Claimed by the New Alpha

by Candace Ayers

  “His lady,” Elie muttered.

  Something rustled to her left.

  Elie looked, but kept walking. It was probably a deer or a rabbit or something. Or a dog. Or a—

  Something big and shaggy stood up between the trees.

  “Oh, holy Jesus,” Elie breathed.

  A bear?! This close to town? Goddamned kids throwing their trash out windows. Bears raiding trash cans right in people’s yards had never been a problem when Elie was in high school. She backed further down the road, but it didn’t move. It was just sitting there, watching her.

  “Don’t mind me,” she murmured as she went. “Just a human out for a stroll. Don’t let me interrupt your evening. Thaaaat’s right, just sit right there, I’ll be out of your fur in a minute or two. Just gonna keeeeep walking this way…”

  She could see its rounded ears flopping about. If she wasn’t mistaken, its head actually tilted a little, as if curious.

  It was big, with big, hunched shoulders. Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it was a grizzly, for sure. What did they say? Try to outrun a grizzly by running downhill? Hadn’t she read somewhere that they could run 50 miles an hour? Wouldn’t they just run faster downhill?

  “Nice bear,” Elie babbled. It hadn’t moved yet, and she was putting some respectable distance between them. “Nice bear… happy bear… calm bear… bear that doesn’t like to eat humans… yucky…”

  There was a sharp whuff sound and the bear’s silhouetted head twitched. It was so like one of Jasper’s snorts that Elie giggled a little, or perhaps that was merely hysteria.

  Following the whuff was a much less familiar sound, as the bear opened its maw and bellowed a short warning.

  “N-Nice bear.” Elie’s voice had diminished to a flickering squeak. They said don’t run from a bear. You can’t outrun a bear. But there was a house just down the road, the first of the cheery-lit homes that lined the street between here and the Barner’s. The bear hadn’t even gotten off its haunches, yet.

  She could make it.

  Elie broke into a sprint. She’d never been much of a runner, a girl her size and shape had too much bounce and jiggle to run. Still, something primal and all-encompassing came rushing to the surface when the need to not die arose, and it pushed strength, surely more than she possessed naturally, into her legs, into her heart, into her lungs that were hissing air in and out. The house ran up the meet her in what seemed like no time.

  “Help!” she threw herself at the door frantically. “Bear! There’s a bear! Please!”

  The house’s occupants opened their doors, baffled but helpful, an older couple whose evening TV time had been interrupted. The man cradled a shotgun as he peered out beyond the safe halo of his front porch. He was dressed like a country grandpa, his flannel shirt tucked into jeans that nearly reached his breastbone. His blustering wife in her frilly nightdress (she’d obviously expected an early evening) pulled Elie inside.

  The bear hadn’t tried to give chase, but when her geriatric saviors offered to drive Elie the rest of the way home. She accepted happily.

  Chapter Four

  Sunlight poured into Elie’s room and stung her eyes. She pulled the quilt up, grumbling.

  This wasn’t her bed back in her Denver apartment. Where was she? She groped around for whoever she’d followed home.

  Wait.

  Elie sat up. She was in her old room in her parent’s house, although it didn’t look the way it had when she’d lived here. She’d sort of wondered, over the years, what her parents’ life might have looked like if she hadn’t existed, if her younger brother Jim had been their only child. Jim had followed his father into the Air Force. He was somewhere in South Asia, now.

  This room, that had been hers growing up, was sunny and open. The thick curtains she’d preferred, were replaced with lacy white ones, which were pretty and feminine but did little to block out the sun from the eyes of late-sleepers. The wood bed frame was the same, and the desk and bookshelves. But everything was bright white and light blue now.

  Elie got out of bed and stretched for the ceiling. Her ripped Avenged Sevenfold concert t-shirt looked out of place.

  Scratching her scalp, the air was so dry up here, and ruffling her already-dismal brown hair, Elie shuffled towards the window. There was the back yard, a series of flower beds, just like always, and the birch trees—

  Elie opened the window. Frowning, she reached out and plucked an envelope from the branches that reached towards her sill. It had her name on it.

  Her frown turned into a smile as she read the note.

  Heard you were back in town, didn’t know your phone number. Hang out in the usual place?

  Still smiling, Elie set the note on the desk and headed for the shower.

  Hidden Lake is possibly the most liberally and generally applied moniker of lakes the world over, but to Elie, Hemford’s Hidden Lake was the only one worth mentioning. It was a tiny lake, really, nestled in a bowl up here in the Rockies, fed by watershed, and emptying into a river at the east end. But, it glittered like magic in the afternoon sun as she approached through the trees. It had always been magical, secretive, intimate.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t private today. Someone was already loitering around at the shore. She huffed, not much to do about it. It was a public lake, after all.

  The stranger saw her through the trees and waved.

  Elie frowned. “Jake?!”

  “Hey! I was starting to worry you hadn’t found my note.” He walked up the shore to meet her as Elie stared open-mouthed.

  Jake Framer was probably the oldest friend she had. In the world of Elie Barner’s love ‘em and leave ‘em, this didn’t amount to what it should, but he’d never seemed to hold her wanderlust against her. That was probably why she had always wandered on back down to this lakeshore to meet him, skip some rocks, drink their parents’ alcohol, and dream about the future. Though small and skinny, Jake hadn’t once bent to whims of others, where Elie had a tendency to try anything and everything and decide whether it was a good idea later. He was the rock to her ocean waves.

  Of course, back then, Elie wouldn’t have used a rock as a metaphor. He’d been thin as a waif at their graduation. The man who stood across from her now, smiling through a day’s growth of dark stubble and blinking in the sun, hardly resembled the kid he’d once been. Jake’s shoulders and chest had swelled tenfold, although his slim waist hadn’t budged. Veins stood out along the bulging muscles of his arms, and if the way his jeans fit was any indication, he hadn’t skipped leg day in five or six years.

  Elie was trying to wrap her head around the transformation when he opened his arms and wrapped her in a great, crushing hug, effortlessly picking her up off the ground as though she weighed nothing. She wanted to laugh, but it came out as a gasp. Wow, he was as strong as he looked.

  “It’s good to see you, Elie” His smile was… exactly as it had always been. Elie smiled back and threw her arms around his neck.

  “What have they been feeding you, growth hormones? I leave for a few years, and you turn into the Incredible Hulk!”

  His muscles, and there were oh-so-many, tensed under her, and Elie slipped away from him cautiously. Jake’s smile had withered a little, but it came back in a flash and he shrugged.

  “Working the logging routes, it does a body good.”

  “Maybe I should go work with you,” she elbowed him in the waist and shivered. He was solid as a tree. “My core could use some tightening.”

  To her surprise and delight, he grabbed her soft waist with both hands speculatively. He squeezed, like he was playing an accordion, and Elie wriggled madly. She’d never tolerated tickling from another man, but Jake had been allowed this privilege since grade school.

  “Still ticklish? I thought people grew out of that,” he teased as they headed back down to the lakefront. There was a wood table by the water, so old that Lewis and Clark might have also used it as a picnic spot, and upon it stood a little Coleman cooler.

/>   “Never too early for a beer,” Elie agreed. Jake pulled out two bottles and handed one over. Elie looked at the label in surprise. “A connoisseur, are we? Where’d you find something that isn’t called ‘Coors’ or ‘Budweiser’ all the way up here?”

  “I wander into the city now and then,” he admitted, popping the twist-top and taking a sip. “I have to move up my monthly bath and change into my Sunday underwear, but it’s worth the trouble.” He had to finish his sentence through chuckles, because Elie had stuck her tongue out at him at the mention of once-monthly personal hygiene.

  They sat on the table-top, feet propped on the bench, just like always. Perfect. It was a little cold out, but it wouldn’t be right any other way.

  “How long have you been working at the mill?”

  “Some five—six years,” he corrected himself.

  Elie looked out over the lake. “You didn’t start right after graduation?”

  Jake shook his head. His dark reddish hair was a little shaggy, and still damp from a recent washing. “I actually tried city life for a couple years. Didn’t work out. Moved back here and they took me on at the mill right away.”

  Elie hummed, nodding. “How’s your mom? I bet she didn’t much care for you moving back.”

  “Oh… Mom passed away a few years ago.”

  Elie turned to Jake, shocked. “How?” Jake’s spitfire mother had been a runner since her teens, and she loved to hike and exercise. It seemed impossible, wrong even, that she should be anything less than happy and healthy and still growing tomatoes in pots on her back porch. The thought of her gone…

  Jake took another swallow of his craft brew, the look on his face suggested he’d suddenly lost the taste for it. “Bear attack,” he murmured.

  “I saw a bear! Just down the street from my parents last night.” Elie couldn’t believe it. Gwen Framer? Killed? It was too awful.

  Jake nodded. “They pass through. Fish and Game figure it’s just a stray male that wanders through town looking through people’s trash. They tried to hunt it, but they lost the trail.”

  “Jesus,” Elie exhaled, raising her eyebrows. She took another drink. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom, Jake. I… I wish I’d been here for you.”

  Jake didn’t answer at first, when he did, his reply was strange. “It’s better you weren’t, Elie.”

  It was such a strange thing to say, even for a lonely soul like Jake, but Elie was so shocked at the thought—the unwelcome scene unfolding in her mind—that Jake’s bizarre comment flew over her dark hair right off into the forest, unnoticed. Having spent a thousand afternoons, both gorgeous and gloomy, on the Framer’s back porch, it was too easy to see it happen. Gwen stepping out for a hike through the woods behind her house, as she often did. In Elie’s mind, she was wearing her powder-blue windbreaker and a baseball cap, and out of the woods… a shape, hunch-shouldered and growling…

  For some reason, Elie’s mind kept filling in the image of bright red blood on the powder blue windbreaker. She closed her eyes and held her beer bottle against her head. Her forehead felt hotter out than it had a moment ago.

  Jake reached out and slung his arm over her shoulder. His arm was so much heavier than it used to be, thick, sinewy and corded. Suddenly, not just Elie’s forehead, but her entire body really was hotter. Elie felt the heat flush up her neck as she let herself be pulled against Jake’s side.

  “It was years ago,” he said softly. “It gets easier as time goes on.”

  He propped his chin on her head. Elie let him. It was comfortable and easy and snug, as if, like matching socks or puzzle pieces, they had been made together and meant to fit perfectly.

  Her eyes fell on the powerful legs in his jeans, and her memory began to unfold another scene, just before she left for France, just after graduation. The last afternoon on the Framer’s back porch, in the middle of a June rain. A skinny kid named Jake, her very best friend in the world, had taken a hell of a chance and tried to make her stay.

  He’d kissed her. At the time, Elie had been cruelly amused, childishly. Things had looked so different when she was eighteen, and Jake Framer from Hemford was far below what she had her sights set on.

  The warm ease that had been soothing through her turned cold abruptly. Elie pulled away. The guilt was so sharp she felt like she must be bleeding inside.

  Jake didn’t cling. He let her move away without protest. Like her mother, he’d learned long ago not to try and hold her when it was time for her to leave.

  “So,” he took another drink. “I heard you met Bryan Mosley last night.”

  “Yeah. So?” Was it always guilt that made even the most innocent questions seem like attacks? Elie didn’t know. Neither did she know any other way to respond except… defensively.

  “He’s a sorry son of a bitch,” Jake said suddenly.

  Elie stood up, her hackles raised. “Why?” Because he won’t work at the mill like everyone else, or because you’re jealous?

  There was no answer. Elie waited for what felt like an hour, wondering if he still had feelings for her. Was that why he was bad-mouthing Bryan? Jake just sat there like a blank page and sipped his beer.

  “Well, why?” she repeated. Her voice had jumped a few pitches, and she sounded less defensive and more silly. That, more than anything, irritated her.

  Through all this, Jake Framer just sat there, untouchable, the sun shooting through holes in the tree boughs overhead to glint red specks from his auburn hair. His great arms and shoulders were relaxed, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Elie could see them flex easily though the fabric of his t-shirt.

  “I’m going home, Jake.” Without another word, Elie stood up and stormed away. What the hell was she so angry about? Was it that Jake had warned her away from another man, or that Jake hadn’t seemed the least bit jealous? It was a little bit of relief, actually, not to have to fight. She should know by now how to handle discomfort without leaning on argument tactics, but Elie didn’t really. At least Jake didn’t slide down that slippery slope.

  Halfway home, she realized she was still clutching the craft beer bottle in one hand. She considered chucking it at a tree, but, instead, Elie sipped it thoughtfully, balefully, as she walked.

  In Denver, you’d get an interview with the city police it you walked around with an open beer down public streets. That was another great thing—the chances of being picked up over open containers in Hemford was blessedly low.

  Chapter Five

  “I hate being wrong,” Elie muttered.

  Five days had passed since she’d driven past the city limit sign, and beautiful spring-turning-summer days, at that. Elie had spent the last two rooting passively through the usual tracks to procure some sort of summer work. A babysitter. A gardener. A part-time sales clerk. She didn’t need the money, per se, but she hated sitting around. There was the impatience in her, again, stirring her to frantic motion.

  Even in a tiny town like Hemford, there was work to be had somewhere, Elie reasoned. The mill would take her for some job or other. What with her father as a foreman, of course they would, but relying on that connection left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. Elie was beginning to think, however, that she wasn’t going to have a choice. She’d been stumbling over more rumors and gossip than job offers.

  “I’d be careful about that Mosley boy, if I were you.” This advice came from Mrs. Fredricks, an elderly manager at the local Jo-Ann fabrics. Of course Mrs. Fredricks knew Elie, remembered her from years back, and wished she had an opening at the store, but she just hired Sue Maybury’s youngest girl, so sorry. However, even in the absence of a job opportunity, advice was always free-flowing.

  “He don’t work, I swear it, I don’t know where his money comes from,” Mrs. Fredericks sighed, shaking her head. She looked like a sewing-and-crafting version of Mrs. Claus. She looked up at Elie meaningfully. “He goes down to town and I think you can imagine what sort of trouble he gets into down there, especially after he got that poo
r Langland girl pregnant. Oh, but you didn’t hear that from me. Poor girl—she lives down in a mobile home on third, now…”

  Elie peered over the steering wheel. If it was, in fact, a mobile home, it hadn’t been mobile in a long while. The lattice siding around the wheels was broken down, and Elie could clearly see tires that looked a century old beneath. The whole place looked a little sideways.

  The trailer door was open, as if the place were abandoned, but Elie had seen someone passing back and forth in the cool shadows within. A toddler played out front, in shorts and a tiny Ironman t-shirt. The clothes looked like the only things within twenty yards that had been purchased new in the last year.

  Elie put her Outback into reverse. There was nothing more she wanted to see here. True, she had no proof except the gobbling chatter of a few ladies around town, but she knew. There were men, and then there were Bryan Mosleys. Elie had seen enough of both to know.

  Before the car could move, an adult came down the steps of the trailer, a baby on her hip. She stopped beside the toddler, looking down at him in something akin to fondness. No, on closer inspection, she just looked dazed. Her faded sundress rippled listlessly in the breeze.

  Elie recognized Brittany Langland right away, mostly because in almost ten years, she’d tried to look exactly as she had in high school. Brit was even thinner now than she had been then, and her pretty face was worn by the rough years, like sandpaper. Thick, dark circles hung under her eyelids and her skin had taken on a yellowish pallor.

  Thank God for birth control, Elie thought sadly.

  At that moment, Brittany seemed to notice Elie’s car, but she was too far away to do anything but stare; she seemed too exhausted to even try. She reached up and tucked a lock of blonde hair, light brown roots quite visible at her scalp, behind her ear.

  Her arm was skeletal, but that wasn’t what Elie noticed. It was the dots. The splotches of blackened scars against the once-tan skin.