Alpha Shifter Protectors: Paranormal Romance Collection

by Keri Hudson

  Quinton let a moment pass before saying, “We’re not so different, Red. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  That grabbed Red’s attention, turning to eye Quinton and take a step toward him. “How do you mean?”

  Quinton stared him dead in the eyes. “I believe you know exactly what I mean.”

  Red arrived to stand in front of Quinton, taller, broader, staring down and straight into Quinton’s eyes. A man like Red was accustomed to men cowering in the face of such a challenge, and the fact that Quinton didn’t even flinch was clearly frustrating for Red. It could even push him over the edge.

  “I don’t like you, Williams, I never did.”

  “That’s a shame,” Quinton said.

  “The way you go around like you’re better than everybody else, baggin’ that bright, shiny new lass, bringing down the best bucks.”

  “We both hunt the same area, Red.”

  “Yeah, and maybe it’s time we corrected that.” Here it comes, Quinton thought, he’ll shift and we’ll have to engage. Red went on, “Partners? Far as I’m concerned, there’s only room for one of us in this territory.”

  “Well, then, I suppose you’d best take your shot.” With a rage-filled grunt, Red stormed him. His big, meaty paws lurched out from his sides to wring Quinton’s neck as he pushed him backward.

  Red growled, “You snotty whelp!”

  Quinton dropped himself down onto his back, kicked his feet up against Red’s belly, and grabbed his arms. A backward roll used the big man’s momentum, flipping him up and over Quinton. He landed hard on the snowy mountain ground, kicking up a cloud of white dust and hitting with a grunt.

  Quinton stood and turned to see Red climbing to his feet. “You have to watch that temper, Red.”

  With an even louder war cry, Red charged Quinton again. His big shoulder hit Quinton in the stomach, making him stumble backward in Red’s grip. Red turned to see the trunk of a big balsam fir coming up behind him. With a quick assertion and a twist of his body, Quinton was once again able to use Red’s uncontrolled force against him. He spun Red to the side, smashing him into the trunk of the tree.

  Red screamed through clenched jaws and fell to the foot of the tree, holding his side. Quinton said, “It doesn’t have to be this way, Red.”

  Slowly, achingly rushing himself to his feet, Red growled, “I’m gonna kill you, I swear it.”

  “You know there’s only one way to do that, and you’d better do it now.” Red looked back at the cabin, then back at Quinton. He seemed to be reasoning out his next move, spotting a branch sticking out from the jack pine next to him. He leapt up and grabbed the branch, hanging from it only for a second before his tremendous weight brought the branch down with him. Now armed, he chuckled and crouched a bit, readying another charge.

  “You want it, you got it.” Red came at Quinton, swinging the branch directly at his head. Quinton backed away from the first swing and ducked the other. But Red raised the branch high to bring it crashing down onto Quinton’s head. This also exposed Red’s underbelly, and Quinton threw a series of hard punches just under the ribs. Red brought the branch down, but with reduced strength and no focus and it glanced Quinton’s shoulder to fall to the ground.

  Quinton threw another punch, this one flat into the sternum, a punch that could have stopped a smaller man’s heart. A left jab to the face and a right cross finally sent the stunned giant falling back into the snow.

  Quinton stepped up and put his boot on Red’s thick neck, just under that bushy red beard. He pressed down just hard enough to deliver a message. He looked down at Red, who looked back up, his paws pulling feebly at Quinton’s leg.

  “Please,” he choked out, “p-p-please, don’t… don’t…” Quinton stepped down just a bit more, and the twisted mask of red-faced fear looking up at Quinton told him everything he needed to know. Quinton stepped back, off Red’s neck. The big man rolled over, clutching his neck and choking, a huge mass of failure.

  Quinton extended his hand to Red, who strained to turn to look up at it as he considered. Finally, Red reached up with his nearest hand and Quinton helped pull him to his feet. The big man was slow to rise, and Quinton was ready for another feeble attack. But it didn’t come. Red just looked at Quinton, gave him a nod, and turned to waddle back toward his cabin.

  Quinton returned to his motor sled with one more piece of the puzzle and one fewer suspect.

  He’s no shifter, Quinton reviewed on his way back to Anchorage, back to Jessica. He’d never have let me lean on his neck like that. And he’d have been a better fighter. Big man like that, probably never had to actually fight anybody in his life.

  But if it wasn’t Red, Quinton couldn’t begin to imagine who it was, where to start looking. A thought occurred to him, and he suspected it was the only way.

  This shifter is here knowing there’s a lupe in the area. I can shift and then head off into the mountains and wait for it to attack.

  But the mountains were unforgiving, merciless even for a shifter. Prey was indeed increasingly hard to find, the crags high and dangerous.

  His thoughts went directly to Jessica. Can’t leave her alone in Anchorage indefinitely. If I’m wrong, then she’ll be a sitting duck. There’s no way she can go out with me to hunt that thing. And she’ll never let me send her off to Seattle. She’s right, she’d be no safer there.

  There didn’t seem to be a way out as the buildings of Anchorage got bigger in front of him.

  I’ll ask Jessica, Quinton decided. She’s intelligent, resourceful. I still think she may yet have the key to settling the whole matter.

  God, I hope so.

  Quinton rode on toward Anchorage, a black figure appearing ahead of him. It came at him fast, and Quinton’s first instinct was to ride around it. He recognized it as a caribou stag, a big one. If it was the one he’d been hunting earlier in the week he could not know. But it was standing against him, he knew that.

  It would be an easy matter to flank the animal and ride on past it, but another big stag appeared nearby… and then another. As Quinton rode toward their line, they seemed to leak up out of the snowy ground like great, black ants, and they seemed to come in just as great a number.

  Quinton thought to weave through them, but they formed a line, not a crowd. They acted with some communal strategy, waiting to enact a move of their own. And as Quinton rode toward them, he knew just why, and why then.

  Quinton had long been the most-feared hunter in the area. His gun was feared by man and beast. And it wasn’t surprising that in that time of tumult, the caribou would sense the division, the weakness among the humans around them. And Quinton had taken many of their own kind. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to take their chance for revenge on a personal basis.

  And as Quinton rode toward them, he felt there was more to it than that.

  Alpha males of every great species despised shifters of every sort, it was well known: orca, grizzly, cougar, lion. They took them whenever they could, sensing the coming apocalypse. They all considered themselves the protectors of the Earth, and they’d identified Quinton for what he was.

  And they wanted to murder him.

  Quinton slowed his motor sled as the stags came out and surrounded him. They formed a wide ring of clopping hooves, terrible antlers, strength and anger and generations of being hunted. Quinton looked around him, knowing himself to be in the center of a circle of hatred, and that he might have earned some of it.

  Or not. He thought about Jessica and her quick wit and charm, things he’d always lacked. Those skills could save him then, if he could use them properly.

  “You’ve come, finally,” Quinton called out, no idea if they could understand him, hoping they would decipher his tone. “My army! We’ve got work to do!” The animals looked at one another, clearly confused by his lack of fear but also his lack of aggression. It was clearly an approach that was beyond their comprehension. They huffed and stomped like the poor, dumb beasts that they w
ere.

  Sensing he was running out of time, he shouted, “You’re pathetic! You call yourselves worthy? You think you’re guardians of the Earth?” They had no answer, only the scowling and huffing compliance of lesser creatures. Quinton went on, “You all know who I am… what I am! I’m the lord of this mountain! I’m the Earth mother’s firstborn son, as far as any of you will ever know and don’t ever forget it!”

  The stags backed down, but one stepped forward, proud and young.

  Quinton stepped forward with a grin he couldn’t suppress. “You, eh? You? You won’t even realize you’ve died, my young buck!” The stag backed up, head low. Quinton turned to another. “You?” He said to another, “You?” All was quiet around him, the circle of stags widening around him.

  “Remember this,” Quinton said, the stags backing away further with their heads low. “I don’t want to make war on you… I’m no more than the bear or cougar or germ that brings you down. Nothing lives forever. But all things must go on. Do you understand that?”

  The big, dumb brutes huffed and nodded, not so dumb as Quinton had thought.

  “Then don’t forget your place with me again,” Quinton said, his voice echoing across the flatlands between them and Anchorage up ahead.

  They assumed a shared subservience, glancing at one another as they backed off and made a clear path for Quinton as he rode on, pushing his motor sled, the shamed caribou stags behind that.

  It had been a close call, but necessary. Quinton was glad to have the chance to settle things with the caribou, but he knew there would be more conflict with them to come. The alpha of any species had their hand to play in the coming shifter apocalypse, after all.

  But that immediate conflict with the caribou had come and gone, and the shifter apocalypse was still a long way off. It was what lay in front of Quinton in Anchorage who mattered most.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Quinton drove the motor sled up onto the hard concrete streets toward the Sheriff’s Department headquarters. All seemed calm from the front, no squad cars out front. Still out wasting their time, Quinton thought. Anyway, they better hope they are. If they stumble on him the way those six hunters did, we’re gonna need a lot more cops around here.

  He walked up to the building and pulled the door open. A phone rang on one desk, but the place was otherwise dead quiet and seemed empty.

  “Hello? Jessica? Sheriff Spalter?” Hairs stood up on the back of Quinton’s neck before he called out louder, “Hello?” Even the phone stopped ringing and the empty silence was the only answer Quinton needed.

  Quinton jumped over the counter and into the empty bullpen. His heart was beating faster, his instincts rising to the surface. “Jessica! Sheriff Spalter?” His mind began to race.

  It’s nothing, he told himself, checking the first of the two corner offices in the rear of the bullpen. He got called out, she went back to the hotel. Just a few hours, how dangerous could it be?

  The first office was empty, and Quinton crossed to the other.

  Quinton had to remind himself that Red had turned out not to be the shifter, and that meant there was a shifter out there. The sheriff’s deputies could have found them and called him to the scene.

  No, Quinton had to tell himself, they’d have left Jessica here to tell me where they were so I could join the hunt. Doesn’t make sense.

  “Jessica?” The quiet drew him down the hall from the bullpen to the other parts of the department HQ. A long, wide hall had smaller rooms on each side. He peeked through the small, rectangular window of one door to see an empty table and two chairs.

  Interrogation room, Quinton realized, useless to me. He checked another, bigger room with counters and lines of chairs against the wall. Booking.

  Quinton knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t place it. Is somebody holding her here, even now, knocked unconscious? Is she tied up and gagged somewhere, bait to draw me into an ambush?

  Then something else struck Quinton’s imagination. Could Sheriff Spalter himself be the shifter? I’d have delivered her right to him. I’d have presented him with the most suitable mate in the territory, and if he knows I’m a shifter then he knows she’s willing. Maybe the subject came up between them, in casual conversation? I told her not to mention it. If that happened, he’d have knocked her out and they could both be long gone, him taking his shifter due before just killing her off to keep the secret. Or just a quick bullet in the back of head? He could have strangled her to death right here and left her body around any corner.

  No, Quinton told himself, no, it can’t be!

  “Jessica? Jessica!”

  Then something else got Quinton’s attention.

  The sheriff’s legs, lying on the floor of the room at the end of the hallway. Quinton rushed to the room, a counter and an exit door leading to what would have to be the side of the building, a metal detector surrounding it. But on the ground, Sheriff Richard Spalter lay dead, his throat cut, deep and wide. The blood had spilled out in a wide pool on each side, a six-inch jackknife lying on the floor near him. Quinton stepped back, stunned by the sight. He glanced around, something else catching his eye. He bent down to pick up a crumpled white handkerchief. It was damp, and it had an acrid stench. He raised it to his face and took a sniff, and a nauseous, lightheaded feeling passed through him, making him want to vomit.

  But there was no time.

  Quinton knew he had to get out of there, so he kept the handkerchief, left the knife and the sheriff, and snuck out through the metal detector and out the side door.

  Once outside, all seemed calm. Nobody had returned to the station house yet, but it would happen soon. Quinton’s mind was moving as quickly as he was, but both were headed in the same direction: the Gold Dust hotel.

  Whoever did this was close enough to get to the sheriff to draw the blade, from in front or from behind, and had to be strong enough to run down and subdue Jessica. Could that be… two people, working together?

  Deliah had been jealous about this from the start, and she was well known enough to Sheriff Spalter to have pulled it off. She could have waited until the two were separated, maybe created a distraction, then killed the sheriff and ambushed Jessica when she returned.

  There was too much to think about and too little time to think about it. The Gold Dust came up just across the street, and Quinton hurried into the traffic. A red pickup truck skidded to a stop, honking its horn as Quinton finally made his way to the hotel.

  They could be holding her here right now! He had to find her.

  Deliah stepped up Quinton, clearly reading his urgency.

  “Where is she?”

  “Who, your girlfriend? I dunno. She hasn’t come in since you two left together a few hours ago, after lunch. She dump you? Oh, I’m sorry, Q. Well, I guess some things just aren’t—”

  “It’s not that, Deliah.”

  He handed her the handkerchief and she looked at it with a little twitch. She took a whiff and turned her head, lowering it from her face and waving away the fumes with the other. “What is this, chloroform?”

  “Don’t be coy with me, Deliah.”

  “I’m not, Quinton, honestly, I’m not. If somebody grabbed your gal, I’m really sorry. That Red Fellows maybe.”

  “No, I was with him at his cabin at the time, not Red.”

  Deliah shook her head a little as she seemed to think it through. “Take it to the sheriff.”

  “Yeah, the sheriff. Deliah, Sheriff Spalter is—”

  “Hey!” Quinton and Deliah both turned to see an unfamiliar man standing in the lobby. “I just saw you coming out of the sheriff’s station!” He turned to shout out the doorway, “He’s in here, Charlie!”

  There was no time to explain to an angry mob. Quinton believed Deliah that she hadn’t kidnapped Jessica—he didn’t have any choice. And he had no interest in shifting and cutting a bloody swath out of Anchorage either. All Quinton could do was put as much distance between himself and those men, the entire town
, and he had to do it immediately. So Quinton scrambled up the steps, long legs carrying him quickly to the second floor and down the hall. He got to the room at the end of the hall, which he knew to be Jessica’s and so, to be empty.

  He kicked the door in and slammed it behind him, but he could already hear more than one man running up behind him. He could kill them, of course. Instead, Quinton pulled the window open and quickly eyed the roof of the building next to them. He shifted, no time even to disrobe. His clothes split away into shreds, his massive lupine form suddenly at the window. He jumped, first to get a purchase on the sill, and the next to jump himself off. He sailed above the street to land gracefully on the flat roof of the next building, three stories tall. He landed clean before stopping and turning to look down at the window of Jessica’s hotel room. The two men looked out and down at the street below.

  “Where is he?”

  “Must’a jumped.”

  “Yeah, c’mon!” They pulled back into the room.

  Quinton’s lupine mind was keen, alive with his heightened senses but still retaining his human intellect and humanity. And at that moment, all those things were telling him he had to get out of Anchorage. Quinton turned to run along the rooftop, taking an easy leap over the next alley to the neighboring shop. But he knew the block would end and he would have to get over the width of an entire four-lane street. He could hear men clamoring behind him, but they didn’t seem to be following him.

  Yet.

  Quinton looked ahead to see a bigger gap between the building he was on and the one beyond it, the end of the block. He looked over to see the same thing on the other side. There was only one way, so Quinton took a running start across the building’s roof and jumped from the ledge. He could only hope nobody had any reason to be looking up at that particular moment. There was little reason for anybody to be expecting to see a five-thousand-pound wolf flying from rooftop to rooftop.

  Quinton hit the other side, much further than he was used to jumping. His forelegs grabbed the edge, but his hind legs had to scrabble and scratch to keep him from falling. With an exertion of strength and determination, Quinton scrambled over the edge and to the next roof. He stopped to see if he’d been noticed, and did hear some word of it with his keen hearing.