There was no shortage of vehicles left behind in this place. Most of them were clunkers that had been on their last breath and had just died. Whoever was in charge of towing had not seen fit to remove them, rightfully assuming it would be a task with no real reward.
This one was different. It was an intact Ford Focus, the kind he had seen when reaching out to Robbie.
Ulysses swung around, heading back the way he had come. Something told him it would be unwise to walk right up to the building beside the Focus, and scratch to ask to be let in.
He took the street before this one, wrapping his way around to the building from the rear. He had no idea how he knew this was the right place to be. Whoever had been in that car could have taken off on foot, could be escaping even as Ulysses snuck his way up to the back wall of the building.
He just knew that wasn’t the reason. He knew it. There was something here. Some answer he had yet to find. He was right on top of it.
His ears pricked as he heard sirens in the distance. He pushed his awareness of that way. It was unimportant and distracting.
He set his paw down on the ground, causing the bare soil underfoot to crunch. He lifted another paw and was about to set that one down when he heard something, a very quiet sound he would surely have missed underneath the crunching of dry earth if he had finished taking his step.
There were other sounds he’d been focused on, the faint cadence of voices coming from the other side of the building, but this one held much more interest for him because it wasn’t a voice at all.
It was a sound like rustling, like fabric being tugged this way and that.
Pricking his ears up again, he tried to locate the source. He couldn’t quite catch the origins. The sound seemed to be coming from nowhere at all.
Suddenly, he realized why that must be and pressed the side of his head against the wall, with his ear flat against the rough surface.
There!
Muffled by the wall, which still must have been quite thin, he could hear the source of the rustling coming from within. Whatever was causing the sound would occasionally stop, then pick back up even more vigorously than before. Fabric against fabric, sliding over a rough surface, snagging, but never ripping.
Someone inside this very back room was struggling with something.
Ulysses smothered the growl rumbling up in the back of his throat, which threatened to burst free at any moment. This was where he had been led to by his awareness of Robbie, by the sense that his mate was in trouble. There wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that the person doing all the struggling in there was exactly who he had come to find.
However, he hadn’t seen any doors or windows in the back of this building as he was creeping around it. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed this observation for him.
Maybe there was a side door.
If not, he would come in at the front and fight his way to the back to save his mate from whoever had taken him.
Ulysses pressed the length of his flank against the wall, letting out a soft whine to the bricking. He didn’t know if the sound carried through, if Robbie could feel him here on the other side. Closing his eyes, he reached for the connection they shared.
I’m here. I’m going to help you.
As he started to move away, to continue his way around the perimeter of the building, he thought he felt a glancing response touch his thoughts. There were no words, just a vague sense of danger and warning, like Robbie was trying to tell him something but lacked the strength to do so properly.
Ulysses shoved the warning aside. Of all the times in his life he had tossed caution to the window, this was certainly going to be one of them.
Lowering his head, he crept along until he reached the edge of the building. Tilting his head, he was able to angle his face so he could peer around the edge without revealing himself.
He couldn’t see anyone, though now the mingled scents of humans perfumed the air. The smell was so thick he could almost see the very trail they walked, which went all up and down this side of the building. They must have been keeping guard here. Patrolling. Either they had been here often or these scents were very recent. He couldn’t tell.
For only a moment, he wished to be an omega, to have the even more powerful senses that came along with submission. Then, he shook the wish away. If he wanted to save Robbie, he needed to be exactly as he was.
Carefully, Ulysses inched his way around the side of the building. He caught sight of a doorway, a nondescript gray frame, set back into the wall, which he hadn’t been able to see before.
The door was shut tightly. It looked very strong, in contrast to the rest of the building, which was crumbling and fading.
Approaching even closer, keeping his steps as quiet as he could, until not even a mouse would have noticed his approach, he came right up in front of the door. This patch in particular reeked of humans and if he strained his hearing as hard as he could, he could pick up on voices coming from within. The speakers were whispering, hardly louder than breathing.
Some of these smells seemed almost familiar to him, in a way he couldn’t quite put his paw on. He couldn’t put a face to the scents, couldn’t put a name to their sources, and he had no idea when he had come in contact with a bunch of wolf kidnappers to be able to know their smell.
All the same, he knew.
Sitting down on his haunches in front of the door, pricking his ears forward, Ulysses whined.
This feels ridiculous.
When nothing happened, he whined again, louder than before.
The insubstantial murmur of voices coming from the other side of the door came to an awkward, muddled halt. Then, someone spoke, a little louder than before, so Ulysses was able to actually make out what was being said.
“What the shit was that?”
“Wind?” someone else suggested.
Ulysses was relieved not to recognize either speaker’s voice.
“Never heard no wind like that before.”
Lifting his paw, Ulysses scratched his claws against the door. The scraping sound was nearly hellish, like fingernails on a chalkboard.
“Is it the cops?”
Ulysses wondered for a moment why these two would be talking about this, wondering aloud if it was the cops. If it was the police, wouldn’t the police be able to hear them?
Then again, maybe not. Ulysses had wolf hearing on his side.
“I’ve never known the cops to scratch on the door. Wouldn’t they try to bust it down?”
Ulysses scratched again.
“Fuck it. I’m opening it.”
The door popped open and Ulysses found himself looking up into the eyes of two burly, muscular men that he had never seen before in his entire life. However, in contrast, they held scents he thought he recognized in some way.
The men stared down at him and he read confusion in their eyes. The larger of the two also seemed to be a little amused. “It’s just a fucking dog.”
Ulysses flicked his ears and whined again. His spine prickled to be performing a charade like this, acting like he was less than he actually was, but he knew he couldn’t do anything to rouse their suspicion now. Forcing himself to do it, he wagged his tail and put on a hopeful, doggy expression. His jaws parted, letting his tongue loll out the side in the epitome of a goofy grin.
“What do you think he wants?” the smaller man asked. “He sure is a big guy, isn’t he? Looks a little dangerous. Like them pits you see ripping out throats at the dog fights.”
“Pffft,” the other scoffed. “He ain’t no pit. Looks like a malamute. My grandpa had one. Mean son of a bitches when they aren’t trained right. This one seems okay, though. Aren’t you, boy?”
Ulysses didn’t respond except to tip his head to one side. He tensed every muscle he had as tightly as he could without giving away what he was doing.
“Someone probably couldn’t take care of him,” the larger man continued. He stretched out his hand. Ulysses pretended to sniff a
t it, brushing his nose over the man’s skin. The man didn’t flinch.
Good.
“They’re big eaters. Probably got ditched because he was eating up all their money.”
“Well, he doesn’t look starved to me. And we don’t have anything to give him.”
The larger man sighed, looking honestly regretful at this fact. He shook his head. “You’re right. Poor fucker. Gonna have to send him on his way. If only he could understand, I’d tell him he’d have better luck begging for scraps back in the city. Nothing for him out here.”
The large man stretched out his hand again, laying it gently on top of Ulysses’ head, stroking his fingers through his fur and down the side of his neck.
For a brief moment, Ulysses hesitated. These two didn’t really seem all that bad. They had come in contact with a massive “dog” and instead of being afraid or yelling at him to leave, they had at least treated him with something that resembled kindness. That was rare, these days.
But, in the end, no matter if these two were nice to a stray dog, they were guarding the entrance to a building he needed to get into.
Ulysses turned his head, flicking out his tongue to lick the man’s wrist. An apology, the only one he could give.
Then, faster than any human could register, he lunged forward, jaws parting, and clamped his fangs on the burly man’s wrist. He bit down as hard as he could, sending a burst of blood up in the air.
Things seemed to hold still for a moment. Droplets of blood hung suspended in the air, as beautiful as miniature jewels where the sunlight hit their beaded shape. The expression on the men’s faces stayed wistful but determined.
Then, everything crashed in all at once. The man Ulysses had bitten reeled away, snarling curse words and clutching at the deep puncture wounds. Blood started to patter against the ground, soaked up immediately by the dry earth. The second man jumped back, fumbling with his belt. “Shit!”
Turning away from the bitten man, Ulysses threw himself forward as fast as he could. He struck against the second man’s legs with all the force of a runaway tank, sending him collapsing backwards onto the concrete, crumpling into a heap.
Leaping again, Ulysses came down on top of him and started tearing at him with fang and claw, biting and scratching wherever he could. The human underneath him brought his arms up in front of his face to protect himself, but he only succeeded in sustaining more damage to himself in the process.
Ulysses didn’t want to kill. He only wanted to maim, to put these two down for the count so he could take advantage and get past them. All the same, as he was shredding this one who wormed and writhed pitifully beneath him, he could feel an uncontrollable urge rising up inside him. It was wild and primal, lacking emotion because it was based in instinct. Here was someone who had caused trouble for him. Someone who played at least some part in the kidnapping of his mate.
He could kill them quite easily. All it would take was a sharp bite to the neck. A chomp to the spinal cord. A crushing blow to the head. He could do as a wolf did in the wild and run down this piece of prey until it collapsed and died.
It was so, so hard to resist.
Ulysses saw red, the color of blood. The color of death.
The human underneath him cried out in pain, shifted just slightly to leave an opening. Out of control, lost to his own instincts, Ulysses lunged to the side and back in, bloody maw opening to put a stop to this struggle once and for all.
Something rushed in to meet his parted jaws and he clamped down on it automatically, only to have a powerful force send him reeling away. Yelping, shaking his head, Ulysses felt several of his fangs drop out of his mouth.
The first man he had bitten had just kicked him in the face.
Ulysses faced his adversary, his jaws clenching and his lips pulling away from his teeth as he snarled.
The first man just looked at him with something almost like pity in his eyes, even as he clenched his bloody wrist. He clearly didn’t want to have to do what he was about to do.
The man advanced, his body tensing in a way that meant he was prepared to kick again.
Maybe a dog, or even a real wolf, would not have learned from last time. They would lunge again, be kicked in the face again. They would be kicked and kicked until their mouth was full of broken shards of teeth and they could no longer see through the blood running into their eyes. And then this man would lift up his booted foot, an apology on his face, and then he would bring his foot down hard and put the suffering animal out of his misery.
It would be a prolonged, agonizing death of which no one was deserving, because, though this man seemed to be a dog lover, he was still a dangerous person.
But Ulysses was not merely an animal.
He lunged.
The man kicked.
Ulysses swerved around the blow, feeling hard leather swipe against his whiskers, and came up in the gap between the man’s legs. He found the meaty, sensitive spot on the inner thigh and bit down as hard as he could.
Furious as he was, as effective as it would be in a fight, he just couldn’t bring himself to bite a dick.
The scream which burst up from the man almost made it seem like he had been bitten in the crotch, however. He threw his head back, the cords in his neck standing out. Both of his hands flew to grab onto Ulysses, burying in his silver fur, yanking handfuls out as they struggled to separate him from their flesh.
Ulysses dug his fangs harder into the man’s meaty thigh, blood filling his mouth, his nose, choking off his breath. And still he bit, paws scrabbling for purchase on the smooth floor as the man reared around, tossing both of them all over the place.
The man fell.
Yanking his head around as hard as he could, Ulysses fell back in the opposite direction. Something ripped with a sound that was more felt than heard, a guttural and gruesome rending of flesh.
Landing hard on his shoulder, Ulysses twisted his body around and got his paws back underneath himself as fast as he could. Panting, he faced the two men and prepared for more fighting.
There would be no more trouble from them. They were both on the ground, clutching at their various wounds, groaning and yelling. Blood covered the floor, trickling and pooling and smearing as they writhed around.
From elsewhere in the building, Ulysses could hear other shouts, other cries of alarm in response to the chaos he had caused. Everyone in here -a number unknown to him- now had the knowledge something bad was happening. As much trouble as that was going to cause for him, he felt a pulse of satisfaction deep inside his stomach. Let them be afraid. Let them fear him. They shouldn’t have fucked with him or his mate.
Lifting his head up, still catching his breath, he tried to assess his surroundings. The building was in just as much of a state of disrepair on the inside as it was on the outside. There were holes in the walls, entire chunks missing. The floor had been stripped so there was no carpeting, just bare concrete. Darker patches of coloration on the wall pointed to pictures which must have hung up for a very long time before being taken down.
There was literally nothing here to tell Ulysses what kind of building he was in. Not a house, for sure, but other than that he had no idea what he was looking at here.
Just inside the doorway he’d come through was somewhat of an open space, bypassed by a wide hallway with nothing in it. The two men he’d beaten down were lying in the hallway, off to the left.
Turning around, Ulysses pushed the door shut with his paws. Then, he headed over to the hallway and turned to the right, hoping this path would take him deeper into the building.
Just as he rounded the corner, he heard some of the other humans start to arrive. Their voices rang with confusion and fear. They didn’t understand what was happening, but whatever it was was’nt something they had been planning for.
Ulysses prowled down the hall, silent except for the constant clicking of his claws against concrete.
He passed by a number of rooms, all of which had been thoroughly gutt
ed. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in here, no decorations, no rugs. Much of the debris from the busted walls and ceilings had been left to lie exactly where it had fallen, though there were occasional clean patches in the hallway where someone had endeavored to clear the path.
Ulysses kept listening, kept scenting, but the information he was receiving was much too tangled for him to make any sense of it. There were too many conflicting scents, to the point where he could no longer pick out individual trails. He couldn’t even figure out if one of these trails belonged to Robbie.
Maybe I broke into the wrong building.
But, no. That couldn’t be. He had been led here, and he had felt that pulse of warning come to him when he reached out to where he thought Robbie was on the other side of the wall. He couldn’t give up hope now.
As he turned another corner, he came face-to-face with another human. This one didn’t even have time to blink before he had knocked them onto their back. Rearing up, he brought both massive paws down on the man’s head. Their face went slack and their body went limp as they were knocked out.
Being knocked out wasn’t like in the movies. A person didn’t faint for hours, and usually started stirring around in only a few seconds. Anything longer than a few minutes pointed to potential brain damage.
The body’s natural inclination was to get working again as soon as possible, to maintain the rhythm it had had since formation.
Ulysses didn’t stop and wait around to see if this man would come to. He would, because that was the way of things. However, regaining consciousness didn’t mean he was going to be able to immediately get back on his feet. He could be disoriented, confused, especially because the last thing he would remember was a gigantic dog throwing itself at him.
At long last, Ulysses finally came across what he had been looking for this entire time. It was a closed door.
He knew it was what he had to be looking for, because this was the only closed door he had encountered in his entire time here. And why else close a door but to keep someone inside?
Ulysses shifted back into human form, though he did so with some regret. He just had to err on the side of caution, making sure whoever was in there wouldn’t suddenly start shooting because of a blood-caked monster coming at them. Not that Ulysses wasn’t covered in blood even as a human. The sticky stuff wasn’t part of him. It didn’t shift away.
Taming The Alpha: A Wolf Shifter Mpreg Romance (Savage Love Book 3) Page 21