by Grey, Aspen
“No, it’s not!” I said quickly. I forced a smile, but must have done a good job as it seemed to work on him. The sad look on his face vanished and he gave me a loving pat on the knee.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s take a look inside.”
Dad opened his door and I got out and followed him to the front steps and stood back while he went up them, expecting them to collapse at any moment. Fortunately, they held strong and dad retrieved the key from his pocket and opened the front door.
He’d bought the place sight unseen, which was a huge risk, but the owners had been adamant about selling it quickly and had let it go for a really good price, which was good, as the divorce hadn’t finalized yet and we were short on cash—really short.
The door swung open to reveal the inside, and to my surprise, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected.
“How about that?” he said with a smile, raising his arms like a presenter. There was a living room to the right, and while small, it had a bay window and a yellow couch that looked to be in pretty good shape. There was a tiny study on the left, and a hallway that led to the kitchen in the back.
We took the stairs to the second floor and found the bathroom and two bedrooms on opposite sides of the house. Dad pointed to the larger of the two. “That one’s yours.”
“Oh, no, dad,” I protested. “You take the big one.”
“No, no,” he refused. “The old man doesn’t need that much space. You go ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as shootin’,” he smiled. “Besides, you still have one more year of school left. I’m sure you’ll need space for your projects and all that.”
“Thanks, dad,” I said, giving him a hug. “You’re the best.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon unloading the truck, being forced inside when those rain clouds indeed made their way overhead and dropped an ocean of rain on our heads. Dad ordered a pizza from a local restaurant and we watched Netflix on the couch using my iPad, as we still didn’t have a television yet.
“Dad, I’m nervous about tomorrow,” I confessed. The divorce had come at the most inopportune time (as if there was an opportune time for your parents to split up) as it was my senior year of high school and I’d been torn away from everyone I’d ever known and brought here where I knew no one.
“I know, bud,” he replied. “But I wouldn’t worry. You’re a friendly guy. You’ll fit right in.”
“Do you think there are many shifters here? Because if I have to spend a whole school year turning down human guys—”
“I’m sure you’ll sniff out some,” he smiled. “We are up in the woods after all.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, and they’re probably all smelly, grimy lumberjacks living off the land with no clue how to dress and horrible taste in fashion and music and—”
“Whoa, there!” my dad exclaimed as though he were calming a horse. “Easy there, wolfie! Let’s not start with the doomsday scenarios just yet. See how your first day goes and who you run into. I don’t know what you’ll find, but I can guarantee you one thing.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“It won’t be anywhere near as bad as you say,” he replied. “In fact, this move might just be the best thing that ever happens to us—to you.”
I doubt it, I thought. But that’s not what I said.
“Yeah, dad. I hope so.”
Chapter Two
Blue
The next day went by pretty fast. Dad dropped me off, said goodbye and went off to his job at the lumber mill. I felt as though I was a soldier heading into hostile territory, but I kept my head up, found my locker, got my books from the office, made it through all of my classes and even managed to answer a few questions in calculus, which I was great at despite hating math with a passion. Dad had been right about school itself not being that bad, but he’d been wrong about one thing, the most important thing:
There were no shifters.
I was the only one—a lone wolf so to speak, thrust into a new environment completely on my own. I sat by myself at lunch and no one made an attempt to get to know me. This wasn’t like those movies where the new kid is instantly welcomed by a group of outsiders who tells them everything there is to know about the school. As I stepped out of the front doors of the school and into the cold September drizzle, far away from the sun of Southern California, I felt more alone than I’d ever felt before.
“You guys want to go to the quarry?” a good-looking senior guy asked a group of girls standing close by.
“It’s too cold for swimming,” one of them replied.
“He’s just trying to get us in our bathing suits!”
“Aw, you read my mind,” he laughed. “My parents are out of town. How about a party at my place?”
“Hell, yes,” one of the girls replied. “I can get my drink on and my dance on!”
I turned slightly towards them, trying to make myself noticeable and hoping they were friendly enough to new kids that I might get an invitation too. But it was like they looked right past me, as though they could somehow tell that I was a shifter and did not belong with them.
“Cool, I’ll see you guys around eight,” the guy said as he hopped down the steps and waved to his friends. They hopped in a black Camaro and sped away laughing. My heart sank.
How was I supposed to make friends when I felt so out of place? How was I supposed to date or find a serious boyfriend? Shifters and humans didn’t coexist—the humans didn’t even know we existed, so to get together with one was impossible. I could never be bred by a human, never know the love of a human, never reveal my true self to a human.
“I’m doomed,” I said to myself as I texted my dad.
Where r u?
I looked around but didn’t see his truck. A few seconds later I got a reply.
Running late. Be there in fifteen.
“Ugh,” I groaned, locking my phone. Fifteen minutes? I could shift into my wolf form and run back home in five. I was even contemplating it for a moment—I could stash my bag in my locker and hide my clothes somewhere out back so I didn’t destroy them when I shifted—but before I could do something that rash, I heard the sound of an engine and a window rolling down behind me. Before I even heard the voice, I smelled him.
A shifter!
“You look lost,” the voice called. My heart leapt as I spun around to see an alpha leaning out of the driver’s side window of a lifted black pickup. He was handsome, obviously older, with brown eyes and brown hair that he’d cut into a faux-hawk. It was a little douchey, but then again, so was his truck and sleeveless t-shirt he was wearing. That was his look and I was okay with that.
“Just...a little,” I managed to reply. “I’m new here.”
“I can see that,” he smiled. His scent was strange, like that sweet-smelling smoke you get at a bonfire—not quite seductive, but definitely alpha. “Get in. I’ll give you a ride.”
My instincts told me to be wary. I was in a new town, knew no one, and my dad was only fifteen minutes away. But then again, he was the only shifter I’d run into all day, and if the town was so sparsely populated by our kind, what were the chances he was some kind of a bad guy?
But still, I hesitated.
“Relax, sweet pea,” he smirked, almost condescendingly. “I’m not going to drug, kidnap and rape you or anything.”
I burst out laughing. His joke instantly relieved all of the tension, and I shrugged. “All right. As long as you don’t do that! What’s your name?”
“Larcon, what’s yours?”
“Blue,” I replied.
“Blue? I like that.”
All smiles, I hopped in the passenger side of his truck and texted my dad.
Got a ride from a friend. Be home soon.
Dad instantly replied.
Great! See? Not that bad!
“So, my place is just down the road, it’s uh…Emory Lane.”
I pointed left out of the school parking lot, but to my sur
prise, Larcon took a right which headed into town.
“Uh…” I said slowly. “What happened to not kidnapping me?”
“Relax,” he smiled. “I can’t bring a cute omega like you home without at least taking him out for a quick drink, can I?”
“I’m not old enough to drink,” I smiled back.
“Don’t worry about that,” he replied. “I know a place.”
I should have been more cautious, but I was feeling excited. I’d gone the whole day feeling alone and now I’d not only run into one of my own kind, but he was a real looker too! An older guy alpha with a nice scent and his own truck who was taking me out for a drink? Maybe this was the good twist to my crummy day.
He pulled into the small downtown of the aptly named Sleepy Hills and into a parking lot beside a dive bar that didn’t even have a sign. “Come on,” he said as he hopped out and led me inside.
My heart was starting to race as I stepped into the dimly lit establishment that smelled like stale beer and wet. I’d never even been a big drinker, but I was longing for some kind of contact with another one of my kind, and to be honest, I was a horny teenage boy too and Larcon was a hottie—even if he was a bit of a redneck cliché.
“Two rum and Cokes, Bruna,” Larcon said with a wave to Bruna, the bartender, a heavyset gal with her hair in a red bandana.
“He of age?” she asked. For a moment, I almost jumped out of my skin, but then I saw her smile and knew she was just messing with us. We all laughed and Larcon led me over to a table near the back in a corner out of the way. Sleepy Hills must have been a really quiet town, as we were the only ones in the place.
“So tell me about yourself,” Larcon said as we took a seat. He pulled his chair up close to me, so close I could feel the warmth from his body. “What brings you to Sleepy Hills?”
“Oh, that’s a long sad story,” I replied. “But tell me—where are all the shifters? I didn’t run into any in school!”
“Yeah, we keep to ourselves mostly. I’m part of a pack, we’re called the Kurrens, and we live on the other side of Mist Peak. There’s another pack on this side, but I wouldn’t go anywhere near them.”
“Oh? Why not?” I asked as Bruna set our drinks down in front of us.
“They’re real assholes,” he replied. “They’re called the Webbers. Dangerous too. Stay away from them.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I replied as he drank some of his drink. I didn’t really want mine, but I also didn’t want to be rude, so I took a sip as well. It was more bitter than I’d remembered rum being, but again, I wasn’t a real drinker so I wouldn’t really know.
“Not bad, eh?” Larcon asked.
I nodded, hiding my grimace. “Yeah.”
“Drink up!” he said, cheersing my glass with his.
“Okay, but just this one,” I replied. “I don’t want you getting me drunk and taking advantage of me.”
I said it with a wink to let him know I was just kidding. I wasn’t worried about him anymore. He’d given me a ride and told me who to look out for and bought me a drink. He was different from the guys back in Santa Monica, but that wasn’t a shocker. I had to get used to how they did things out here.
I took another sip, and for the first time all day, really let myself relax. My phone buzzed and I checked it. Another text from dad.
Home. Where are you?
I replied quickly.
Met a shifter friend. Be home in a bit.
Dad wrote back.
Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
I smiled.
I won’t!
And that was true. I really wasn’t a bad boy—not even remotely. In fact, having this drink with Larcon was the most rebellious thing I’d done in a long time.
“You tell him you were all right?” Larcon asked, obviously perceptive enough to know I was texting my dad.
“I did,” I smiled as I set my phone down on the table and took another sip of my drink which was about halfway finished.
“Good,” he grinned. “So you don’t have a boyfriend or anything? A mate? Ever had any children?”
“Why? You wanna breed me?” I joked.
Wow, that was uncharacteristic! I glanced at my drink with suspicion.
“Say, how strong is this thing?”
Larcon laughed. “Ah, you ain’t drunk. You just want me. Don’t try and blame the drink!”
I tried to smile back, but the room started to spin. The old corner jukebox’s colors bloomed and twisted like you see in one of those acid trips in the movies. I reached out to brace myself against the table as my vision started to narrow.
“Something’s not right,” I stammered. My head felt like it was being stuffed with cotton. I looked around for Bruna, but she was gone, and when I looked back at Larcon for support, and saw the telling smile on his face, I knew that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.
“What’s the matter, sweet pea?” he asked as he stood up and loomed over me. “Something wrong?”
Before I passed out, the last thought that went through my mind was, I’m sorry, dad.
Chapter Three
Alexander
Peace. But how long would it last? As I sped through Kurren territory in my cherry red 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB 4-cam, I wanted to spit. I was probably imagining things, but with my windows down and the air blowing through my hair, I was sure I could smell them—their stink, their stench of cruelty and betrayal.
The Kurrens were another pack of shifters that lived on the other side of Mist Peak from my pack. We’d been at war at one point, a war that had taken my family from me and had torn our pack to pieces. I was only six when the truce was negotiated, and now, twenty-two years later, I couldn’t help but feel as though we were on the brink of something terrible happening.
Tyrese, one of our alphas, had spotted an outsider wolf on the peak this morning, dangerously close to the boundary line that separated our territory from the Kurrens’. It was a beta, just a scout probably, who’d turned tail and run when he was spotted, but it was a bad sign. It meant the Kurrens were getting bold.
I’d been at home in my office finalizing some trades when Tyrese had come home and let me know what he’d seen. Rather than gathering the troops, shifting and looking for trouble, I’d hopped in the car and gone for a ride, hoping to run into one of the Kurrens so we could have a talk. But so far, the hills were quiet.
It was a dreary day that matched my mood. Our pack was in turmoil, struggling without a leader. Our last head alpha, Hector, vanished one night without a trace. None of us knew where he went, and he’d apparently used pheromone blockers as none of us, not even Jasper, our best scout with a keen sense of smell, had been able to track him. Now, we were like a ship without a rudder, or a captain, and if things came to a head soon with the Kurrens, we’d need to be focused and band together.
I downshifted the car as I hooked a turn overlooking the canyon that sloped down to the stream below. Still no signs of the Kurrens, but still I couldn’t stand the air. Just being on their side of the peak had my hairs on edge and my fangs extended. I was ready to take my wolf form at a moment’s notice.
My eyes searched the trees as I sped down the road, searching for a wolf silhouette or the form of a naked man who’d just returned to human form. But I saw nothing. In a way I was relieved. Running into one of them would only bring more trouble, and I was on my own. But at the same time, we had to know if something was coming. We had to be prepared.
I came down on the other side of the peak and slowed at the private dirt driveway that I knew led deep into the woods to the Kurrens’ compound. I’d never been there myself, but I knew it housed at least three alphas, a handful of betas, and even worse—several captive omegas.
Larcon’s harem. Everyone in the area knew about it, but during peacetime, there was nothing we could do. I tried not to think about it; all it did was cause my heart to ache. Those memories were simply too painful to bear, so I pushed them aside, slammed the Ferrari i
nto first gear, whipped it around and sped back towards Sleepy Hills.
I was in no mood to go home—not just yet—and with nothing new to report, there was no reason to rush back. Sleepy Hills was a human town, with no shifters living in it, so in a way it was a refuge for me when I needed to collect my thoughts and get away from it all. The human world seemed so much simpler than ours—at least that’s how it seemed to me.
I grimaced at the violet clouds overhead, which were seconds from dumping rain on the quiet little town and gunned it, going through the gears until I was roaring down the main street into town. I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I completely forgot about the speed trap set up just after the tracks, and groaned as a police cruiser pulled out behind me with its lights flashing.
“Goddamn it.”
I slowed to a stop and got my registration and insurance from the glove box and looked in my rearview as the officer got out of his car and came over to me. If only he knew who I was, how powerful I was and how weak he was. I could tear him to pieces if I wanted to. That gun on his hip was nothing compared to my incredible strength, but he thought he was the one in charge.
It’s the human’s world, so you play by human rules.
“How you doing, Alex?” Officer Brady asked with a smile and a nod. This wasn’t the first time Brady had pulled me over, nor would it be the last.
“Officer,” I replied simply as I handed him everything he was about to ask for.
“Going a little fast back there,” he remarked. “In a hurry somewhere?”
“Just lost track of my speed I guess.”
“Easy to do in a car like that,” he replied. “Maybe take it to the track next time you want to let loose. This here’s a quiet town. We don’t want any accidents.”
“Of course not.”
“I’ll run this and be right back.”
“Officer,” I said. “With all due respect, you know me. You know I’m registered and insured.”