Rise of the Alphas

by Alexis Davie

  Her reaction to seeing Adonis still played in her mind. There had been no one to witness that kill. She could have taken him down and then dragged his body away and hidden it and she could have bought herself enough time to complete the mission before the pack started to suspect foul play. Or she could have left his body out in the open and used it to send a message to the queen—a message that said I’m coming for you.

  Instead, she had frozen, filled with doubts. It was like Adonis had cast a spell over her. She refused to believe that what she felt for him was love. How could she love a monster like him? But she had definitely felt something for him. She tried to tell herself it was nothing to do with Adonis personally. That it was nothing to do with the fact that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She had just been nervous because he would have been her first kill.

  Uncle Steve had warned her about that. He had explained that no matter how ready she thought she was for this, when the time came, she would hesitate. He had told her it was because in their human form, a dragon looked no different from the next guy. It was all too easy to forget what they were and what they were capable of doing. Uncle Steve had told her that all of the training in the world didn’t really prepare you for that moment when you came face to face with your first target, but he did also tell her it got easier after the first kill.

  Brooke had listened intently, taking it all in like she did with every lesson Uncle Steve imparted to her, but deep down, she hadn’t believed this one would be a problem for her. She knew what the dragons were and what they could do, and she would never look at one and see anything but a monster. She tried to tell herself she had been wrong about that. That the reason she couldn’t kill Adonis was exactly what Uncle Steve had described to her, but she knew it wasn’t true.

  It was because of the way her body had responded to seeing him. The way she had felt when she looked at his dark eyes. The thing that had stopped her had been the way he had mesmerized her so completely and the way he made her question everything she thought she knew about dragons.

  She told herself none of that mattered now. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again. If she came face to face with him tonight, he was going down. Even as she thought it, her body rebelled against her, her body tingling and her center clenching as she saw Adonis’ lean, muscular body in her mind.

  Brooke shook away the thoughts of what it would feel like to kiss him, to have him run his hands over her body. She tried not to think of what it would feel like to lick down his toned body. She couldn’t afford to think like that. He was the same as the rest of them. An enemy to humankind, rotten to the core. Even though he came wrapped in a pretty package, it didn’t change what he was. She hadn’t gone through thirteen years of training, the pain of losing her parents, just to be derailed from her mission because she had taken a liking to how Adonis looked.

  The best-case scenario for her would be to get to Alexandria without having to face Adonis. She knew she would have no such qualms about killing that bitch. And while she would take down anyone that got in her way, once Alexandria was dead, she had no intention of searching the castle for anyone else. She was a trained hunter, and Uncle Steve had always told her she was the best hunter he had ever trained, but being a hunter wasn’t her calling. This was personal for her, and the only dragon that mattered to her was Alexandria.

  Her mind automatically went back to that day when she had seen Alexandria slaughtering her parents. She knew now that only the terror that had paralyzed her had saved her own life. If she had moved or made a sound, Alexandria would have come for her next. Like she came for Lucas after taking out his parents. Usually, when these thoughts came to her, she pushed them away before they could break her. Tonight, she let them come, using them to strengthen her resolve.

  She saw herself in her mind, striding into the castle, strong and ferocious, a warrior. She saw herself sneaking through the deserted corridors and finding the queen’s chambers. She would kill the guards and then she would finally get her moment, her revenge. She would tell Alexandria exactly who she was and why she was there, and then she would end her, finally avenging her parents.

  By the time the clock finally showed her it was 1 a.m. and time to leave her hotel room, she was fired up and more ready for this mission than she had ever been.

  5

  Over the last few nights, the hunter had been back several times and more guards had picked up the scent. They still believed the hunter to be male. Their dragons didn’t assign gender to a scent unless they recognized the scent as that of their mate. And only Adonis was perceiving that feeling.

  Alexandria had called Adonis to her chambers earlier that day and told him that the guards were getting antsy. So far, she had kept it between herself and the soldiers that the hunter was coming creeping back each night. It would only worry the pack to hear that a hunter was getting through their defenses. Alexandria was raging about the fact that the hunter was outsmarting her guards, and she told Adonis this was ending tonight.

  She had told him he would be paired up with Leonardo and the two of them would go out into the woods and find the hunter and end him once and for all. Adonis had been reluctant to join the search party of two, but he knew he had no choice. What Alexandria commanded, she got. Plus, if he had voiced his objections, it would have brought unwanted attention onto him. He could hardly confess to his mother that he had scented the hunter once before and his dragon had claimed her as his mate.

  By the time he went to meet up with Leonardo, he had told himself this was a good thing. He could lose Leonardo and track down the hunter himself. He couldn’t be with her, that went without saying, but maybe he could still save her. He could reason with her, tell her to run and never come back here. It wasn’t his best plan, but it was all he had.

  “Ready?” Leonardo asked as Adonis reached the meeting point.

  Adonis touched the gun that hung from his belt and nodded. Leonardo wore a matching gun hanging from his own belt. Dragon hunters were usually pretty tough and fearless, and of course they carried Antirrhinum, but if they couldn’t get close to their targets, they couldn’t do much damage, and the guns ensured they didn’t get close. The dragons had the advantage. They could sniff out a human long before the human knew they were coming for them.

  Only the elite soldiers like Adonis and Leonardo were issued guns, though. Alexandria had recalled the weapons from the other soldiers, telling them to use their fire and their claws after a soldier had accidently shot her when she couldn’t sleep one night and had gone down to the courtyard. The fact that the bullets couldn’t kill her was irrelevant. The pain had been excruciating, and she had no intention of going through that again.

  Adonis and Leonardo moved out of the castle, across the courtyard, and into the main grounds of the castle. They crossed the grounds quickly and entered the woods. They both began sniffing the air almost immediately. Adonis smelled nothing that suggested any human was out here. They made their way deeper into the woods and kept sniffing.

  “Maybe we should split up,” Adonis said. “Then we can cover the whole woods a lot quicker.”

  “No way,” Leonardo said.

  Adonis’ heart sank. He had been so sure Leonardo would agree to this. Leonardo was the last person who would fear a hunter, but he had to have a good reason for ignoring the suggestion of the prince.

  “I can trust you, right?” Leonardo said.

  Adonis nodded.

  “Good. Because I’m not meant to tell you this, and if it gets back to Queen Alexandria that I did, then she’ll imprison me, her best soldier or not.”

  “I won’t say a word to her,” Adonis promised.

  “We can’t split up. I am under strict orders not to leave your side, and to make sure you are not harmed, no matter what happens,” Leonardo said.

  Adonis felt anger stirring inside of him and although he tried to hide it, he knew Leonardo had seen the flash of it cross his face.

  “Look, man, don’t be
angry. Queen Alexandria knows damn well you’re as good a soldier as I am. Maybe even a better soldier than I am. But you’re still her son. And she’s lost enough family members. She’s not going to risk your life for this mission.”

  Adonis knew all of that. That was not why he was angry, although it was a good cover story for the real reason, and he forced himself to give Leonardo a sheepish smile.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Leonardo shrugged and they walked on in silence, both still sniffing the air.

  The truth was, Adonis was angry at himself. He should have seen this coming. He should have known his mother wouldn’t send him out here like this without some plan in place to protect his life at all costs. Now he was never going to be able to shake Leonardo. Even if he thought he could outsmart him and slip away, he couldn’t do it now. Forcing Leonardo to disregard the queen’s orders would be signing the warrant for him to spend the rest of eternity rotting in a jail cell. Or perhaps even being executed. His mother kept a small amount of Antirrhinum in the castle in case she ever needed to execute a pack member. To Adonis’ knowledge, she had never used any of it, but this would definitely be something that forced her hand.

  Leonardo stopped walking abruptly. Adonis almost walked into his back, but he stopped just in time.

  “I’ve got something,” Leonardo said, sniffing the air.

  Adonis sniffed too and his heart sank when he picked up the hunter’s scent. All he could do now was try to send Leonardo down the wrong path.

  “Yeah, I’ve got it too,” Adonis said. “This way.”

  He nodded down an overgrown path in the opposite direction to where the scent was coming from, hoping Leonardo would follow him without question. Again, he had underestimated Leonardo. Leonardo raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

  “No, it’s this way,” he said, pointing in the right direction. He looked at Adonis for a moment. “Mate, you have to let this go. Your mother is just looking out for you. Don’t let anger affect your senses.”

  “I’m not,” Adonis snapped, reacting exactly the way he would have if Leonardo was right.

  It was better for Leonardo to think he was letting his emotions cloud his judgment than it was to have him think he had just lost his touch.

  “Whatever,” Leonardo said. “Just get a grip. Come on.”

  He started down the right path. Adonis wondered briefly what he would do if he took the other path, but he wasn’t willing to risk it. Although technically Leonardo would be breaking his orders if he let Adonis go down the wrong path alone, he also knew he would be safe down there. He would simply deal with the hunter alone and come back and find Adonis when it was done.

  Adonis followed Leonardo, his mind protesting with every step. He wasn’t going to be able to stop this and save the girl without telling Leonardo the truth and somehow convincing him to let him talk to the girl and send her away. Leonardo would never agree to that, and if Adonis gave him a direct order and forced him to do it, he would still tell his mother. Leonardo was a great soldier, and Adonis thought of him as a friend, but when it came down to it, his loyalty was to his queen above all others.

  Adonis didn’t have time to even begin to think up a plan. They reached the end of the path where it opened out to a little clearing with four other paths radiating out from it. The hunter was walking across the clearing, a bow in her hands, an arrow laid loosely in the strings. Adonis knew she hadn’t spotted them. They were almost silent in their approach and her recon mission must have given her confidence, making her think no one would be out here at this point in time.

  Leonardo was drawing his gun when Adonis’ dragon roared to life inside of him. He didn’t know why and he didn’t have time to question it, but he knew with every animal instinct he had that he had to protect the girl at all costs. There was only one way for him to do that now, and hating himself as he did it, he reached his hands out and grabbed Leonardo by the throat. Before Leonardo had even had a chance to register his touch, Adonis snapped his neck with one clean twist. He lowered Leonardo’s body to the ground and sank down beside him.

  He pulled a sharp knife from his back pocket and began the laborious task of making sure Leonardo couldn’t recover from this. In addition to the Antirrhinum, there was another way to kill a dragon. A way that no hunter would ever be brave or stupid enough to try. A way that hadn’t been done for as long as Adonis could remember, because the first rule of being a dragon was not to kill your own except under official execution orders and even his mother balked at that.

  Adonis ignored the hot spray of blood that coated his face and arms as he carefully decapitated Leonardo. It took longer than he had expected, and when he was done, he was shaking.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to Leonardo’s body.

  Leonardo’s head didn’t seem to accept the apology. It rolled slightly, coming to rest against Adonis’ knee, its accusing eyes staring up at him. Adonis jumped to his feet. He looked down at the carnage he had caused, wondering what had become of him. He had done it to save the girl, but still. Adonis had known Leonardo for centuries. He was beginning to think his dragon had this all wrong, but his dragon roared inside of him in triumph, telling him he had done the right thing saving the girl’s life.

  It didn’t make him feel any better, and he began to slowly back away from Leonardo’s body. Before he knew it, he had turned around and he was running full pelt, trying to outrun his thoughts, trying to forget what he had done.

  6

  Brooke crept through the woods, her stride long and purposeful. She was alert, but she wasn’t in total stealth mode. She was confident she wouldn’t be disturbed in this area of the woods at this time.

  She stopped for a moment when she reached a clearing with four paths she could choose from. She checked her watch and knew she had to take the path that pointed north east. That was the one that the guard would just be moving on from right about now and she would have at least an hour before they completed the circle and walked that path again.

  She froze suddenly, sure she had heard a noise behind her. She turned around slowly, already pulling the string tight on her bow. She had been walking with an arrow loosely loaded, just in case something like this happened.

  She couldn’t see anyone behind her, but she stayed in place, her arrow ready to fly at any second as her eyes scanned the darkness. She started to relax, telling herself it was just her mind playing tricks on her. She lowered the bow, taking the tension back off the string again.

  She turned back around and her worst fear was realized. The guards had changed their pattern. They must have been aware of her tracking them all along, leaving it just long enough to lull her into a false sense of security. They were definitely ready for her. They were already in their dragon forms, one blue, one green. They towered over Brooke, and she felt her insides turn to liquid. Although she was more afraid than she had ever been in her life, her training kicked in and she had the bow back up and the arrow pulled tight again even in the half-second it took her to register the dragons.

  She let the arrow fly and it hit its mark, landing in the right eye of the blue dragon. The dragon raised its head as Brooke reached for another arrow. It made a death howl, a sound so chilling it made Brooke shiver a little. The howl was cut off after only seconds and the dragon’s lifeless body fell to the ground with a loud thump.

  As quick as Brooke’s hunter’s reflexes were, the reflexes of a dragon were faster, and she hadn’t even gotten her next arrow loaded when the green dragon roared and launched itself at her. She felt claws collide with her shoulders and then she was falling backwards, her bow flying from her hand. She landed hard on her back, her fingers stretching for the bow, but it was out of reach. Her quiver dug painfully into her back.

  She knew she was dead. She looked up into the yellow eyes of the dragon and held her breath, waiting for the plume of flames to rain down upon her. The flames didn’t come immediately and Brooke heard footsteps r
unning toward the clearing. There was no hope of rescue for her. The footsteps were other soldiers who must have heard the momentary death howl of the dragon she had killed.

  She was soon surrounded by five more men. The dragon pinning her in place changed back into a man. Brooke could have fought him and stood a chance if it was one on one, but now that the others were here, she knew she didn’t stand a chance. Even as a man, the guy holding her down outweighed her by at least seventy-five pounds, and her struggling to get loose had no effect on him at all.

  He held her tightly in place, his body pinning her to the ground. He looked up at the others as one of them spoke.

  “That’s the hunter. I recognize her scent. Kill her,” he said.

  The one pinning Brooke to the ground shook his head.

  “The queen said the remaining Order member is male. This one is most definitely female. I say we take her to the queen for questioning. She might know something about the other one.”

  Brooke maintained the defiant expression she wore, being careful not to give anything away, but she knew they had to be talking about her Uncle Steve. Alexandria had found out somehow that he was still alive.

  “She’s not going to talk. Just kill her,” one of the guards said.

  Damned right I’m not going to talk, she thought.

  Suddenly, the man pinning her in place jumped up. Before she could flee, his hands were on the tops of her arms. He dragged her to her feet, easily avoiding her flailing arms and her kicking legs.

  “There’s no way I’m taking responsibility for killing someone I know the queen will want to talk to,” he said. He started walking, dragging Brooke along with him. “And besides, you know the queen. She has ways to make even the most stubborn human talk.”

  Not me, Brooke thought. She can do whatever she wants to me and I won’t talk. I’m dead either way, and there’s no way in hell I’m taking Uncle Steve down with me. I might have failed my mission, but I won’t give Alexandria the satisfaction of taking down another member of my family.