by Grey, Aspen
But I couldn’t help but feel as though there was something…wrong with me. I felt off-balance, like a car running with a flat tire or a ship that couldn’t quite find its way through the waves. I felt incomplete, as though there was a secret inside me that not even I understood that was begging to be let out. But so far, I’d been unable to find the answer.
There’s something wrong with you and you know it.
But my heart was heavy as I patrolled the Hillcrest streets, having come over from Mission Beach to get a change of scenery. I was starting to be too recognizable to the cops in the area and that wasn’t good.
The crowd was…interesting, to say the least.
There was a group of really fancy-looking human men standing outside of a club smoking those stupid vape pens with some kind of scented crap in them. There was a drag queen crooning on about his makeup and Britney Spears’ next comeback, but then down the street some ways there were two alphas with expensive-looking suits on standing at the mouth of an alley.
Tall and decent-looking? Check.
Obvious cash? Check.
Here we go.
I walked quickly towards them, shouldering through a crowd of trust fund baby kids wearing Commes De Garcon sneakers and Rick Owens jackets.
“Gucci is so over,” one of them remarked. “Tired.”
“I’d never own a piece of Gucci,” his friend agreed. “Not since those rappers started talking about it.”
Shaking my head, I kept moving towards the two alphas.
“Hey, big boys,” I called out to them. “You guys looking for a good time?”
They didn’t even turn to look at me.
That’s odd, I thought as I closed in on them. They were obviously paying attention to something down in the alley, and I stepped right up beside them to see. But as I did, before I even laid eyes on what it was they were looking at, a scent hit my nose with the force of a dump truck going eighty miles per hour.
Fuck!
Not just a scent. Two scents.
“Wow!” I gasped when I laid eyes on them.
I couldn’t make them out fully, as their backs were to me, but they were both omegas. The brown-haired one smelled of hot chocolate that instantly made my mouth start to water, and the other one, whose hair was longer and shaggier, smelled like pineapple. Somehow, my cock began to grow beneath my jeans.
What is happening? I thought as my insides twisted and an airy sensation swept through my skull like my mind was being lifted into the clouds. I started to tingle and was suddenly completely unaware of anything going on around me. A building could have collapsed into the earth and I wouldn’t have noticed.
I couldn’t stop staring at their bodies, taking in every shape, every curve, every muscular line I could make out. They were definitely street boys, both of them with gorgeous asses. They weren’t too tall, but they were both omegas—why would I be drooling over a couple of omegas as an omega myself?
“Hey,” a voice called out from somewhere. A hand touched my arm. “HEY!”
“WHAT?!” I blurted out, spinning around to face the two alphas who were staring at me.
“If you want those omegas, you’re out of luck,” one of them told me.
What?
Did they not recognize another working boy when they saw one? Maybe they saw the dumb look on my faces. After all—why did I want them like I did?
A thought entered my mind.
No. No, that’s impossible!
I shook my head and looked back down the alley at the boys. As I inhaled again, their scents triggered more of the same feelings inside of me. I felt like rushing over to them and fucking their brains out. My cock was absolutely begging to be unleashed and urges I’d never experienced in my life were rising up within me.
What is happening to me!?
“You get the fuck out of here too!” someone else shouted. I looked past the omegas where a gangster-looking motherfucker was waving his hands our direction as if to shoo us away. “These boys are off the market tonight until they get their shit together!”
“Fuck you!” one of them shouted. I couldn’t help but smile, but the gangster wasn’t amused. He nodded to the alpha henchman standing beside him, and I watched in horror as the big bastard started to advance on the two boys.
Keep away from them! I thought as my fangs extended.
The jerk, who barely had any hair on his head and was dressed like your stereotypical bruiser, stepped in quickly, raised a fist and drove it into the pineapple-smelling omega’s stomach, causing him to topple over.
“NO!” I roared, and before I knew what I was even doing, I shifted into my panther form and sprinted down the alley towards the omegas, understanding deep down in my soul that the thought I’d had when I first smelled them was in fact true, as impossible as it seemed: they were my fated mates.
Chapter Four
Billy
My stomach flared with pain as Pablo’s man drove his fist into me. As I toppled over, I heard a scream from behind me.
“NO!”
I hit the ground and sucked in air through my nostrils. As I did, a scent, so overwhelming and powerful that I could barely believe something so incredible could exist, swept into my lungs like a thousand fireworks.
It smelled like the purest pine, like what I imagined it smelled like in the woods of New England, and, despite the horrible pain I was feeling, woke my body with a beautiful feeling of elation and joy.
What—can it be?
“You son of a bitch!” Tommy screamed. I looked up as he swung at Pablo’s man. But before anything could happen, an alpha panther, his fur a glorious charcoal black, streaked through the air and sank his teeth into the man’s neck.
His cry was cut short, stifled by the powerful bite. By the time he toppled over and hit the ground, he was done for. The alpha released him and his body fell like a rag doll. He spun around quickly and snarled at Pablo, who was standing there wide-eyed like he’d just seen an alien spaceship land behind us.
“Wait—wait!” he stammered as our savior gnashed his teeth in his direction.
His scent washed over Tommy and me like a warm breeze, amplifying the insane sensations that were already racing through me. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Tommy and glanced up at him to see a stunned look on his face, almost comparable to the one on Pablo’s.
Our alpha protector let out a ferocious growl as he positioned himself between the Hillcrest gangster and us. His coat was rich and healthy, and his body rippled with muscles as he stood there ready to react.
My mind was spinning.
The pain in my stomach was the last thing on my mind as I knelt there in the alley, looking up at Pablo, wondering what his next move would be, with the most incredible scent I’d ever smelled in my life coating my lungs like it would never leave.
The scent of my fated mate.
Impossible!
I coughed and clutched my stomach as Pablo turned and ran. For a second, I thought our mysterious protector was going to chase after him, but as Pablo rounded the corner and vanished, the alpha turned back to us and shifted back to human form.
“Are you okay?” he asked, quickly kneeling down beside me, his kind eyes looking down at me with a warmth I’d never felt before.
He was tall and pale, much paler than most boys in Southern California, with long jet black hair like he was a character out of a vampire movie or something, but one of the ones where the vampires were played by male models. The smell of pine was overwhelming as I fought to find the words to respond.
“Y-yes,” I finally stammered as he reached out a hand. I took it and he helped me to my feet. I was practically jelly as I looked at him. I could barely even smell Tommy anymore, despite the fact that he was standing right beside me.
“You’re sure?” he asked. I nodded.
“Yes.”
“He didn’t touch you, did he?” This time he was talking to Tommy. I looked over and saw that he was just about as dumbfounded as
I was.
“No,” he replied. “You—you got him before he could.”
I tried to keep my eyes on the gorgeous alpha’s face and not let them drift down to his cock, which was almost impossible, as his body was sculpted like a perfect V that was designed to lead my gaze straight down there.
“We should get out of here,” he told us, glancing down at Pablo’s man who now lay dead at our feet. “My name is Garrett. Come with me. You’ll be safe.”
I was hypnotized. I knew I was supposed to say something, do something, but I was frozen in place like a spray of water caught by a polar vortex.
“Come on!” Garrett repeated, his voice sharp enough to snap me out of my stupid state for long enough to put one foot in front of the other as he took my hand. He took Tommy’s too, and I looked over at him as we ran and saw the same dumb look on his face that must have been on mine. Whatever it was that I was feeling, he was feeling it too.
The scent of a fated mate? That’s not possible!
I didn’t believe in that horse shit. It was just like those “true love” stories told by humans to make themselves feel better and hopeful about the future. Fated mates were nothing more than a couple of really horny idiots who had convinced themselves that they were “meant for each other” and nothing in the world could ever break them apart. It was crap. Fairy-tale nonsense.
Isn’t it? Then what am I feeling?
Garrett steered us out of the alley and onto the street. I heard the jeers of the crowd as we ran past them, but none of their chatter even registered. We kept running, racing through the streets until nothing mattered anymore besides feelings spinning around inside of me.
“Where are you taking us?” Tommy managed to ask.
“My place,” Garrett replied. “You’ll be safe there.”
“He can track us.”
“No, he can’t,” Garrett smiled, tugging us down a side street with only one light casting hard shadows everywhere. Garrett released my hand, and I felt an enormous sense of loss and longing sweep over me like an actual physical force threatening to bring me to my knees. I reached out and grabbed an old signpost to keep myself from falling over.
I watched the alpha, in all his glory, as he stepped up to faded wall of a building and plucked out a loose brick to reveal a small spray bottle. He took it, aimed it at both of us and sprayed.
“Pheromone blockers,” Tommy said softly as Garrett turned the bottle on himself.
“I’ve got them stashed all over the city,” he said. “Comes in handy around here.”
“Yeah…” I replied, mesmerized.
As he sprayed himself, his glorious scent was taken from me, and for a moment, I felt myself start to come back to my senses. But when I looked at him and saw his strong physique, his obvious strength and ability, and his sheer beauty, I still felt as though I’d been hit by a punch to the gut.
“Fucking alphas in this town,” he scoffed, forcing a smile as he looked back at us. “So glad I’m not one of them!”
Not one of them? I thought. Wait, what? What’s he talking about?
“Come on,” he said before I could keep thinking. “Let’s get the fuck off the streets.”
Chapter Five
Tommy
What the fuck is happening?
I felt like a car that had lost its wheels and was now being towed down the highway by a tractor-trailer truck that had absolutely no intent of stopping.
That son of a bitch Pablo had showed up, ready to ruin our night and then some, and this guy Garrett—he’d come out of nowhere, with a scent that seemed to have been made for me. I’d never felt anything like it, but I knew what it meant.
Fated mates.
But that was bullshit. A bunch of rom-com, movie-of-the-week crap that shifter boys told each other while standing on the corners, kidding themselves that one day one of their Johns would end up being their one true love.
But if it was bullshit—what was it that I was feeling?
What was even stranger was that Billy was feeling it too. I could just tell by looking at him. His eyes, usually alert, sarcastic and filled with energy, were dull and submissive as though he’d been given an anesthetic or was doped up out of his mind. We had both become different people since meeting Garrett only minutes ago. Parts of our personalities that had never come out before were surfacing, and I felt an overwhelming urge to give myself to the alpha who had put himself in danger just for us—two boys he didn’t even know.
“This way,” he said, his voice sending shivers through my body, causing goose bumps to raise on my skin.
But I’d lost his scent. The pheromone blockers were necessary—I knew that—but the loss of his smell was like the loss of a loved one that I had never known existed until they were gone. As Garrett tugged me along, I stared at his beautiful back and the side of his face that I could see, and wondered if he had felt what I had felt when I smelled him.
He must have!
There was a reason he’d jumped in to save us, right? Out here on the streets, people just didn’t do random favors like that for each other, especially when it meant putting their life on the line. But he’d done both for us, and that had to mean something. Now he was taking us away, and despite my cautious instincts and all the horrible possibilities that could lie in store for us, I somehow knew he meant us no harm.
We raced through the darkness, cutting through the center courtyard of an apartment complex, passing a wide-eyed grandma smoking a pipe. She raised a hand like she had something to say, but we were past her in an instant and racing down the next block.
Finally, Garrett slowed at an old apartment building that looked like it should have been condemned long ago.
“Here!” he hissed as he pulled us towards an old dumpster.
“Where are you taking us?” Billy asked. In response, Garrett shouldered the old hunk of metal out of the way. It swung as though it was anchored down somehow, and I realized it had been jury-rigged to function as a kind of door, a barrier to discourage any outsiders from wandering close to the building.
He pulled it closed behind us and led us to a door that was hidden beneath the stairs leading to the second floor. Quickly, he unlocked it and ushered us inside. His scent wafted over us as we entered, and I closed my eyes to inhale as he closed and locked the door behind us. I fell to my knees in the darkness, my heart racing and my head spinning like a washing machine with an unbalanced load.
What is going on? What’s—what’s happening to me?
The lights came on and I looked around to see that we were in an apartment much nicer than anyone would expect from the outside of the building—and that was the point. Garrett had found this place, and was probably squatting, and then fixed it up into something quite comfortable and tasteful.
There were two mid-century couches, one orange and one lime green, facing each other in the center of the room with a warm wooden coffee table between them. There was a bookshelf filled with books, a kitchen on the right side of the room and a hallway leading to what I assumed would be the bedroom and bathroom.
“Who the fuck was that guy?” Garrett hissed. I looked up to see him pacing back and forth angrily, his gorgeous body tense like a boxer getting ready for a fight. “And what did he want with you!?”
“He’s a pimp,” I managed to mutter. “He’s been squeezing me and Billy, doing his best to get us to give him a cut of our take.”
“We’ve been ducking him,” Billy added. “But I guess he got fed up with waiting.”
It was then I noticed the blood dripping from Garrett’s lips, and an uncharacteristic urge came over me, and I found myself on my feet, walking over to the sink and wetting down a paper towel with warm water.
“Here,” I told him. “Let me take care of that for you.”
I dabbed at his lips, doing my best to ignore the stench of Pablo’s man’s blood, wishing I could smell Garrett’s scent and not just what had saturated his apartment.
“I don’t—I don
’t even know your names,” he said softly.
“I’m Tommy,” I replied. “And that’s Billy over there.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly. I felt his eyes on me and looked up to a sight I’d never seen before. Garrett’s eyes were different colors. One was brown and one was blue. I remembered there was a name, a scientific term for that, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I also didn’t care. All I knew was that I was smitten. Absolutely, one hundred percent, smitten.
“It’s a good thing we had a big strong alpha like you come along,” Billy said, getting up and coming over to join us.
Garrett frowned and looked at him. “What are you talking about? I’m not an alpha.”
Chapter Six
Garrett
Big strong alpha?
What were these two omegas talking about? I was an omega like them—couldn’t they smell me? Sure, maybe I’d managed to take out that alpha back there, but that was only because I’d gotten the jump on him. I’m sure in a one-on-one fight he’d have chewed right through me.
“That’s a good one!” Billy laughed as he leaned across the counter and looked at me. I couldn’t stop thinking about just how gorgeous he was, and my balance felt completely off as the phrase fated mates swam about my mind like a sparkling school of fish. “Not an alpha! You know, if you ever want to stop being a bodyguard, you could have a career in comedy!”
“What are you talking about?” I replied indignantly. “I’m not an alpha.”
I heard a strange sound from Tommy and looked down to see him laughing softly to himself as he made his way to the trash can to throw away the bloody paper towel he’d used to wipe my lips clean.
“There’s such a thing as too much modesty,” he said. He turned around and looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on my midsection before finding my eyes again.
“I’m not—” I started to say, but stopped as I looked at both of them standing there before me. Their scents were gone now, masked by the pheromone blockers I’d used on them, but the effects they’d had one me were still there.