The Alpha Legacy Boxed Set 1-7

by Holly Hook

  I turn the cabin light on—at least it still works—and turn the pendant over in my other hand. Aunt May tore it off as I bled out from the bite, but the clasp is still intact. Someone can still wear this. Since Olivia hasn't turned yet, can this stop it from even happening? Can it hold back the Savage Wolf that will want to rise to the surface and kill?

  I think of Noah and how crushed he sounded earlier today.

  I scramble out of the car and enter the hospital. A woman with a coughing toddler occupies the nurse behind the counter, and five others wait in the ER. The acrid scent of illness, along with antiseptic, fills the room. The smells are noticeable even with weakened senses. A bad taste rises in my mouth and I check the ER for any sign of Olivia's mother. I've seen her before. She looks like an older version of Olivia and works long hours, treating influenza, abdominal pain, and sports injuries.

  I'll play Noah up as the awkward guy he is.

  Taking a seat, I wait and squeeze the pendant tighter, dulling my sense of smell further, but it doesn't take away the saliva, bile, and spray cleaners. Machines beep throughout the building. In one of the nearby exam rooms, a man argues with someone about the four hour wait time. A janitor walks past, sweeping tracked-in dirt and pine needles from the floor, while orderlies wheel people in and out of the ER. It's backed up tonight, because after an hour, a coughing guy gets up and walks out, having given up on the wait.

  And then I spot a dark-haired woman in a white coat walking out of some double doors. She smells of antiseptic and latex gloves. Like Olivia, she wears her hair back, but Dr. Bertram doesn't slather on purple lipstick or makeup. She's practical, and I hope, not as stuck up as her daughter.

  I rise from my chair as soon as I see her checking a clipboard. In a few strides, I make it across the room, drawing stares from two patients. Why is a healthy girl waiting in the ER?

  "Dr. Bertram. Right?" I ask, stopping before her.

  She faces me. "Correct." Bags hang under her eyes, betraying a long shift.

  "Sorry to bother you, but I'm here for...for a guy at school," I say. "He wanted to give Olivia a present. If you could hand this to her that would be great. Tell her it's from a secret admirer." I hold out my silver pendant.

  Dr. Bertram glares at me. I'm wasting her time and interrupting important work. "This is not the time for high school politics."

  Like mother, like daughter. Great. "Please, just hand this to her," I say. "The guy wanted to congratulate Olivia for her part in the play. He was just too nervous if you know what I mean. And Olivia would never take this from me personally." I could have gone to the Bertrams' house, but with a gate, groundskeeper, and alarm, even a werewolf might not make it inside.

  "Okay," she says with a quick nod, eyeing her clipboard and keeping it out of my view. "Slip it into my pocket and I'll make sure she gets it. Now unless you're waiting for someone, you need to leave."

  "Will do." I do as she says, sliding my heirloom into her white coat pocket to sit next to pens and crumpled papers. As soon as I release it, the hospital smells assault me with full force.

  A pang fills my heart. My pendant represents a life I no longer have. But I'm with Cayden now and part of another world.

  Dr. Bertram stands before double doors that lead to the rest of the hospital, leaving me no choice but to go back outside and hope she remembers to give the gift to Olivia—and that Olivia wears it and doesn't have to turn or die. I'll find another way into the hospital and continue my search for medical records. Heading to the rotating doors, I reach out to push them open, but freeze when a new scent hits me.

  Rotting wood and dirt.

  My insides freeze as I exhale. I take another breath as a young guy in a hoodie and pushes through, holding his arm close to his chest. But on the next breath, the scent has vanished. The guy passing me smells like adrenaline, iron, and sweat with a trace of pizza. A broken arm, maybe. He marches up to the desk and leans over it, and as I'm pushing my way out of the ER, I hear him speak two strained words that freeze me all over again.

  "Dog bite."

  I stop in the middle of the rotating doors. Though the glass panel has closed the gap between the ER and the entryway behind me, and the sounds and smells dull, I can still listen.

  "Are you bleeding?"

  "I was, but I wrapped it up."

  "How long ago did this happen?"

  "When my friends and I were in the woods two hours ago."

  "Did you see the dog?"

  "Not well. We were drinking a little, and it was dark. Please, just get me a doctor. This hurts like hell!"

  "I know, I know. Please fill out this paperwork and we'll get you back to take your vitals."

  "I'm bleeding from a bite that might get infected!"

  "You must take a seat and wait for someone to bring you back. We'll get to you as soon as we can." The nurse speaks as if the man is a child asking his parents how much longer their road trip will take.

  The man sighs and stalks over to a seat. "I might as well wait and go to urgent care."

  Stomach turning, I sniff again, but the rotten wood scent has vanished. Only sickness and antiseptic remain. Exiting the doors and emerging into the night, I take a breath. The man might have been sitting on a rotting log if he was out in the woods drinking with his buds. That would account for the smell. And maybe a dog attacked him. Dogs are more common than anything else around here. I could be overreacting.

  Or I'm not reacting enough.

  My phone buzzes with a text. I pull it out. Cayden's sent me a message.

  Where are you?

  I stare at it. Cayden's never sent me this question before.

  Investigating Olivia, I text back.

  But where are you at?

  Sighing, I respond, the hospital.

  She's there?

  No. Her mother works here. And a guy in the ER says he has a dog bite.

  Just a few seconds after I hit Send, my phone blows up again. Then you shouldn't be out there alone.

  Balking, I eye the phone and gulp. Cayden's not the possessive type, but the series of texts don't feel right. I'm an independent person and able to defend myself. I smell nothing wrong right now.

  You still shouldn't have wandered off.

  "Cayden," I say, my voice low and savage. Then I swallow, trying to clear it as a shudder races down my spine. During the past couple of weeks, I've tried to push my changes to the side, but the longer I spend like this, the more obvious it becomes that things won't ever feel the same again. The world might have opened, but at the same time it's closed. There are pack rules.

  Everly, Remo, and Aunt May would tell me this is the way things are. What the alpha says goes. I couldn't care less about that. Cayden's father decided not to engage the Baltic Wolves until it was too late and Olivia landed in a potential mess. He wouldn't fight back until Wyatt had to die. Until the Lowe parents had to follow him into death. The system's flawed. Cayden of all people should see that.

  I'm coming.

  He leaves me with that final message.

  "Now you can't stay away," I mutter. At least I have about twenty minutes to poke around and find medical records. It beats waiting and seeing what Olivia will do next.

  So I circle to the front of the hospital and walk in through the main entrance. The two receptionists pay no attention and I push through a set of double doors. Having never been here, I'm not sure where to go, so I search for a map. The closest thing I find to one is near the elevator and beside the cafeteria which reeks of grease and everything unhealthy.

  And it's just a list of what each floor is. Nothing that shouts records. I wish Aunt May had watched more medical thrillers but no such luck.

  The basement.

  Isn't that where they store everything in hospitals, besides broom closets?

  Boarding the elevator, I press the button for the basement. The elevator dings and I descend. The doors hesitate to open and I wonder if I need security clearance.

  But they open,
and a long, bare hallway lined with double doors stretches in front of me. Spare beds line the hall and I sniff, trying to see if anyone's down here. The stench of cleaning supplies and rubber gloves fills my lungs and I hold back a cough. My sense of smell is overwhelming.

  But I get off the elevator and walk down the hall. Machines hum and I assume they're freezers. Blood storage, or the morgue. The morgue. A shudder races down my spine as I think of poor Wyatt and Cayden's parents.

  All three lie buried in the wilderness where they fell, I tell myself.

  It was best not to get the authorities involved.

  I hurry past a set of double doors where the freezer hum gets the loudest. At the end of the hall another set of doors has a small wooden sign glued to the rightmost door: RECORDS. RESTRICTED ACCESS.

  They won't let just anyone walk inside. I stop before the doors and peek through the glass windows. There's a combination lock beside the door and the light above the number panel's red. I peek through the narrow glass window of one door. Shelves upon shelves of folders, all with colored letters on the tabs, stretches wall to wall. Mountain Range still keeps paper records, despite the computer age. I'm in luck.

  If only I could get inside.

  I grab the handle and tug, but the door remains locked. I pull harder and the lock groans under stress. Maybe with my increased strength, I can break the lock and get inside. All I have to do is steal Olivia's folder and go. A slimy feeling covers me as I think of theft, but I've already done worse. And if we don't know the truth about Olivia, I could fight—and kill—a classmate my best friend loves.

  Taking a breath, I cock my legs and pull again with my full body weight. The right door buckles, then flies open. I have to jump to keep the door from hitting me in the face.

  I catch my footing without thinking.

  A shrill ringing starts somewhere above, on the first floor. I've tripped an alarm.

  Cursing, I burst into the Records room, bounding across the floor to the shelves in three steps. Vision sharpening, I lock into hunting mode. Bertram...five folders with the name exist, and the last one reads Bertram, O. Has to be Olivia. I snatch the folder and run to the exit, but not before I hear the elevator humming as it rises. My elevator. Someone's called it. When it returns and the doors open, security will greet me and they won't let me out of here with this manila folder in hand.

  My phone buzzes. I close the Records door, but what good will it do now? Another elevator might take me out of here—there must be over one exit from the basement—but my hearing doesn't reveal one. Narrow hallways branch off, but I trust none. The elevator dings above. Feet thud as the security guards board it.

  Hugging the records, my gaze darts around. The faint smell of decay meets my nostrils.

  The morgue.

  I remember reading somewhere that hospitals won't parade sheeted bodies past the cafeteria or anyone else. So they won't use the main elevator. There must be a back entrance and elevator to the morgue and I need to find it.

  I push through the double doors, breaking another lock, and into a gray, dim room with a wall of fridge doors and two metal exam tables, both empty. Mountain Range Hospital is smaller and therefore slow in the death department. I close the door behind me and sidestep away from it.

  The elevator dings. Doors hesitate and then slide open. I can't smell the security guards through the walls, but I can hear their footfalls as they race to the Records room. I have precious seconds. If they go inside, I might make it back to the elevator—

  "There's no one in here," a guard says.

  "The door's broken."

  "Search the others." Footfalls pound out of the Records room.

  "This is just like last week. Who the heck is breaking these doors?"

  Last week?

  I backpedal across the morgue, dodging a desk that looks as if it belongs in an office. My back hits another door, one not locked from the inside which I push open to find a wide, unmarked hallway and a lone elevator at the end. This must be a back way where they haul in bodies.

  I close the door as more open back in the basement. Hitting the call button, I wait for the hum as the elevator drops to collect me. I pray no one's bringing cargo down.

  The elevator's empty. I board and mash the star button. which I hope is the main floor, and these doors close in just a second. As soon as they do, the elevator dings and the morgue exit I left bursts open with a bang.

  "Elevator," the guard radios. A crackle follows. They've found me.

  They're calling reinforcements.

  Someone will meet me at the top.

  For the first time in two weeks, a tug pulls at my insides, urging me to give in to the animal inside. I grip the railing of the elevator as my heart races. The Baltic Wolves were one thing. The guards are people. I'm in a hospital...

  The tug comes again, and another radio crackles.

  This one comes from above. I eye the buttons. The only options in this small elevator are the first floor and the basement. It's meant for service, not visitors.

  If I don't do what I have to do, I'll never get out of here and Olivia could die.

  Breathing out, I give in to the animal pull as pain explodes in my bones.

  Chapter Three

  The past two weeks have almost erased how painful it is to transform. No, it's agony. Dark blobs fill my vision as my muscles burn and ripple, changing shape, and a horrific cracking fills my being as if I've become a raging fire. I blink. The elevator buttons dance over my head and settle. I sniff, aware of dirt and soap wafting off the floor of the elevator. Electricity buzzes within wires and the light above. Anguish fades. My clothes lie ripped all around me, my car keys and drivers' license sticking out from my pants pockets. Olivia's records lie next to a blond paw.

  I hadn't thought of that.

  Now standing on all fours, I snap the folder up in my jaws, trying not to puncture the manila. It's not easy. I shove it up against the wall before I can maneuver and grab it. Then I look down and snap at my keys, dropping the folder.

  The elevator's hum slows. I've taken two precious seconds to transform and if I don't carry my stuff, there won't be a point to getting out of here.

  So I bite my keys, which poke at the roof of my mouth, and follow by snatching my driver's license by lifting it with a claw and sticking it to my tongue. Not graceful, but it'll work. Struggling not to swallow the keys and the card, I grab Olivia's records in my jaw again just as the elevator door slides open.

  Three shocked hospital guards, two women and one man, stand before me in a narrow service hallway far from patients' eyes. The man takes a step back and utters a curse. One woman presses against the wall and screams. Metallic fear fills the air. A blond wolf holding medical records and car keys wasn't on the list of expected culprits.

  I bolt from the elevator.

  The guards part and let me pass. Claws scraping polished linoleum, I reach the corner of the hallway and realize too late that I've left my phone among my ripped clothing.

  It's password protected, but police can crack that if they try long enough. But I can't go back now.

  Heart racing, I catch a whiff of shocked adrenaline as I turn the corner. Offices line the corridor. Somewhere ahead, a wall phone rings. Coffee hangs in the air. Sniffing, I detect the cool night flowing past me, sticking close to the floor and coming from a fork to the right.

  A door opens, and a nurse in scrubs steps out. She's an older, heavyset, no-nonsense type woman who lays eyes on me and freezes.

  "Aggie!" she shouts, looking back into the office. "Someone left the bay door open again!"

  I have to admire her guts. Bolting past her, I run on her words. The bay door. Funeral homes must need a back way to pick up bodies.

  No urge to hurt these people hits me. The fighting instinct has fled. Only escape fills my mind.

  I bolt past the woman, brushing her knees, and take the fork to the right.

  Double doors remain closed, but behind me, someone presse
s a button—maybe the nurse I passed—and the bay doors swing open with a loud clunk to let me out.

  "What are you doing?" another woman yells. "That animal has someone's chart!"

  "We can't have a wolf running around in here!"

  The smell of forest and garbage follow. Three ambulances wait in the back lot as I bolt out under the stars.

  Shouts follow from within the hospital but I don't stop. The smell of the surrounding woods fills the air and I face a tall wooden fence that separates civilization from the wilderness. My car's around front. I've left a bag of clothes in there just in case, and if I can get there and change back, I'll can drive away like nothing happened. Maybe I can go back inside and get my phone.

  "Where did it go?" a man shouts behind me.

  "I've called the police. They're on their way."

  Turning, I face the door to see the three security guards, led by the tough nurse, standing in the loading bay.

  A man presses a wall button to lower the door, shutting me out.

  And in the distance, police sirens wail. I hear one unit and first, and then two more join. They're coming to investigate the medical records break-in and they'll answer a strange call.

  I run around the hospital, bounding over concrete barriers, over shrubs, and jumping over the hoods of cars with the folder in my mouth. No one's in the parking lot. My thoughts turn to the Beater and I find it parked on the edge. Light from the ER pours onto the pavement and I eye the door, making sure it doesn't rotate. I stride over to the car, eager to have hands and opposable thumbs again, and duck down between it and a giant SUV that's since parked next to me.

  Setting the folder and my stuff down, I brace myself for the wall of pain I must face to get back to human form. No pull marks my body's willingness to change, so I have to grab for the ordinary Brie within. I find her cowering and grab on.

  Waves of pain explode over me in rolling, fiery avalanches as I growl, then whimper, and then bite in a human scream as the world tilts and my body pops and cracks. The only good thing about the process is that it only takes two seconds, but even those are eternal. I grasp at the pavement, fingers splaying on concrete. The cool night air wraps around my bare skin. Though I don't feel horror at being surrounded by other werewolves like this, my heart races at the thought of others finding me naked.