Awakened Alpha

by Chloe Vincent

  Gwen felt a ripple of cold fear at the thought but she put on a brave face and said, “Then we’ll wipe him out. Won’t we?”

  “Damn right we will.”

  15

  Sam

  Sam woke up feeling so good, he thought there might be something wrong. Then he realized Gwen was in his bed, in his arms, and that he was alive and awake. He felt a sense of joy he couldn’t remember feeling since his pride had been alive. It was Sunday morning, and he was awake and alive and his mate was in his arms. They hadn’t actually had the “mate” conversation yet. But he was sure of it. As sure as he could be of anything. He still had just a little bit of insecurity. He thought Gwen felt just as strongly as he did but what if she didn’t? What if he had pinned his hopes on a woman whose affection was fleeting? What if?

  “You look worried,” Gwen murmured.

  His brow was furrowed. He kept his eyes closed. She kissed the tip of his nose. “I’m asleep,” he said.

  “No, you’re worrying.” She kissed each cheek and weakly attempted to wrap her arms around him but considering his bulk and her little arms, it was a helpless cause. “Why are you worried?”

  He didn’t want to talk about all that right now. He wanted to feel as good as he had when he had first woken up. “Just thinking about Basil,” he lied.

  They had planned to go looking for Basil today up in the hills below the Observatory, perhaps even in the Observatory, depending on how it went. Olive had given Gwen a purple crystal that glowed upon finding high concentrations of dark magic, like a Geiger counter. Gwen had seemed almost too excited about using it. He worried for her safety, but she was insistent on joining him in his crusade against Basil.

  He opened his eyes now and couldn’t help but smile into her big brown eyes. “Remember, we’re just doing recon,” Sam said, for the tenth time. “Nothing risky today.”

  “I knooow.” Gwen pecked a kiss to his lips and rolled out of bed, stealing his robe and jogging up the stairs to his kitchen. “I’ll make the coffee!”

  They were running together and Sam felt like it was his first time running, it felt so different with Gwen by his side. He was holding back a little bit, slowing to let Gwen keep pace with him. Not that she was slow, but he was particularly fast, especially on uneven ground as they made their way up into the hills through the chaparral brush and overgrowth toward the hidden places over Griffith Park. Not too far from the Observatory, they found a flat overhang and shifted back and Gwen took the crystal. Nothing. They shifted again and kept running. It was warm out and the sun was blazing. Sam didn’t often do this kind of work in broad daylight, but he knew how to keep them out of sight of the humans. No one would see them. And anyway, this was his town, or he had always felt like it was.

  They shifted back again and the dark crystal was dimly glowing. They nodded in agreement at each other and started climbing in the direction of the Observatory, but it was too steep and difficult in human form.

  “Hold on,” Gwen said, sighing. She dropped the crystal in the dirt. It was small enough, she gauged. She shifted and picked it up in her mouth, holding it still with her teeth. Sam nodded and shifted and they made their way up, Sam continually checking the brightness of the crystal and redirecting them accordingly. Just below the Observatory, so close they would be seen by tourists if they went any farther, the crystal was glowing like a lightbulb.

  Sam shifted back and waited for Gwen, giving her a wry grin as she dropped the crystal and became human again, squinting at him in the sun. “We couldn’t have just gone straight to the Observatory, huh?” Gwen said.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, at least we had some fun.”

  Sam snorted at that, and they climbed the short distance to a low wall, climbing over, blessedly out of sight of tourists or security, since nobody was supposed to be hanging out on the hillside below the museum.

  “You’ve got dirt,” Sam muttered, and dusted off Gwen’s back, earning a smile as they straightened up and tried to look casual.

  “We going in then?” Gwen asked. She held the crystal in her hand. It was glowing brightly.

  “Yes, let’s.” He took her hand and they trotted up the front steps, joining the bustle of people heading inside.

  They didn’t know what they were looking for and it was difficult for Sam not to get a little distracted by the romance. He’d always thought space was a romantic thing; stars, moons, meteors. He held Gwen’s hand in his as they strolled around the rotunda and they leaned on the marble wall around Foucault’s Pendulum and glanced down into it to see the pendulum gently swaying as it neared another peg to be knocked over with the passing of the hour.

  Gwen was keeping her eye on the crystal and it was still bright but had not grown brighter. Idly, he led her up into the South Gallery where people were observing telescopic photographs and a tour guide was leading a group around, talking about the photography of galaxies.

  “Sam,” Gwen muttered. “Sam!”

  Sam frowned and looked at the crystal as they neared the tour. It was distractingly bright now. She was carrying a crossbody bag, and she stashed it inside just as people were starting to turn their heads to look. The tour guide had stopped talking and now he was glancing over at Sam even though the two of them were standing a few feet from his group.

  “The Andromeda galaxy…” The guide looked at Sam as if he were trying to place him.

  “Gwen,” Sam muttered.

  It all happened in less than a second but Gwen looked back and forth between them and abruptly pulled Sam to her and smothered him with a kiss, tugging him away.

  “Vieni con me, cara!” Gwen said in Italian. Sam blinked, following her lead but baffled as he followed her out of the gallery, Gwen babbling in Italian the entire time. They ran back outside and up the stairs of the west terrace before they stopped, catching their breath. The crystal had dimmed slightly.

  “Was that him?” Gwen asked.

  “You speak Italian?” Sam gaped at her.

  “Sure!” Gwen said. “I mean, I’m almost fluent. Enough to pass. My mother’s Italian.”

  “That was sexy,” Sam muttered, and tugged her forward to kiss her.

  She giggled against his mouth but finally pulled away. “But was it him?”

  “Yeah,” he said nodding. “He’s a tour guide in the… Of all the things.”

  “Do you think he recognized you?” Gwen asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said, frowning. “He looked at me but I couldn’t tell if he realized who he was. It’s kind of galling. The asshole cursed me into a coma for a year. He should know what I look like.”

  “So what do we now, Mr. Guardian?” Gwen put her hands on her hips and looked up at him expectantly.

  “Now you go back home to the safety of your safe apartment?” Sam said hopefully. “Out of danger.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Shouldn’t we follow him?” Gwen asked. She was looking at him as if asking for permission and he appreciated that as much as she wanted to insert herself into this little caper, she was at least respecting his position and experience as a guardian. “He must have a lair somewhere, right?”

  “A lair?” Sam said wryly.

  “All good big bads gotta have a lair,” Gwen said with a smirk. “We just have to wait until he leaves. Except we don’t know when he gets off. What if he gets off before closing? How do we know-”

  “I got this,” Sam said, giving her a wink. “Wait here.” He skipped down the steps of the West Terrace and headed inside, quickly sniffing out the management office. He looked for the first person in an Observatory uniform he could find who he thought might be giving him the eye and zeroed in on them. The girl was older and redheaded and she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him. She was standing near the Help Desk with a clipboard. He approached, slipping his hands in his pockets and flexing a little. He cast her his most charming smile.

  “Hi there,” he sai
d softly, and watched her melt a little bit. “Say, I’m picking up my friend who works here later but I don’t know when he gets off. Not answering his texts. He’s probably giving tours. Can I ask you his schedule?”

  “Um…” She looked a little googly-eyed and swallowed. “I should really um… Well, what’s his name?”

  “Basil,” Sam said, inwardly crossing his fingers that Basil the dark wizard, who apparently moonlighted at the Griffith Observatory, did not have an alias.

  “Oh!” She squinted at him. “Basil? Really? You don’t look somebody who would… Anyway, he’s closing tonight. Should be off at ten-thirty. Do you need to-”

  “Thank you,” Sam said, grinning brilliantly. He watched her melt again, felt slightly guilty and all but ran back to Gwen on the west terrace. “He’s closing. Ten-thirty.”

  Gwen raised her eyebrows. “Did you just charm that out of somebody?”

  “Of course I did, I’m very charming,” he said, although he was blushing.

  “You’re the charmingest,” she said, and attempted to actually climb him in pursuit of a kiss and he crouched a little, and lifted her up and they lost track of the time a little, by turns making out and then looking out at the city below, unaware that it was being protected from the darkest of forces by two very dopey-eyed mountain lions.

  At a quarter to ten, Gwen and Sam were hidden behind a display about black holes and out of sight of security as the museum began to ease people out the door. When he peeked over the top of the exhibit, Sam could see Basil from the back as he stood near the entrance. He didn’t look evil, to Sam’s mind. In fact, Sam had to really look hard to see the same person who had been aglow with dark power as he hovered in the air and stretched out his hand to curse Sam, sending him tumbling down the hillside. Right now, he was just a middle-aged guy in a polo shirt who worked in a museum.

  By a few minutes after ten, everyone was out except a few employees. Somebody was closing up the gift shop, a cleaning crew was going around and Basil and a couple of other docents were on their way out. Gwen and Sam kept low, skittering from the display to the shadows behind a pillar, as they kept watch on Basil. When they saw him exit right out the front, they ran stealthily from shadow to shadow to a side exit that let out on the West Terrace. It was a lot more trouble than they needed to go to, Sam realized. But he had not wanted to lose track of his target. Now, the two of them only watched at a distance, but Basil wasn’t headed to the parking lot to a car. Instead he was walking in their direction, and they ducked down as Basil walked around the West Terrace and into a narrow passage between the building and the fencing on the steep hillside. Sam and Gwen glanced at each other, waiting a minute, and shifted before following. They could be stealthier as cats. They kept low and followed from after. Basil was climbing through a hole in the fence and descended down the steep and hazardous hillside not far from where Gwen and Sam had come from just that afternoon. They’d been on the right track after all.

  They looked at each other, pausing in the brush as they let Basil get ahead of them. Sam gazed at Gwen’s lion form in the moonlight. She was a beautiful lioness and he could see the human part of her in her eyes when she looked at him; her big lion’s eyes just as bright and energetic as she was usually. When he waited too long, she seemed to smile, and grunted a little, nudging his flank gently. If Sam had been human, he would have blushed at being caught out. Instead he ducked his head, and they crawled through the brush, keeping low, following Basil’s path down a narrow trail and around a curve cut into the hillside where the land leveled out and they saw a cave entrance into which Basil was just now disappearing.

  Gwen started to follow and Sam growled softly and she stopped, looking back. They shifted back into human form and hid behind another brush. It was dangerously dark out but for the moonlight. Sam rubbed his chin, considering.

  “You don’t want to follow?” Gwen asked.

  “Well, we’re on recon, remember?” Sam said warily. “But listen, I’ve been to these caves before. It was a while back, but last I saw it’s a dead end in there. There are some big caverns but there’s nowhere else to go. If he’s got a lair, this is probably it. I guess it’s possible he could have tunneled right on through to the other side of the hill while I was out but…”

  They waited there a while, just to see if anything would happen. Sam was about to suggest they should leave when Basil came out of the cave again. They ducked back, holding their breath, and Basil walked right by their shrub, climbing back up the hillside to the parking lot of the Observatory as easily as crossing a street.

  That then was his lair, Sam thought. And he had just left it...

  Gwen chewed her lip, staring at the cave entrance, and muttered, “I want to see.”

  Sam looked at her, her eyes gleaming even brighter now as she stared at the cave entrance. She had no experience with this kind of thing. Her only qualification was her status as a mountain lion shifter which meant she probably had more ability for it than she realized. But she was, for the most part, a regular person who had thrown herself into this dangerous world and why? Just for him, he realized. She’d spilled blood for him, to bring him back from the dark and lonely place. She was fearless and-

  “I love you,” Sam said. His voice sounded too loud in the quiet night, the loud and lit up Hollywood below seeming far away now.

  Gwen swiveled and stared at him now, her jaw dropping. “I… Sam, I love you too.”

  Sam kissed her, holding her there and trying to convey via his lips that he would like to be with her forever if possible, thanks very much. She seemed to receive it and return the feeling, smiling against his lips and reaching up to hold the back of his neck.

  She leaned back and said brightly, “Now let’s go in the cave!”

  “Aah…” Sam squinted, trying to decide. On his own, he would have. But he was worried for Gwen who was fearless, maybe too fearless and also would definitely not agree to being left behind.

  He felt a stab of fear then. What if it was always like this? Gwen was a lion shifter, sure. In another life, perhaps she was an experienced guardian but in this world she wasn’t and could easily get hurt. She also had a nice and busy life helping people every single day. Wouldn’t his life wreck hers even if they did love each other? What if? What if? His mind raced. What if it was all too much for her? Sure, one crazy caper up against a dark wizard was one thing, but his life was all crazy capers against dark wizards and the like...

  His mind raced so much he didn’t see Gwen sneaking away, quickly jogging toward the entrance to the cave.

  “Gwen!” Sam hissed, jogging after her.

  “Come on!” Gwen looked back at him, bright eyes lit by the moon, a grin on her face. Sam thought to himself: I am screwed.

  16

  Gwen

  Gwen looked back at Sam who wore a long-suffering expression on his face while also somehow looking proud of her and her stomach swooped with affection for him. She had always sort of wondered about guardians like Sam. Or at least, when she had been a little girl she had wondered what they were like, thinking of them as something like medieval knights. She hadn’t known then that they still existed. But now her mountain of a man came striding toward her and took her hand, a wry smile on his face. She should have been scared, she supposed. She wasn’t used to things like this. But it seemed impossible to be too scared with Sam by her side. She had never felt so safe with anyone.

  “Stay behind me, please,” he said. He said it firmly, in a tone that brooked no discussion. Gwen nodded once, and kept behind him as they neared the dark.

  At the entrance to the cave, Gwen felt like they walked through something. It was like walking through a wall of static electricity, and she shivered.

  “That was a ward,” Sam said. When they had passed through it, he stopped and stroked his chin, staring back at it.

  “Like a forcefield?” Gwen asked. “Then how come we could walk through it?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said.
She watched him approach the entrance again and gasp as he apparently touched the invisible wall of energy. He jumped back and shook his head. “Nice. Real nice. It lets you in but doesn’t let you out. Unless you’re Basil, I suppose. It’s like he wants to trap people.”

  Gwen whispered, “Oh no…”

  “I might be able to break it,” Sam said, stroking his chin. “I know things.”

  “You can do magic?” Gwen asked in surprise.

  Sam huffed at that. “Well, what do you think I do? Just maul people?”

  “No.” She sidled up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I just didn’t realize. You’re so multi-talented.”

  “Thank you, darling.” He pecked a kiss to her lips. “No time for love though. C’mon.”

  He was all business, and she liked that too. She stayed behind him as they crept through a long pitch black tunnel so quiet that they could only hear their own breath and, dimly, the sound of dripping somewhere far off. But as they went on, they saw a glow up ahead. Gwen held Sam’s hand tight and they found themselves in a proper dark wizard’s lair. The place looked like a giant lab; huge old wood tables covered in scrolls and bottles and pots. The place was lit by a few lanterns hanging from the ceiling of the cave.

  “Jackpot!” Gwen said. Sam seemed uncertain but she could tell he wanted to get a good look at the place before they left.

  He squeezed her hand and said, “Okay, we’ll just take a quick look around but then we’re out of here.”

  “Yes!” They spread, looking for any clues as to nefarious schemes and plans. Gwen found a table strewn with photographs and scribbles specifically about Sam and a few other guardians, and her stomach turned over. There was a sort of chart with about six shifter guardian’s pictures pasted to it. There was a red X over Sam’s face. There were three smaller pictures and Gwen recognized them as the rest of Sam’s pride, long dead. There were little red Xs through their faces too. Basil was keeping track. He wanted all the guardians gone. She opted not to show the chart to Sam. She hated to remind him of his grief.