Alpha's Last Fight: A Paranormal Shapeshifter BBW Romance

by Rose, Aubrey

  I’m the one that’s going to cut your fucking heart out and eat it. But another scream drowned out my words before I could begin to utter them.

  I searched for the source of the scream as Quinn stepped back in the ring, looking mostly human again. He dabbed at his forehead with a borrowed scarf, but it just kept bleeding. Now he was weak.

  I could be like him. I could be as fast as him, and make him suffer for his weakness. I knew that once I headed down this path, though, there was no turning back. To beat him I’d have to become like him. As strong and fast as he was. Whatever the cost. I’d have to become a monster.

  I looked up at Quinn, and then past him, to the crowd. Over his shoulder, I saw her.

  Or did I?

  My vision swam, but even through the agony I realized I had access to senses I’d never even dreamed of. My ears tuned to the frequency of Natalie’s voice, and I heard her sobs of despair. It was her. My love. My mate. But there was something wrong.

  Her scent - the remarkable, heady, once-in-a-lifetime scent that I loved so much - had turned sour. It hit me with great rolling waves of fear and desperation. But beneath it all, there was something sicker. A revulsion, eating away at her like maggots on a corpse. Fear, contempt, hatred.

  NO!

  No. This wasn’t me. Not here. Not now. Not for her. I couldn’t bear to be remembered like this. Not by her. I pushed it back, the pain in my twisted bones and muscles fading as I returned to a more natural form. If she was going to see me die, she would see me as the man she loved.

  As I shifted back, the other pain returned. My jaw, my nose. The wounds in my side and chest. But they didn’t matter. I brushed past Quinn, who circled back around to the other side of the ring. He didn’t know what I was doing. Neither did I, really.

  I shuffled to the ropes, dragging one leg behind me. Another injury I barely recalled picking up. I did my best to smile, but I probably still looked like something out of a kid’s worst nightmare. It didn’t matter, though. I was still me. At the end I’d still be me. That was all that mattered.

  I brought two fingers to my chest. Touched them to my heart. Brought them to my lips. My hand shook weakly as I raised my arm and pointed to her in the crowd.

  Before, she had to beg me to talk, but now there was so much I wanted to say. I love you. You made me better, but you deserve more. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough.

  I slumped. There was no fight left in me. I was done. I blinked away tears and looked down at the mat. When I looked up she was gone. Good. I didn’t want her to see what came next.

  I turned around, my fists lowered, and waited for the end.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Natalie

  I fought back a wave of nausea as the monster in the ring pummeled Hutch. Every crack of his fist made me wince. The animal inside me joined in my despair. Hutch was mine, I couldn’t deny it. He was my alpha, and the wolf in me trembled to see him on the edge of death.

  “What did you do, Tommy?” My voice was a deep rumble in my throat, cutting through the excited roar of the crowd like a knife.

  “I… I… don’t. I didn’t know.” There was genuine surprise there. Even shock. Tommy looked like he was about to throw up. “I wanted to get rid of him. I thought if he was good enough… maybe he’d just stay here. But not this. Not like this.”

  “Fix it, Tommy! Call off the fight.”

  He barked a short nervous laugh.

  “Look around, Nat. Look at these people. Look at this place. I've got no power here.”

  I swallowed hard. The crowd around us was screaming, their fists pumping the air. In the center of the ring Hutch took another blow, his head reeling back, blood misting the air. It was like the first time I’d seen him, only this time he was the one who was going to lose.

  And this time, losing meant death.

  I couldn’t… I couldn’t sit here and watch him die. I had to do something. I clutched at Tommy’s arm. Like it or not, he was the only person here that could help me, and I didn’t have any pride left when it came to saving Hutch’s life. He had to know how serious this was. I shouted over the crowd into his ear.

  “You did this, Tommy. You have to fix it! He’s going to die.”

  I looked back to the ring. Hutch’s face was stretching, turning. He was becoming… something else. A monster. Just like the other fighter.

  Then, before he threw another punch, his eyes found mine. Immediately his face changed back. It was him. Hutch.

  He raised his hand to his heart. His fingers against his chest.

  No. Oh, god.

  His fingers rose, pressing against his lips.

  Hutch. My Hutch. My mate. My love.

  He pointed out, towards me, finding me in the middle of all the cheering faces. And at that moment, I knew what he was doing.

  He was saying goodbye.

  I could tell. I saw it in his eyes. He’d given up. He’d made peace with whatever demons tugged at his poor damaged soul and he’d given up. He wanted to make sure I knew that in the end he chose to stop fighting.

  My heart melted. Searing pain through my chest. I couldn’t lose him. No matter what it took, I wouldn’t let him go.

  I tore at Tommy’s arm, tears streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop sobbing, begging him to help, rambling words that made no sense to me anymore.

  “Tommy, please. We have to do something now. Help me. We loved each other once, didn’t we? We loved each other before it all went wrong. Please! We have to—”

  “I told you, I don’t have any power—”

  Tommy stopped, a look of sudden realization coming over his face.

  “Power… no power. Come on!” Tommy suddenly leaped into action. Taking me by my hand and dragging me from my seat. All other eyes were fixed on the ring where a monster was rising up behind Hutch...

  As Tommy half limped, half jogged down a concrete corridor he blurted out something about his company having been involved in some of the construction. Going on a tour before it opened. Remembering where to…

  I ignored him, listening instead to the roar of the crowd. They were chanting something I couldn’t make out, building in pitch and tempo until it reached a crescendo and then a bloodthirsty roar. I was sure the monster was killing him. My poor Hutch, bruised, beaten and bloody.

  Tommy pulled open a door to reveal a room full of flashing lights and switches. Big switches. The kind they had in movies when you needed to switch off the power. These were real? They actually had them for real?

  Again the roar of the crowd grew. I could feel the vibrations through the concrete. The words were muffled, but I knew they were calling for blood. Kill him. Finish him. Hurt him. Break him. I had to stop him.

  Tommy turned to me as he flicked the first switch and said one word: “Run.”

  I understood. I turned. I ran.

  By the time I was halfway back down the corridor I heard the unmistakable thrum of powerful lights being shutdown, followed by screams of panic as the entire auditorium was plunged into a murky darkness. Seconds later some dim emergency lights flickered on, but the damage was already done. Once panic had spread, it was never going to be contained.

  I needed to get to the ring, but between me and my mate was a wall of humans, lost and desperate. I felt sorry for them as I shifted.

  Even now, knowing what Hutch had taught me about balance, it was hard to let the wolf out. The claws tore through my skin, and I screamed as I fell forward onto paws, leaping toward my mate. But I had to do it. It didn’t matter what happened to me. I had to save him. My senses sharpened, and in the dim red of the emergency lights I darted through the crowds of people. Women screamed as I brushed by their legs.

  As I bounded toward the ring, I saw the hulking figure of Hutch’s opponent looming over his prone form.

  He can’t be dead. I refused to believe it.

  I was running at full speed when I jumped. When I embraced the animal and let her take over, I had expected the ferocity. I
had expected the way I could sense so much more of the world around me. But I hadn’t anticipated just how powerful my body would feel. My hind legs pushed me up and forward like pistons. I flew through the air like a bullet. Over the top of the ropes until I went crashing into the monster with the full weight of my powerful new body behind it.

  My momentum knocked him down and I tumbled to the floor managing to land, somehow, on my feet. I squared off against him and hunched my shoulders. Growling as my fur bristled. Letting him know that he’d had to get through me if he wanted to hurt Hutch any more.

  As he struggled to his feet I charged him, teeth bared, ready to jump again. But the mat was slick with blood. I lost my footing and ended up skidding towards him as he lashed out with a vicious kick. He caught me square across the ribs and I let out an anguished howl at the sudden burst of pain.

  Ahh! It hurt! I mean, really hurt. I wasn’t prepared for just how much the blow hurt me. How did Hutch do this day after day, soaking up the pain and then fighting back? I wanted to curl into a ball whimpering. But I couldn’t. I was the only thing that stood between the monster and my mate. I had to be strong. I had to be fearless.

  He turned on me again, and I braced myself for another kick.

  “Hey, asshole! Get the fuck away from her!”

  It was Tommy. He ducked under the rope and into the ring as the monster turned to face him. Then the monster growled, his words coming out twisted and snarling.

  “This guy? You’re kidding me, right?”

  Tommy jerked his cane upwards, flipping it over and plucking it out of the air with both hands in one swift motion, pulling it back behind his shoulder like a baseball bat. He swung at the monster with all his strength, and the cane hit his head with a sickening crunch. The carved antlers that had decorated the top of the cane embedded themselves into the side of his head. Tommy stumbled forward. Without something to lean on, he grabbed at the ropes to keep himself from falling.

  The monster roared with pain, and then roared again as he pulled the cane from his head and tossed it aside. He turned towards a terrified Tommy and swatted him aside like a bug, sending him skidding across the bloody mat and out of the ring.

  My claws scrabbled on the mat, and I shifted back to human form to crawl across the mat to where Hutch was lying. I didn’t have the luxury of being embarrassed. If anyone had an issue with my big naked ass sticking up in the air as I searched frantically for the man I loved, then so be it.

  The ground was sticky with blood, so much blood. And the closer I got to Hutch, the more of it there was. My stomach roiled.

  “Natalie...”

  Oh, thank God. He was still alive. But only just. He’d pulled himself upright, leaning against one of the corner posts. His face was caked in blood, one arm hung limply at his side, and one of his legs was twisted at an angle that didn’t seem possible.

  “S… s… si…” Blood bubbled from between his lips as he spoke. Rich and dark. I was sure he was bleeding internally.

  “Don’t talk. Oh God, don’t try and talk.”

  Somewhere, way back in the dim distant past, I’d attended a first aid course, but that didn’t prepare me for something like this. He needed a doctor. He needed a hospital.

  But first we had a monster to deal with.

  “Si… Silver… bullet.”

  Hutch was delirious, but he needed to stop talking. I stroked his hair and tried to calm him. “It’s okay, baby, I’m here. It’ll be okay. We just need to—”

  The monster growled from behind me.

  “Well ain’t this sweet. The big bad wolf has got himself a big ass bitch. My day just keeps getting better and better.”

  He had shifted back to human form again, trying to wipe the blood from his eye. The gash on his forehead wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  “Time to end this, Hutch.”

  He stepped back and embraced whatever darkness it was that had eating away at his soul. A darkness that twisted and contorted flesh and bones until the man became a hulking brute. A solid wall of muscle and fur. His body grew and grew until he towered over the ropes of the ring.

  No. I refused to let it happen. I turned to face him, grimacing at the pain in my chest as I did so.

  “Back off!” I yelled.

  The monster’s laugh was perhaps the most disturbing sound I’d heard in my life. It came from deep in his chest and bubbled out like a malevolent force. I was nothing to him. His twisted laugh became a snarl, and the snarl became a roar as he readied himself to pounce.

  I had to do something. I began to stand. I needed to put myself between him and Hutch, to stop him somehow, but Hutch grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to him. For someone who appeared to be on death’s door, his grip was improbably strong.

  “Were… werewolf.”

  What the hell was he trying to tell me?

  “Werewolf. Silver bullet.”

  He released my wrist and shoved Tommy’s cane into my hand. The tip of the cane was shod in silver. Hutch’s silver bullet. I looked up into his eyes.

  “Is that really a thing?”

  Hutch shrugged, and even behind all the blood and sweat, even in the dim emergency lighting of the arena, I could still see him grin under the pain.

  “Worth a… try.”

  The monster behind me was snapping, growling. The words came out slowly, one by one.

  “Time... for you... to die.”

  I turned just as the monster lunged, the power in his massive legs driving him forwards like a bulldozer. I held the cane in both hands and searched inside for all the strength I could find, everything I had left, as I thrust the cane towards him like a spear with all my weight behind it.

  The silver capped cane pierced the skin and bone over his heart with a sickening crunch. It took all my strength to hold it firm, but it was the monster’s momentum that pushed it onwards, impaling him through the heart.

  His body was already going slack as he crashed into me with enough force to knock the wind out of my lungs. My head snapped back and I gasped for air as the monster collapsed on top of me. His roar faded to a pathetic gurgle as the spark faded from his eyes. I reached out and touched Hutch’s hand as the medics swarmed up onto the ring and around us, and then my eyes fluttered into darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Natalie

  Hutch’s wounds had mostly healed, but as I touched up the cut on his shoulder, he lay in my bed, chest bare, and whined like his arm was being amputated.

  “Oh, cool it with the moaning and groaning,” I said, dousing a cotton pad with hydrogen peroxide and swiping it across the cut. “You’re as bad as a newborn pup.”

  “Says the lady who can’t stop nursing me.” Hutch grinned. I tossed the old bandage into the trash by my desk. “I think I know a way to make you moan and groan.”

  “Hutch!”

  He caught me around the waist and rolled me over so that I was lying underneath him. His huge muscled arms surrounded me, his bare chest bearing down on my body. A whirlwind of kisses tickled my arms, my neck. Finally he paused for a moment, his face hovering only a few inches away from mine, a spark of sly desire in his eye.

  I reached up to touch his cheek with the back of my hand. Pink scars, almost fully healed, crisscrossed the bridge of his nose, leading all the way down to his chin.

  “That guy really messed you up,” I said, thinking back to the fight with a mixture of guilt and relief.

  “Yeah, but chicks dig scars,” Hutch said. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you think they make me look badass?”

  “Truly badass,” I agreed. “Hey, you got a new tattoo.” I traced it with my finger, two wolves running side by side. “Is that...?”

  “You and me, babe. My beautiful mate. My story wasn’t finished. It still isn’t finished. That’s how I knew I was going to win.”

  “Win? You have to be kidding me.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t win. He kicked your ass. If I hadn
’t been there…”

  I didn’t mention what Hutch might have become if I hadn’t been there. Something worse than dead. Something we didn’t talk about. A shadow passed over his face, but just for a moment.

  “And how about that Tommy fella? Hey Asshole! Bam! Who knew he had it in him? I owe him a drink.”

  My brow creased. Tommy had survived his encounter with a real monster, bruised, but relatively intact. Maybe he had redeemed himself enough for me to forgive him one day. One day.

  “You don’t owe him anything. As far as Tommy is concerned, we’re even. And enough about him. I want to hear more about this beautiful mate and your unfinished story.”

  Hutch leaned in and kissed me lightly, his lips barely brushing mine. The connection between us flared up brightly, sparking red and yellow behind my eyelids. I opened my eyes to see Hutch looking at me, pure adoration in his eyes. I’m not an arrogant person, but it was nice to have someone admire me, especially someone as utterly sexy as Hutch.

  “The most beautiful woman in the world,” Hutch said. “And she’s my mate. How did I get so lucky?”

  “Sheer coincidence,” I said. “Plus the scars.”

  “See? Lucky scars.”

  Hutch kissed me again, deeper this time, letting his weight pull us closer. My core stirred in anticipation when I felt his length against my thigh.

  “I believe you said something about making me moan,” I said.

  “That I did,” Hutch said. He kissed me again, and again the connection sparked, threading itself through my body and drawing me close in a dizzy bout of desire.

  He moved down farther and I squirmed as he lifted the hem of my skirt and nuzzled between my thighs.

  “Hutch!”

  He breathed in deeply, his nose grazing me and shocking my body into arching back against the bed.

  “Ohhh,” I moaned. Okay, he had me there.

  “God, I love your smell,” he murmured. His tongue flicked out and licked me through the fabric of my panties. Immediately my body clutched itself inside, aching for more. His tongue stroked me again and again, slowly. His hand pressed my hip down into the mattress as I bucked up automatically, searching for release.