PRIZE: An MMA Fighter Secret Baby Romance

by Brooke Valentine

  He sighed again. “Look, the outside world is a different environment; it’s nowhere like the forest or jungle. The danger is way too high for me to let you risk your life. Your skill is very much needed to protect the pack so please stay here and look after them. You’re the only one I could trust.”

  She rolled her eyes away and kept quiet. She thought he was just being selfish. She’d always wanted to go to the outside world and see what it looked like – because deep inside her, she wanted to become like a human and wear pretty dresses and go to expensive restaurants with a date. But like what Lucas had said, the outside world was far too perilous for a lycan like her to visit. Dark shadows had almost dominated the mainland and they wanted it for themselves. Sharing was not in their vocabulary.

  Chapter Five

  To Kill a Lycan

  “The presence of the lycans are becoming more prominent. They’re spreading across the mainland and I suspect they’ve found our main headquarter,” Maverick said, his tone of voice sounded very worried.

  Edward held up the testing tube and stirred the blue chemical in it. He dropped a red substance and the chemical reaction caused the tube to smoke, and eventually exploded into a tiny pop. A look of annoyance had registered across his face. He threw it to the floor and took his safety glasses off.

  “Why can’t I freaking get it right?!” he yelled, letting his frustration out. The veins on his forehead surfaced and his eyes turned red. For the past couple of years, he’d been trying to find the right mixture of chemicals to use as a weapon against the lycans, but the formulae he’d come up with were of no effect and had little value. He took his white gown off and threw it to the chair. “I’ll never get it right. There was no way that we could defeat them now. Time is running out and I still haven’t come up with the right formula! Shoot me now before Valentine does.”

  Maverick kicked the empty can of soda lying on the floor and it flew out of the window down to the unsuspecting people on the street. “That’s the least of our worries, right now. What we need to do is to come up with an initial plan to distract the lycans from finding us. I could sense their presence. Their distinctive smell is hard to ignore.”

  Edward leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. “Don’t mind them. Valentine has sent assassins to hunt them down and I’m pretty sure they’re doing a good job at killing those rabid dogs.” He took his gloves off and chucked them into the garbage. “We’re the ones in trouble. We only have less than three months to come up with a formula that will instantly kill a lycan.”

  “Let me handle it.”

  His face turned grim. He put his feet down and looked at Maverick with an astonished look on his face. “You don’t even know what DNA stands for and you want me to let you handle it? Science is more complex than you think, so don’t take it easy. It’s not as easy as it looks. Our lives depend on this experiment and Valentine won’t spare a wink at getting our heads chopped off.”

  “Don’t be a dick. When I said something, I mean it, so get your ass working before I chop your head off,” Maverick said, irritated at Edward’s little faith. He walked toward the window and looked down the street. The multitude of people kept walking, busy with their own lives, oblivious that they were being sandwiched in the war between the two kinds of creatures that had once existed in the myths and fantasy of books. “This whole country will be under our dominion and our kind shall soon occupy every corner of the planet. We’ll no longer need to hide in shadows.”

  Edward looked hesitant. Maverick’s words didn’t sound realistic enough for him to believe it, though he wished such thing would happen. He knew lycans were far stronger than them; their highly developed weapons certainly helped to downsize the lycan’s population, but not to the extent that they could eliminate them. If that was the case, then Valentine wouldn’t have asked him to develop a chemical substance that would kill a lycan in a single shot. Though he wished to object, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

  Maverick swept a glance across the street, counting the number of the dark shadows he recognized. There was a handful of them and almost half of the crowds were his kind. He grinned, delighted at the scenery. New York City was soon becoming their home. He could already foresee the future where the dark shadows rule and enslave the remaining humans, and he couldn’t wait to see that happening. Out of nowhere, his nose twitched and he almost sneezed but pinched his nose up.

  “What’s that smell?”

  Edward’s eyebrows furrowed. He smelled his shirt and armpits. “It’s not me. I took a bath this morning.”

  “It smells like…” He couldn’t come to term as to how to describe the foul smell. It stunk so much that it gave him a brain freeze.

  He sniffed the air to determine what kind of creature possessed such scent. His eyes grew wide open and his heart beat faster and faster. “It smells like a dog.”

  “A dog?” Maverick asked outrageously. He brought his gaze out the window as the foul smell got closer. A tall and skinny young man caught his attention. The young man looked like a beggar. He was wearing a green hoody and he walked as if he was being chased. “A lycan!” he growled quietly.

  Edward rose from his seat in panic. “A what?!”

  Without wasting a single moment, Maverick grabbed hold of his leather coat and rushed his way out. Before stepping a foot out of the door, he grabbed his gun and tucked it into his waist. Before he knew it, he was out of the sight, gone out of the building.

  “What a bastard, little pussy! Don’t even know how to say goodbye,” Edward mumbled as he made his way to where Maverick was standing. With vigilant eyes, he scanned the street and searched where the smell was coming from. It was gone. Whoever possessed that smell was so fast that he could barely trace the aura, which made him wonder what kind of creature possessed such speed. He remembered what Maverick whispered – only then he’d come to realize it was a lycan.

  His knees trembled and his heart palpitated so fast he was at the point of collapse. The incident last week surfaced to his remembrance. He encountered an outcast lycan and he couldn’t help but engage in a fight. It was on a subway when that happened and had not one of the assassins arrived, he would have tasted death prematurely. Sweat soaked his whole body, his hands and knees were shaking, his lips were quivering and tears welled up in his eyes. He stared blankly at the floor.

  Outside of the multiple stories building, Maverick pushed his way through the crowds, shoving them aside as he focused his attention on the young man whom he’d sensed as a lycan. He couldn’t get it wrong. His gut instinct was way too strong than his doubt and he felt the urge to follow it. He knew what a lycan smell like, especially when they’d just come from the forest. They smelled like earth and decaying carcasses.

  He stopped for a moment and sniffed the air. The smell was gone. He closed his eyes and searched the creature through his mind using the smell. In his mind, everyone was just a shadow and the only person that existed was the person he wished to see. He searched every street and alleyway, but the young man was nowhere to be seen. He continued his search and looked even further – he still couldn’t find him. His frustration had grown even greater and he cussed under his breath. Little did he know people were staring at him, making fun of his facial expressions with his eyes closed, videoing him live on Facebook, and taking pictures, making memes out of him.

  But he stood untamed. Standing in the middle of the street did not bother him at all. Most of the people, apart from those ignorant ones that kept making fun of him, knew the importance of his presence. They recognized his aura so they knew he was a dark shadow just like themselves.

  Maverick’s eyes clenched tight. He could see a red light coming from the suspected lycan. It radiated from somewhere nearby, somewhere secluded and dirty – a place where many would not dare to walk by. He focused his attention on it and traced the figure, trying to recognize whether it was just a normal human or an enemy. He sniffed the air and tried to inhale the scent. It took h
im a couple of painful minutes to reach the young man’s scent as the surrounding was polluted with smokes and other scents that lingered in the air. Coffee shops and restaurants confused his sense of smell, but eventually, the foul odor he’d smelled earlier came back to his nose, insulting his nostrils.

  The smell was so disgusting that it made his stomach churn, making him want to vomit. He cleared his mind and put up with the smell. What he needed to do now was to determine whether that young man was a classified lycan, either an outcast or someone sent to spy on them. He looked through his heart – it was normal; the beat was at its usual speed, but the pulse was weak and faint. He looked through his stomach to see what kind of meal he’d had recently; it was empty. He couldn’t see anything in there, but intestines and organs that looked nothing like a lycan’s ones.

  “Could he just be a normal human?” he asked himself, confused at his findings. The young man smelled like a lycan, but his features showed a human characteristic.

  Maverick’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He couldn’t understand why a human would smell like a lycan? For a fraction of a time, he pondered over it while keeping his mind on the young man who seemed to be scavenging food from skips. Perhaps he was a homeless kid dropped out of high school and he had nothing to eat? But that didn’t answer his dilemma as to how that human had a smell of a lycan.

  At one point, he thought the lycans must have kept the human captive in the forest and let him go, causing their scent to stick to him. But he quickly brushed it away, knowing such thing could never happen as lycans never held a human captive. He dug in deeper into a more reasonable explanation that could somehow expound the mystery behind this. But it didn’t take long for him to lose his patience. This human was giving him so much of a headache and he didn’t have the tolerance to endure such unnecessary pain when he could just go and confront him.

  As he opened his eyes, he quickly covered his face because the sunlight was right in front of him, blinding him to the extent that he could no longer see anything but a blurry image of the sky. He cussed a foul word and brought his eyes down to the ground to gain his vision back. In a matter of seconds, he could now see the ground clearly. He looked up and saw the crowds staring at him. Two police officers were glaring at him with a black shiny baton in their hands, one of them was a black woman chewing a gum; she was looking at him with dirty eyes.

  He turned around to leave. His black leather coat swayed in the opposite direction as he headed back to the headquarter. After a few steps, his heart stopped as he felt a hand grabbed his left shoulder, preventing him from walking any further. He sensed a powerful aura ran through his body like a lightning, electrifying him. He turned his eyes sideways in an attempt to get a glimpse of the person, but to no avail.

  “Valentine wants to see you.”

  Maverick made a complete turn and faced the stranger. He frowned and looked at him from head to toe. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “It’s none of your business who I am. Valentine wants to see you immediately,” the tall black guy said in a monotone voice.

  Maverick had never seen him before and he suspected he was one of those converted humans who sold themselves for a fraction of a price. He never liked the idea of turning a human into their kinds as it made him feel disgusted. For him, humans didn’t deserve immortality and superpowers for they were created to die. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Tell Valentine that I’m coming shortly. I just have to sort something out.”

  “Valentine hates waiting and you should know better.”

  He lost his cool and grinned sarcastically.

  “Who the hell are you to be talking to me like that? Valentine knows me and I’m sure he’ll let me do whatever I want because everything that I do is for his ass’ sake, stupid little cunt!”

  The guy kept his mouth shut and stared blankly at the pedestrian crossing, ignoring him completely.

  A sigh of great annoyance escaped out of his lips.

  “Humans are the most stupid creatures I’ve ever encountered,” he whispered under his breath. Without a choice, he decided to come and meet Valentine. But before he left, he looked in the direction where the young man was.

  “I’ll find and kill you.”

  Chapter Six

  The Day to Remember

  Samantha finished the cocktail and chewed the grapes, squeezing it into her mouth. She was at her Mellissa’s bar drinking since twelve in the morning till now. Having a high tolerance for alcohol served to her advantage. She wasn’t that type of a heavy drinker, a couple of shots was all she needed to relax and forget her problems.

  About two months ago, the man she was engaged with had turned out to be a cheater. She had loved him and thought of spending the rest of her life with him, but things didn’t work out according to her plan. The bastard had a family already with three grown-up kids in high school. And now she was being sued for liaison and the freaking pervert kept denying his involvement with the crime, claiming she was the one chasing him all along when he’d told her he already had a family of his own. What a liar!

  But Samantha didn’t want to think about that right now. Her mom had just been hospitalized the other day due to kidney failure caused by too much drinking. She sighed and grabbed the bottle of whiskey, but Mellissa quickly grabbed it away from her and put it on the shelf.

  “Girl, you’ve got to go home. It’s already quarter past ten.”

  Samantha’s vision blurred out. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “You’re drunk. I’ll call a taxi, okay?” Mellissa picked up the phone and talked to a taxi operator, demanding for a cab. Soon after, she dropped the phone back and returned to wiping the glasses and utensils as she put them back neatly to the shelves and drawers. She was Samantha’s best friend all the way from high school when she dropped at eighth grade to work here and make some cash to feed her baby girl, who was now not-so-baby-anymore.

  “Who did you call? Samantha asked, her head was whirling around from intoxication.

  “Your boyfriend. I told him to come and pick you up,” she said, trying to alert her in the hopes of putting senses back into her head.

  And it worked! Samantha’s eyes grew wide open and stared at her with that funny look as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “No way! You did not just do that. You did not call that bastard, right Mel?” She grabbed hold of an empty bottle of whiskey, threatening to smash it to Mellissa.

  “Girl, chill out! I called a taxi not him, okay. Put that thing down,” she said, freaked out. She knew Samantha could go wild when she was drunk and she’d seen her break a girl’s nose before at a house party. It was pretty intense, and it scared the hell out of her.

  Samantha breathed out. “You’re mad. You almost gave me a heartbreak.”

  Mellissa pulled the drawer open and put the glasses into it. Just as when her lips parted to reply, her ears heard a screeching sound from the outside. Her eyebrows furrowed and her heart skipped a beat. She had a bad feeling it was one of those thieves again who broke into the shop the other day. But then again, it made her wonder why would that thief come in the broad daylight?

  “Sam, can you hear that?” she whispered quietly.

  She looked puzzled. “Ha?”

  Mellissa made a hissing sound to shut her up. “Listen to that sound. Someone is trying to break into the shop again.”

  “Ah,” she nodded as if she cared. “Don’t worry, no one would break into your shop. It’s pretty shitty, anyway. All they could find is garbage everywhere,” she said, utterly oblivious of how offensive her words sounded.

  “Haaay! I should’ve never let you drink that much.” She turned around and grabbed a baseball bat from underneath the countertop. She came prepared. There was also a gun in the office room for self-defense, but she didn’t know how to use it better than a baseball bat. She used to be a varsity player back in high school so hitting the ball was an easy job to do, but this time she thought she would hit a different kind of ball, a much s
ofter one.

  She headed to where the sound was coming from, then she stopped, and listened again. After a short observation, she concluded it was coming from the outside. Slowly and painfully, she turned the doorknob, sweat dripping in her hands, her knees were trembling. As she was about to pull the door open, she jumped from where she was standing and cringed.

  “I’m sorry, the spoon slipped from my hand. It wasn’t my fault,” Samantha said, grinning as though annoying her even further. Mellissa clenched her fists and rolled her eyes at her. With great caution, she pulled the door open and jumped out, holding the baseball bat and swinging it forward. She swung it repeatedly, hitting the air and wasting her energy. To her surprise, there wasn’t any thief. A young man was scavenging food in the garbage skip. He just looked at her with an innocent look in his eyes, which assured her he meant her no harm. She brought the bat down and stared at him, realizing that he was kind of cute, but quite skinny as well.

  His bad smell insulted her nostrils. He smelled like a drainage. He was wearing a green hoody and it looked as though he had not taken a proper bath for quite some time. He stunk so bad that she pinched her nose and breathed through her mouth. She looked at him for a while and remembered that time when she dropped out of high school and lived on streets, homeless and broke. No one helped her and she promised that she would never turn a cold shoulder to those who were suffering. She wanted to help him, but she did not even know him. Not even his name.

  “Hey,” she called out.

  He looked at her with that look that begged for help. “Yes?”

  She got it. He needed help, but before then she had to know him well – only if he’d be honest enough to tell the truths. “What’s your name and where did you come from?” Her tone sounded very demanding that made him take a step back.

  “I’m Vincent and I’m from Chicago.”

  Her eyes slightly widened. “You’ve come all the way from Chicago?”