chest. “I thought you’d kick me to the curb. And that was the very best-case scenario.”

  “Why on earth would I want that?” she asked, reaching into the fridge, pulling out two beers and heading over to where I was sitting.

  “When I first found out about shifters, I was fucking horrified,” I told her as she dropped down next to me. “That’s putting it very mildly. I didn’t handle it well. My experience with human-shifter contact hasn’t exactly been positive.”

  She shrugged. I was beginning to wonder if she’d gone into shock all over again. “I don’t know why I’m not freaking out, to be honest,” she said. “Last night I was terrified of everything that was happening. The Marquis, the dogs—my attraction to you, even. Everything was so scary to me, but…” I glanced over to see that she was staring at me intently, like she was as eager to figure out what was going on in her mind as I was. “But ever since this morning, when we…well, you know…”

  “Had a wild quickie on my desk?”

  “Yeah, that,” she said, twisting off her bottle cap. “Ever since then, I’ve felt this weird kind of…I don’t know, connection to you. I guess I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant until now, but now I get it. All those little mysteries—the cemetery, the blue flame, the giant dogs—none of them made sense on their own. That’s what was driving me crazy. I needed an answer. Any answer. This might not be the one I was expecting, but it’s so much better than driving myself crazy.”

  I nodded my head. Of course I understood what she meant; I’d felt it too. It was what had frightened me from the first moment I’d set eyes on her, the first moment we’d touched. The depth of our connection had been enough to send me storming off in the other direction. It was too real, too palpable, as though it could come to overwhelm me, to control my mind and my life.

  “When the Marquis came barging into my place like that,” she continued, “I was scared as hell. I thought I was going to die.” She looked down at the floor and swallowed. “But all I could think about was you, Trick.” She set her beer down on
a side table and reached for me without looking my way. I offered her my hand, squeezing hers gently in an attempt to reassure her.

  “I kept wondering, would I ever see you again? Was everything really going to end this way?” Her voice was stretched thin by now, not by what the Marquis had done to her but by the depth of her emotion. “I think I even said a little prayer in my head. I promised I’d give anything to see you again, just once. I suppose in my mind it meant accepting whatever insanity the world threw my way next.”

  Pulling my hand away, I twisted open my beer and downed half of it in one gulp. “This is definitely insanity, and I’m not sure I want to inflict it on you,” I said, staring into space. “My life is nuts, Sierra. You’re amazing—more amazing than you know. And now you know why I was so reluctant to let anything happen between us. I was scared of pulling you any closer. I still am. You don’t deserve it. It’s…”

  “I know. It’s complicated,” she said, lifting her bottle to clink it ironically against mine. “I suppose I’m now part of the complication.”

  “You are,” I said. “But in the best possible way.” I let out a breath that had been trapped inside my chest for what felt like days. “Hey—you’re not going to write about this, are you?”

  She turned to me with a glare, then relaxed into a boisterous laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me? My editor would have me institutionalized. There’s no way a word of this ever passes my lips, let alone makes its way onto paper.”

  “Thanks. The thing is, we have certain unwritten rules…”

  “Yeah, the Marquis made that sort of clear when he decided it would be better to choke me out than let me learn what you actually are.”

  “I don’t care about the Marquis,” I said. “I care about the pack…and you.”

  Sierra shot me a smile that turned up the temperature on my already all-too-warm heart. “I told you, you’re the kind of guy who doesn’t like disappointing people,” she said.

  “And you were right. You nailed me.”

  “Well, technically,” she said, taking another gulp of beer, “you nailed me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She set the bottle down again and rose to her feet to grab a broom that was sitting in the corner. As she began to sweep up the broken glass littering the floor, she said, “So listen—I have questions.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I imagine you do.”

  Chapter 7

  Sierra

  “First things first,” I said as I swept the shards of glass into a tidy pile far from the couch. I tucked the broom back into its corner and went back to sit on the couch next to him.

  I could no longer look at the gorgeous man who was so close to me without seeing it—that beautiful, majestic creature who’d magically emerged from his body and fought to save my life. I saw the wolf now in the blue of Trick’s eyes, in the stubble on his cheeks. Finally, I was beginning to understand where his wildness and his unreadable nature came from.

  I swallowed and asked my first question. “How long have you been a…what do you call yourself, anyhow? And please, for the love of God, tell me you don’t say werewolf.”

  There was no way Trick was anything with w-e-r-e in the title. That prefix conjured images of clawed, deformed, super-hairy men who looked like the love-child of Chewbacca and a stray pit bull. Trick was a sexy, muscular man in human form. And his wolf…well, for the few moments that I’d gotten to look at him, all I’d thought was that he was beautiful, as well as powerful. Tall, sleek, and exquisite…. not to mention wild-eyed and protective, like the man himself.

  “We’re called shifters,” he said, “and the answer to your first question is a long time.”

  I shot him a Come on, give me more than that glance, and he relented.

  “About a century,” he said.

  “Oh. Wow.” I tucked my right leg under me and took a deep breath. So, my lover was over a hundred years old. Another fact that should have hit me like a shock to my system. But for some insane reason, it didn’t.

  I still hadn’t quite figured out why I wasn’t on the floor in the fetal position by now, sucking my thumb and praying for a near-lethal dose of anti-psychotic drugs. But for whatever reason, everything Trick was telling me seemed perfectly natural. It all made sense.

  Which made no sense at all.

  Unless I’d fallen so hard for him that there was literally nothing I could learn about him that would turn me off. As long as he wasn’t a psycho killer, Trick could do almost no wrong in my eyes.

  Boy, was I screwed.

  “How did it happen?” I asked. “I mean, how did you become like this?”

  Trick clinked his fingernails against the side of his beer bottle as if he was searching for the best way to answer the question. “There’s something called marking,” he finally replied. “A wolf shifter can bite a person without necessarily turning them. But when their intention is to inflict the change…” His voice had thinned out, like it was an effort to describe the process.

  “Yes?” I asked, reaching for his hand. He was so hot to the touch, and I wondered if it was because his wolf was so close to his skin.

  “The bite works its way into your bloodstream and takes over your body. It’s…painful, to say the least, like a sickness. At least for humans.” As he spoke I couldn’t help but detect the note of deep pain in his voice, and suddenly I felt cruel. I was asking him to relive a trauma, to relate to me how he’d been altered on the most fundamental level. He’d had one life stolen away and another inflicted on him, and it hardly seemed fair for me to conjure the memory.

  “I see,” I said. “I’m sorry. So it wasn’t something you wanted, then.”

  He shook his head. “Not in the least. It’s a cruel fate to inflict on anyone. A curse, in more ways than I can say. But it’s my life now. A life that comes with certain responsibilities—which is why I keep to myself most of the time.”

  “Right,” I replied. “Louis said something about that.” Just as I mentioned our mutual friend, a lightbulb went on somewhere in the darkest reaches of my mind. “Holy shit. Louis—is he…I mean, is he…?”

  Trick nodded. “Yeah, he is. He actually wanted me to open up and tell you all this. He likes you a lot. Thinks you’re good for me.”

  “I know,” I said, lifting Trick’s hand to my lips and kissing each finger before setting it down again. “Okay, more questions. An easy one this time. How the living hell do your clothes stay on?”

  “Magic,” he said. “Like so many other things you’ve seen by now.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said, watching as the brightness faded a little from his irises. “I’ve witnessed more magic here in New Orleans than I ever believed existed. I thought it was all hokum, but…”

  “But.” Trick let out a laugh. “The funny thing is, I’d venture to guess there are a lot of shifters where you come from,” he said. “We’re not exactly rare. We’re just good at hiding.”

  “I feel so stupid,” I said. “I had no idea. For that matter, I don’t understand why you hide. I mean, it’s absolutely amazing that you can do what you do…I guess I would have thought you’d want to show it to the world.”

  Trick dropped his chin and threw me a look that made me laugh. “You were a reporter,” he said. “Tell me something—how well does this world accept people who are a little different from what’s considered ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’?”

  “Okay, fair point.” I squeezed his hand before pulling it to my lips again. After I’d kissed it, he pulled it away and stroked his fingers gently over my cheek.

  “I’m so grateful to you,” I said, reveling in the sensation of his touch.

  “For what?”

  “For showing me your wolf. For letting me into your world—and, of course, for what you did to the Marquis.”

  He hooked a finger under my chin, pulling my eyes to his, and gazed at me with a warmth I’d never seen from him. I didn’t think it was possible to feel closer to him than wh
en he’d been buried deep inside me. But in this moment, I felt as though his blood was running through my veins. Our minds were one.

  A new strength had taken me over—and a new vision of a world that I was only just beginning to understand.

  “I’m glad too,” he said in a soft, sensual voice. “But I should be thanking you.”

  “Why’s that? You’re the one who keeps saving me from certain death.”

  “Because you’ve healed something inside me, Sierra. Something I didn’t think could ever be healed.”

  “Healed you? But you’re so strong. You seem unbreakable.”

  “I’ve been broken for a long time,” he said. “Trust me. The shattered glass that was all over the floor earlier is nothing, compared to the mess of broken shards I keep inside myself.”

  “Well then, we’ll have to keep working on you.”

  “Deal.” He gave me a reassuring smile. “But it’s not all bad,” he said. “There’s a sense of community to a wolf pack that’s not like anything that humans share.”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “The wolf shifters protect each other. We look out for each other—at least we used to, when there was order to our pack, when we last had an Alpha.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked, almost wincing with fear of what the answer might be.

  “He was killed,” Trick said, “in the woods one night when he was out on patrol. No witnesses.”

  “But you think you know who did it,” I said, “and I assume that means I know, too.”

  Trick nodded. “He’s a parasite,” he said. “He’s done more harm in this world than I can tell you. He’s ruined so many lives…” He reached over, cupped his hand behind my neck and kissed the crown of my head. “He won’t ruin mine or yours,” he said. “I promise.”

  “I know.” I pulled away and for a moment, we just looked into one another’s eyes before my mouth finally dropped open. “I have one more question,” I said. “Okay, maybe two.”