Alpha’s Sun

by Rose, Renee

  I can’t see Sunny but I sense her enjoyment and it does something to my wolf. He’s content because she’s content. It’s crazy, but true. And there’s no denying the euphoria I feel now that he’s marked her. Like bubbles of joy that won’t stop rising.

  We swing by the bar where the dickwad works, but they aren’t open yet, so we head to my place to shower and for me to change clothes. When I get out of the shower, I find fresh jars of flowers on the kitchen table, coffee table, end table and dresser.

  I smile and shake my head with disbelief. Sunny. Bringing color to the world everywhere she goes. Crazy, wonderful woman.

  I catch her around the waist and pull her in for a kiss. “Ready?”

  She smiles up at me, looking more youthful than ever. I guess good sex will do that to a woman. “Ready, big man. Let’s go.”

  I put my huge helmet on her again and we ride over, even though it’s not far. When we get in, I nearly choke when I see the douchebag she went out on a date with. Tall, skinny. Weaselly. Arrogant little prick. But it doesn’t matter. He’s not competition. She made that clear.

  “Larry, hi!” She waves as we walk over. He’s behind the bar shoveling ice into ice buckets.

  “Oh, hey, Sunny.” He gives me a wary glance.

  Good. He definitely should know she’s been claimed.

  “Hey, we have a question for you.”

  It’s surprising how grateful I am she said we not I.

  “Remember that government building you ran across in the Carson Forest?”

  He lights up, like this is a story he loves to tell. “The alien research site? Definitely. What about it?” He looks from Sunny to me with new interest.

  “We’d like to ride out there on the bike and take a look around.”

  He shakes his head with authority. “No way you’ll get in. I’m telling you, there are guard towers and guys with machine guns at the top. It’s crazy secure.” He looks like he wants to launch into his whole story, so I cut him short.

  “Directions, man?”

  “I don’t think you want to go out there. It’s the kind of place people don’t come back from.”

  “You might be right about that,” I say. “But yeah, we definitely want to go out. Can you give us directions?”

  He leans forward on his forearms and launches into an avid description of how to get there. I can’t stand when people give too much information in directions—it muddies the picture and makes it harder to remember the salient points. This guy’s doing that. He describes every turn with great detail.

  I grab the pen and order ticket book from his front pocket and plop them on the counter between us. “Draw a map,” I command, using the timber of alpha command.

  Lo and behold, it works. He shuts up and draws the map, like I ask. “You guys be careful. Hey—stop in here when you’re back so I know you’re safe. That way if they capture you, you can tell them that someone knows where you are and is going to go public if you don’t get back.” He looks immensely satisfied with himself and this solution, so I nod.

  “Yeah, sure thing. Thanks.” I wave the paper with the map.

  “Bye, Larry,” Sunny calls out cheerfully, and I’m not even a tiny bit jealous. There’s no way that guy could be attractive to her.

  Still, I slide an arm around her waist as we walk out, showing my claim on her.

  Outside, at the bike, I catch Sunny’s chin. “I don’t think you should go.”

  “Fuck that. I’m in this, too. My daughter and her father were harmed by these guys. I require justice.” She folds her arms across her chest and sticks her chin out. “Besides, we’re just a couple of lovebirds out for a drive, right?” She says brightly. “I’m your best cover.”

  She has a point. But I hate the idea of bringing her close to danger. I’ll just scout it out. If it’s what this guy describes, we will leave and I will call home to Wolf Ridge for backup.

  I plop the helmet on her head and swing a leg over the bike. “Climb on, baby. Let’s see what we can find.”

  * * *

  Sunny

  Larry’s map was shit and it takes us nearly an hour and a half of backtracking to find the unmarked road he described, but eventually we do. Titus hides the Harley behind a boulder and we hike in on foot. He holds my hand and swings our arms together like we’re on a picnic or date of some kind.

  The hike is about a half mile in and then the road just seems to stop.

  There’s nothing here.

  Titus turns around in a circle. “Wrong road?”

  The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. “No,” I murmur. “I sense evil here.”

  He raises his brows.

  I’m used to people thinking I’m nuts when I say things like that, so I just shrug, but he scans the trees more closely. “From which direction?”

  The pleasure of being believed does something fluttery to my chest. I close my eyes to feel the energy. It blasts me from straight ahead. I open my eyes and point. Definitely that way.

  Titus moves in that direction without comment. We walk into the woods, no path to follow, nothing. It doesn’t make sense that a lab would be out here beyond the road. The kind of lab Larry described would require a large parking area with many cars. Not a dead end dirt road and a hike into a pathless forest.

  I start to doubt my intuition. “Maybe I’m wrong. This doesn’t make sense.”

  Titus shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re wrong.” He turns to face me and starts stripping off his clothes.

  “Oh! Okay.” I wasn’t really feeling the romance at this precise moment, but with Titus, I’m always down. His passion sets my body on fire. I start to pull off my own shirt and he freezes.

  “What are you doing?” He’s fully naked now, his muscled body like a work of art.

  “Um…” I cock my head. “What are you doing?”

  He throws back his head and lets out a booming laugh that makes all the birds in the trees scatter. “Oh, baby. I would love to nail you up against this tree right now, but I was going to shift and sniff around. I can smell better when I’m in wolf form.”

  Oh.

  My face grows warm. “Right. Totally. Got it.”

  Titus saunters toward me, his dick at full salute. “Why’d you have to go and show me these?” He cups one of my small breasts and rubs his thumb over the nipple.

  I squirm, already wet for him. “Titus, don’t. Go!” I point toward the direction of the evil.

  He chuckles again. “Rain check?” He brushes his lips across mine.

  I groan. “Definitely.”

  “Stay here. Do not move.” In a blur of motion, he changes to wolf form, his four paws huge in the dirt.

  I watch in awe as he trots off, nose to the ground, following the scents. Beautiful creature. I’m struck for a moment with honor that he showed me his wolf. That he trusts me with his secret. That I get to be a part of this strange and private society he and my daughter inhabit. It’s a privilege, for sure.

  He disappears from sight and I wait, listening to the stirring of the forest around me. A few minutes later, I hear a whistle.

  “Sunny! Come check this out.” I hear Titus call.

  I leave Titus’ clothes and boots and jog in the direction of his voice. “Titus?”

  “Over here.”

  I have to go around a huge boulder to find him—in all his naked glory—at the edge of a drop-off.

  I gasp. Down below, hidden from aerial view by the natural outcropping of rocks, lies a concrete bunker. On the other side is the elevated guard tower and a different dirt road that leads to what appears to be an underground parking lot.

  “This is it!” Titus’ eyes gleam the bright blue of his wolf. His aura is a bold red-orange. He’s ready for battle. “I don’t see or hear anyone around but I’m going in closer. Stay here and keep an eye out, okay?”

  “Be careful, Titus.”

  “I will.” He shifts and lands on all fours, already in stride.

  From m
y vantage point, I can watch him the whole time. He skirts back and forth down the steep incline, leaping from rock to rock until he makes it to the bottom. There, he stays low, in the shadows, sniffing around the perimeter.

  I wish I had a pair of binoculars. I can’t be positive, but I don’t think I see anyone in the guard tower.

  I’m surprised to see Titus run right for what appears to be the front door. When he goes in, I charge down after him. No way I’m letting him go into that place alone.

  I skid and slide down the mountainside, then slowly climb down the boulder face. It’s not nearly as easy as Titus made it look. Before long, I’m literally rock climbing without a belay and it’s scary as hell.

  Rocks slide out beneath me and scatter to the ground far below, warning me I’m far too high to sustain a drop. I move one foot. A hand. Try to figure out the best way to go.

  Fuck, this is totally impossible with my casted arm. I look back up the way I came.

  Crap. I don’t think I can even get back up that way. And I can’t go down anymore. I whimper.

  “Sunny!”

  Relief pours through me at the sound of Titus’ voice below. I don’t dare turn to look though. I’m frozen, hanging on for dear life, my limbs trembling, my fingers slipping from sweat. “Sunny, look at me.”

  Slowly, slowly, I turn my head to look over my shoulder and down. Titus is right beneath me, about twenty-five feet. He’s holding his arms out. He’s still naked. I’m not sure I’m going to get used to that.

  “Let go, baby. I’ll catch you.”

  I don’t even hesitate. I trust this man completely, and I’m definitely willing to accept his help. I let go and drop, squeaking as the wind rushes along my skin. I collide into Titus with a thud, but he drops his arms and his knees, swinging me around to break the fall. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss his cheek.

  “You saved me!” I breathe.

  “I don’t know about that,” he says with a chuckle. “But what in the hell were you doing, little lady? I’m going to turn your ass pink for scaring the shit out of me.”

  I suck his earlobe between my lips and release it with a pop. “Promise?”

  He eases me gently to my feet and pops my ass without any force at all. “Cute, baby. Very cute.”

  I turn around and look at the building and my eyes fly wide. There are no doors. In fact, it appears a bomb went off where the doors used to be. “What happened? Is the building empty?”

  He nods. “Yeah, but this was definitely a shifter lab. I smell weird shifter smell all over the place.”

  “What’s weird shifter scent?”

  He takes my hand and leads me toward the building. “Unidentified animal. They were experimenting on turning humans into shifters. Genetic modification shit. Experiments didn’t always work. There’s these guys from a lab in California that are just… weird. One’s an owl, I think. The other two—I’m not even sure. Some kind of canine?” he shakes his head. “It’s fucking tragic.”

  “Oh my goddess.”

  “Yeah. It’s a wonder they even know how to function after what they’ve been through.”

  We stop at the entrance. “What do you think happened here?”

  “It looks like this lab has already been taken out, but it wasn’t by us. It was obviously by force, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  We enter into darkness, which doesn’t seem to bother Titus in the least.

  “Are you sure there’s no one here?”

  He squeezes my hand. “Positive. I thought you might want to have a look around, but we can go back out if you’re scared. I’ll come back later to really search and see if there are any more clues. From what I can tell, everything’s been emptied and destroyed. There’s no equipment, data, files, anything. It’s just an empty, burned out bunker with cages and prison cells.”

  I shiver, the sense of desperation, terror and evil pulling at me from every corner. There are entities hanging around here—probably ghosts of the departed test subjects, but I’m too creeped out to acknowledge them to ask.

  “Yeah, let’s go back. I can’t actually see anything anyway.”

  Titus stops. “Oh shit. Right. I’m sorry, baby. I forgot.”

  We retrace our steps, and I’m relieved when we step into the light.

  Until I see three men in black step out with guns pointed right at us.

  Chapter 8

  Titus

  A snarl rips out of my throat, and I shift before I even have a chance to think. The need to protect Sunny is too great. My wolf body-checks her to shove her back behind me.

  My brain isn’t working yet—I’m in full fight-mode, ready to rip their throats out.

  One of them laughs like he’s going to enjoy killing me.

  Another one steps forward. “Shift, wolf.” The words enter my body and reverberate through. There’s alpha command in them. It gets my attention, even though I’m unwilling to obey.

  It helps kick my brain back online.

  Shifters.

  These guys are shifters.

  Which doesn’t necessarily mean they are friendly. But their scents are familiar. These are the wolves from Sunny’s place.

  “Shift, wolf,” he repeats.

  I shift, calmer, now. A little more able to think. Still, I angle my body in front of Sunny’s to shield her from them.

  “What are you doing here?” the alpha demands.

  I narrow my eyes, not sure how much to say.

  Sunny steps out from behind me, hands on her hips. “We know what you’re up to!” she asserts. “We know, and we’re not the only ones. Experimenting on shifters. Kidnapping them. Tracking down their children. We’re not going to let you get away with it.”

  The alpha raises an eyebrow.

  “Sunny,” I say in a low voice. “These guys are the wolves we saw outside your place last night.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes widen and she steps back to my side. I drop an arm around her shoulders and pull her against me. “Well, what are they doing here, then?”

  The alpha’s lips twitch. He has black hair and the smooth dark skin of a Native American. One of the other men looks similar, like they’re related. He’s young for an alpha—early thirties, tops. “I asked you first.”

  “Point those weapons away from my female,” I demand, even though I’m out-numbered and out-gunned. They’re wolves. They should know a mated wolf will stop at nothing to protect his female and my mating mark scent is all over Sunny. Even if it means taking on three much younger and well-armed wolves.

  The alpha gives a tiny nod and the guns drop. “Talk.”

  “I was sent to find intel on this lab. Our pack had word there was still an operational lab in New Mexico. Apparently, it’s already been shut down.”

  “Your pack sent an old wolf and a human female to take down a lab?” One of the guys asks derisively.

  I lift my lip and growl in his direction.

  “What do you know about labs like these?” the alpha asks.

  I study the wolves a little more and grow uneasy. They may be shifters, but they hold themselves like military. Like Nash, the shifter from the lab outside San Diego. They have the stance of soldiers—shoulders back, chest up. Huge muscles bulging through their black t-shirts. The guns they’re carrying don’t look like civilian weapons, not that I really know much about guns. And they definitely know how to handle them. Not like thugs who bought themselves big guns on the black market. But like professionals who handle guns with respect and care.

  Could these men be working for the government? Could they actually be part of this program? Maybe a result of it?

  I narrow my eyes. “What do you know?” I counter.

  He looks at me for a long time. “I know who dismantled this lab.” His gaze meets mine squarely.

  I relax. “You did?”

  He gives a single nod.

  “I know who took down labs just like it in California and Utah,” I tell him.

  Again, the quie
t nod. “Your pack?”

  “Extended pack, yes.”

  “So you know what they did here? This Data-X corporation?” He lifts his chin in the direction of the building.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Were there… survivors?”

  He considers me another long moment, as if still weighing whether he can trust me. “Yes. And they require placement. We can’t keep them here safely long term. Taos is way too small.”

  I scrub a hand over my beard. “I will talk to my alpha, but I’m sure they can be accommodated in Arizona—either Tucson or Phoenix or both. There’s plenty of room and employment if they’re seeking asylum.”

  The alpha steps forward and extends his hand. “Rafe Lightfoot.”

  “Titus Brown. This is Sunny Hines. Her daughter’s father was killed in one of the labs.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Rafe offers as he shakes her hand. To me, he says, “Check with your alpha. I’m not going to expose these shifters to anyone new unless I have assurances they will be given full assistance.”

  I nod my agreement and pull out my phone.

  The shifter who mocked me earlier snorts and I quickly realize why. There’s no cell phone coverage out here. Zero bars.

  “Give me your phone number,” I say to Rafe.

  He doesn’t move. His ability to remain perfectly still is unnerving. The one who I’m pretty sure must be his brother has the same mastery. “We’ll rendezvous. Ramirez Bar at sixteen hundred hours.”

  If I had any doubt of their military background, it’s gone. “Who are you guys?” I demand.

  “We’re nobody,” he answers. “And I’ll ask you to forget you ever met us when this is over.”

  I shrug. I can live with that. If they’re some kind of secret-ops organization that takes down government-funded atrocities, I’m not going to protest. “Sixteen hundred hours. Ramirez Bar.”

  “That’s right. We can give you a lift back to your bike, seeing as how your female had some difficulty scaling the rocks.”