Double The Alpha

by Amira Rain

  She wasn’t kidding. Even once we got into downtown, we still raced along just as fast as we had when leaving the park. Traveling within the hologram was something like being in a massive parking garage, only with all the cars above and below us moving.

  Looking out the window, I couldn’t even see the actual paved road anymore, just the multiple levels of cars beneath us. It was honestly kind of fun to ride in a car this way. Or, maybe not outright fun, but at least distracting enough so that I wasn’t overly anxious about the impending Gorgolian attack.

  Celeste seemed to be distracted by it, too, because she’d fallen completely silent, just staring straight ahead and pushing buttons on the dash every so often. At first, I thought she was maybe just enjoying the rare experience of driving between the levels, but then a little crease between her big blue eyes told me otherwise; I asked what she was thinking about.

  Without taking her gaze from the level we were on at present, she lifted her slender shoulders in a shrug. “Well, not about the Gorgolians. I know we’ll make it back to The Arch before they reach the city. I’m just thinking about how such a fearless maniac like myself, a maniac who crashes into brick walls, or nearly crashes into them like today, could have just completely frozen up how I did when I saw Drago heading toward me. I’m having thoughts that maybe Jason’s right. Maybe I just froze up because dragons are simply very scary up close, and it was my first time ever dealing with one. Maybe I do just need a second chance.”

  Right away, I felt sick to my stomach.

  “No. No, Celeste, I’m warning you. Do not get any thoughts about going out onto the balcony again this time, or—”

  “I’m not. Truly, I’m not, Viv.”

  She glanced over at me, and I saw that the look in her eyes was one of sincerity.

  “I am not going out onto the balcony this time. I know my limitations now, and I know not to do a reckless thing twice. No, this time I’ll be...” Celeste paused, swallowing. “I’ll be staying indoors, with the rest of the women.” She paused again, tightening her hands on the steering wheel. “Grandma Irene will be... She’ll be super proud.”

  Celeste stomped on the gas, flicking the radio on to a pop station, and I knew she was done talking at the moment. Peering out a crack in the hardtop, I began trying to look for any signs of Gorgolian shifters and fighting, but all I saw were Jackson’s men, circling high above the city, in clusters of about a dozen. And then, once we neared The Arch, I spotted a glimpse of Jackson himself -- dark, fierce, and magnificent, hovering low with his face seeming to be directed toward the ground, as if he was trying to spot someone. His sweetheart, maybe, I thought with a little thrill rippling through me.

  Once inside The Arch, Celeste and I told his shifter guard that we’d arrived safely, and then once he’d taken off to tell Jackson, Celeste and I took the elevator up to my apartment.

  The fight between the United Federation of Shifters and the Gorgolians raged all afternoon and into the night. Coming from somewhere high in the sky, great booms and crashes shook the city. Long jets of fire shot across the darkened horizon. Every so often, a mighty roar would shake the very foundation of The Arch itself, making the building tremble with just the faintest of vibrations. Also, every so often, a noise like a bomb hitting the ground far below would sound, likely indicating that one of the thousands of shifters in the sky had fallen to the ground, dead or injured. I knew that when a Gorgolian was killed, Jackson and his men would try to catch him in mid-air and steer him away from all buildings to land on the road so that no one inside the buildings would be hurt.

  Somewhere along the way, even as worried as we were about Jackson, Jason, and the other UFS shifters, Celeste and I managed to get a few hours of sleep. I crashed on the French blue couch in the living room, fighting a few sniffles of anxiety over Jackson’s safety, and Celeste fell asleep in a recliner nearby, empty glass of wine tipped over in her lap.

  I awoke sometime shortly after dawn. Jackson’s strong arms were around me, lifting me. My face was against his hard chest. My arms found their way to wrap around his strong shoulders. Feeling as if I were in some hazy, blissful dream, I never wanted it to end. But shortly after he carried me into my bedroom, whispering sweet nothings into my ear, even calling me sweetheart several times, it did. That was when Jackson said something that had the effect of making me bolt upright to sit in bed, heart pounding.

  CHAPTER 15

  “All is okay, sweetheart. They weren’t able to kill any of our people here in D.C., and they weren’t able to kill any of my men.”

  “Good. That’s such good news.”

  “Very unfortunately, though, they were able to destroy The Dome and the time machine.”

  With a sudden rush of adrenaline flooding my veins, I bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath and pushing away from Jackson. “If he destroyed The Dome, he’ll be able to destroy me, too. He’ll be able to take me. He’ll hurt me.”

  Terrified yet still groggy, I felt like I was still half-asleep in some sort of nightmare.

  Sitting beside me, Jackson pulled me into his arms again, shushing me and smoothing my hair. “No. No, he’ll never be able to take you or hurt you. Never. I won’t let him. The Gorgolian dragons outnumber my men, but we’re better fighters. And even right now, I have shifter reinforcements coming to help us deal with the Gorgolians for good. The lions and bears are coming to help us. And very soon, Drago Stone will be dead. I promise you that.”

  Soothed a little, I took a few deep breaths, with my heartbeat slowly returning to normal. “I didn’t even know there were lion and bear shifters. I thought just dragons.”

  “Well, the other shifters are not often spoken of because there certainly aren’t many lion and bear shifters, and they tend to keep to themselves. We honestly hardly ever interact with them. They’re scattered throughout the country with no real permanent home, moving from town-to-town, and state-to-state, like nomads. Each group would like a permanent home, though, and I’m thinking that in exchange for their help, I may give the two group leaders their own land, to establish their own sovereign nations.

  Maybe a couple of the near-uninhabited states in the United Free States. Seems only fair at this point, especially since they’ve given us UFS dragon shifters quite a bit of help over the years. Sometimes small rogue groups of Gorgolians have passed our borders and have traveled to other free states in the nation far and wide, and the lions and bears have helped us to deal with them. And then just recently, the two group leaders eagerly agreed to help me take out Drago Stone.”

  At the mere mention of his name, a little shiver rippled through me, and Jackson held me even tighter, kissing the top of my head.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know even hearing his name makes you uneasy, and I shouldn’t have said it.”

  Not wanting to be a complete baby, I shook my head. “No, don’t be sorry. It’s fine. Normally, I’m okay hearing his name, but I just woke up feeling kind of panicky for some reason. Probably just because while the battle was going on, I remembered a few more things about him, like that he used to be into some very strange occult things as a human, even before he became a shifter. He used to say he was some kind of a sorcerer, and he used to try to do all these different spells with black magic.

  I don’t really remember all of it, but I don’t think he was very good at magic, but it still terrified me at the time, and...” I took a deep breath, fighting off the urge to shiver again. “I guess it still does.”

  Jackson cleared his throat, still smoothing my hair. “Well, we have recently seen some… evidence, I guess you might say, of Drago trying to use magic in battle, but whatever kind of a sorcerer he imagines himself to be, he’s still not very good at it, so that should be of no concern to us. I’ll never, ever let him hurt you, Vivian. I’ll always keep you safe here in The Arch. Even as we speak, I have no fewer than three hundred of my best men circling the entire building, and they’ll take shifts with my other men, so that there will ne
ver be a single moment when The Arch isn’t heavily, heavily guarded. They’ll never let Drago near it. And I’ll keep the guards in place until he’s dead. I only wish I’d done the same for The Dome, but between protecting The Arch and the city’s civilians, our resources were stretched a bit thin at the time.”

  “So, the entire Dome was destroyed? Even the time machine?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. And I’m incredibly sorry, Vivian. I’m incredibly sorry you no longer have a choice about whether to stay in D.C. or return home.”

  I lifted my face from his chest to look at him, seeming to surprise him with a smile. “I’m not sorry. Right before you called me before the attack, I’d already made my choice. I’d decided to stay here, with you. I’d decided that even before you told me how badly you wanted me to stay. So, right now, I’m just taking the time machine being destroyed as a sign of fate. Kind of an affirmation, in a way, that I made the right choice.”

  With the thin light of dawn revealing his expression as one of shock, Jackson just looked at me for a long moment. “You’d really decided to stay? Even before I called you?”

  I nodded, still smiling. “Yes. It’s true. I’d already made up my mind. You could say that I almost hit a brick wall, and I realized I had to make a decision. And then I realized that all I wanted was your arms around me. That’s it. That’s what I wanted the most. So, I decided to stay.”

  Wearing an expression of something like relief and joy at once, Jackson pressed his lips to my forehead, hard. “You won’t regret your choice, Vivian. I promise you; you won’t regret it.”

  Feeling light years better than I had just a minute or so earlier, I smiled yet again. “Well, you could help make sure of that by giving me a kiss right now. That is, if you want to.”

  Jackson snorted, full lips curving into one of his devastatingly sexy half-grins. “Do I want to give you a kiss? I’m not even going to dignify that with a response; I’ll just show you.”

  He did, but to my extreme disappointment, his phone began going off the moment he touched his mouth to mine. We both made a little groan at the exact same time, but I pulled away first, knowing that the call could be urgent.

  “Go ahead and answer it. I know some of your men are probably injured, and I don’t want you to miss an important call.”

  It turned out that the call was an important one, actually crucially so. A fire was building in the smoldering rubble of The Dome, and if not stopped soon, it could spread to nearby residential buildings. Jackson and his men would have to help the city’s human-staffed fire department by filling their mouths with water in dragon form, then releasing the water above the ruins.

  Not wanting to keep him from it one more second, I told him to just go to the fire right away. “Just come back as soon as you can.”

  He gave me a squeeze, frowning. “I will, though I don’t know when that will be. Once the fire’s put out, the rubble will need to be cleared away, and in the meantime, I’m going to have to lead my men on the northern front in keeping Drago and his men from the city until our reinforcements can arrive. But I promise you, as soon as I’m able, the very second, I’ll be back to see you.”

  I didn’t see Jackson again for ten very long, nearly agonizing days. During that time, I realized I was officially in love with him, and maybe even deeply in love, already. I missed every single thing about him. I missed his voice, and his smile, and of course, the feel of his strong arms around me, comforting me and protecting me. I missed the feeling of butterflies in my stomach I so frequently developed around him.

  During this time, I couldn’t even distract myself by leaving The Arch to explore the city with Celeste. Our next dragon tail fix would have to wait. Jackson had asked me to not leave The Arch for any reason, at any time, until Drago was dead, and I’d promised that I wouldn’t. I knew it was simply too dangerous. Especially considering that Jackson had received word that I, not The Dome, had been the target of Drago’s most recent attack, but he just hadn’t been able to get to me. It seemed that he’d destroyed The Dome just out of anger.

  During daily phone calls, Jackson assured me that no matter what, he was going to keep me safe, and I believed him with all my heart. I knew that as long as I stayed in The Arch, which I’d definitely be doing, I’d be fine. Jackson still had hundreds of his men circling the building at all times. I just wished that the lions and bears would arrive in D.C. to provide backup to him and his men soon, so that things could get back to normal. The plan was for Jackson, his men, and the lions and bears to ambush the Gorgolians where they were still camped out to the north of the city. They’d attack the Gorgolians from the sky, injuring as many as they could and then letting them fall to the ground, where the lions and bears would finish them off.

  Although confined to The Arch, I realized I could have it a lot worse. There were still plenty of places for Celeste and me to go, plenty of places to shop and eat. However, I’d never been content just to spend my days shopping and eating, especially not with large groups of “fans” following me continuously, so when one day Celeste asked if I wanted to get into practicing archery in the gardens again, I gladly accepted.

  Celeste said that it was just a way to pass the time now, adding that she didn’t think she’d ever try to use her archery skills against the Gorgolians again.

  “Almost every single time he calls, Jason keeps insisting that that my freezing up was just a fluke, and he keeps saying I just need another chance, but I know better. I know I’d just screw it up again. I keep telling him that if any woman should be attempting to use archery against the Gorgolians again, it should be you, Viv. You’re the only one around here with any real bravery.”

  It never failed to strike me as funny that Celeste, along with Jackson and everyone else in D.C., it seemed, thought I was so brave, when I, myself apparently went through life, at least the part of my life I’d spent with Drago/Dan, thinking I was such a coward. I was actually starting to think that maybe everyone was right, that maybe I did possess some strength and bravery that had just never been apparent to me. Or that had been suppressed by Drago/Dan. Maybe.

  On the day Jackson finally returned to The Arch, or the evening, technically, I was waiting for him in my apartment around eleven, impatiently drumming my fingers on the arm of the couch. He’d called an hour or so earlier, saying that he was coming home, but wondering if it might be too late to stop by and see me.

  “I completely understand if you just want to go to sleep.”

  I’d scoffed, knowing he was teasing me, but incredulous at the same time. “Are you kidding me? Please get here as soon as you can, and prepare to have me launch myself into your arms.”

  I fully intended to do just that, but when Jackson finally arrived, I opened the door, suddenly feeling shy for some reason.

  “Hey.”

  After raking his gaze over my face and body, seeming to feast on me with his eyes, Jackson gave me one of his irresistible half-grins. “Hey yourself, young woman so gorgeous her beauty is almost otherworldly.”

  I wasn’t quite sure about that, but I had applied a little makeup and had swept my long brown hair up into a loose twist, intended to show off a new pair of dangly silver earrings I was wearing. I was also displaying a little bit of skin, dressed in just a silky red spaghetti-strap camisole with no bra, and matching silky red, extremely short pajama shorts with no underwear on beneath. They were actually so short that if I didn’t wear them down fairly low on my hips, an inch or two of my well-rounded rear cheeks would be visible from the back.

  But, considering that Jackson had already seen me naked before, considering that we’d already actually made love, I wasn’t quite sure why showing a bit of skin would make me feel shy like I was. I supposed it was just because I hadn’t seen him in a while, or maybe because this was the first time we were going to be able to spend any real time together, since everything he’d told me on the phone before the battle, and what I’d decided even before then.

  I als
o might have been feeling a little shy because over the past ten days, I’d been thinking about the night of passion Jackson and I had shared, and I’d been thinking about it a lot. I’d been thinking about the way he’d moved inside of me, and how he’d made me feel, and how he’d just about made me see rainbows when I’d reached my peak. I’d been thinking that I might want a lot more of that kind of physical intimacy. And then, ever since he’d called an hour or so earlier, it had been all I could think about. These thoughts had already made me a bit slick, and now seeing Jackson in person, that seemed to be adding to me feeling a little bashful.

  I was able to give him a little smile, though, and he opened his arms, grinning.

  “I believe you were saying something about launching yourself into my arms.”

  Laughing, I did just that, flinging myself toward him with a little leap. He caught me easily, actually picking me up off my feet, chuckling near my ear, and just like that, the ice was broken.

  After enjoying the feel of my cheek against his chest while he carried me inside the apartment, I lifted my face to look at him. “Carry me to my bedroom, please. That is, if you want to.”

  Hooking an arm beneath my knees, Jackson scoffed. “If I want to? Silly, silly, silly girl.”

  I laughed, and he began carrying me off to my bedroom, dipping his head to kiss me.

  *

  By the time we reached my bedroom, Jackson’s kisses had made me bold and hungry.

  “Please set me down on my bed, and then I want to watch you undress.” Pausing, I swallowed. “Please.”

  Apparently, I wasn’t being too bold, because Jackson set me down with a low growl, then began peeling his t-shirt off in front of me bedside, obviously enjoying the act of losing his clothes under my gaze.