The Alpha's Desire 3 (12 page)

Chapter Fifteen

I laid in the strange bed that was slowly becoming more and more familiar to me, though I didn’t want it to. Each moment without Lex brought waves of panic. Familiar with panic attacks, my mind and body flew to the edge of them and back again, dangling me over a cliff, letting me flail my arms to keep from falling over that edge. At times, I grew unsure whether I could survive such a fall if I let myself go. So, I had to stay grounded, as calm as I could for him.  He’d been there for me for years, and I’d barely even known it outside of a few dreams and vague sightings of a wolf I couldn’t explain away, and that I hadn’t given the proper thought to either.

Sleep began to take me despite my abundance of thoughts going here and there and everywhere, from the past with and without him, to the all too real fears and strangeness of the present, to the good and bad of the unknowns in the future to soon come.

As my mind drifted into oblivion, a rest sorely needed, dreams of him came again, fast and furious flashes of him in that abandoned room I’d seen him in earlier, alone and in pain. Our connection remained strong despite the angry, green to purple bruises and seeping gashes all over his skin. He laid there, on a dirty floor, naked and cold. The chill that seeped right through to his bones served only to keep him more awake than resting, that much more aware of his continued agony. 

Seeing him weaker than he’d been any other time I’d seen, or connected, to him, my heart broke. It brought tears, a hot, heavy flow of water that I could feel running over my face, though I couldn’t see myself in the dream or vision. I looked him over from head to toe, evaluating even with the brutal truth that I could do nothing for him but to let him know that I cared, that I loved him, and that I was soon coming for him.

Starting at his head, his black hair was matted with dried blood more than whatever still oozed from a cut just above his right ear into his hairline. One eye of beautiful blue stayed swollen shut, while the other, now a greyish navy, glazed, looked around the room as if unseeing, unable to focus on any one thing. Cuts littered his cheeks, those of busted open skin from hard blows, accented with aging bruises, dried blood, and new signs of infection keeping the ridges of the skin wet.

Even asleep, somehow knowing this to be fact, that only our minds were connecting, I could feel my stomach roll and tighten. I gagged even, curling up over the sensation. I wouldn’t have been surprised to awaken to a bed that looked like it had been wrestled in. The nausea was powerful enough to affect my real body, make it react by twisting and turning under the covers, I was sure.

Puncture wounds, bite marks, dotted his shoulders, the skin there more red and angry than that on his face. The muscles there, ones I’d run my fingers over while making love as they bunched up under my fingers, remained tense even as he curled his shoulders forward over the pain there. I watched the muscles of his chest jump from time to time, as slashes of pain must have continued to rip through him. His abs were covered in streams of blood and dirt, and I feared that infection would take him if the injuries didn’t.

The blood, again more dry than wet, pooled on his lap, over his manhood, and onto his thick thighs. The beasts hadn’t even given him clothes now that he’d transformed back into a man. His legs were covered in scratches, some distinctly being from claws, while others were more topical, from being dragged. 

I couldn’t close my eyes in the dream, make the image of him this way, so beaten, bruised, so mentally defeated, go away. I felt his spirit, and it wasn’t his exactly. Whatever they were doing in preventing him from healing, it seemed to be overriding his usual fierce spirit, as well. He lay there defeated.

As if it were possible, as if he saw me in the room, too, he seemed to look directly into my eyes. I found a second of comfort in this before my mind raged to save him, to heal him, to have him as not only my lover again, but as my wolf protector, fierce and unbeatable.

In my vision of him, he changed into his wolf. While that fur remained matted and bloody, the cuts and bruises were not as evident due to his thick fur. I moved my spirit to merge with his until it felt like I was holding him, stroking his fur, comforting him with the touch of my body. An animal-like moan came from his stomach, vibrating through his chest. It wasn’t a whimper, but almost a cry, as in a war cry of the defeated. He refused to give up, and neither would I.

In his massive ear, back and flat against his head, I willed myself to whisper to him.
Stay strong, my wolf. I love you with all of my heart, all of my being, all that I am. And, I am coming for you, along with the others. Soon, you will be healing and in my arms again. I promise you that.

Chapter Sixteen

Stuffed into several vans and SUVs, the large group had made its way to the old manufacturing district. I really felt I’d been there before, and easily guided them to where we needed to go, until I saw the building he was being held in. At times, they’d directed me to close my eyes, to just feel him, to lead us when parts became unfamiliar. But, all in all, we’d gotten here pretty easily. Nira put in a call to the Royals who were in the area and on their way to meet us at this specific location.

For the last two blocks or so, the buildings had grown into various states of disrepair, unused save for a few homeless squatters or possibly drug dealers. No businesses called this block home anymore. Instead, only trashcans lit on fire to provide warmth lit up small coverings thrown over various scrap parts left abandoned. These hovels were their homes. I wanted to help them, to hand them money or food, or simply a hug to help them feel wanted in this world. I wanted to give them whatever they needed. I had so much now, that once I got my Lex back, learned about my magic, I wanted to do more with my life than just push pencils around an office. I wanted to make a real difference.

My mind boggled with how life worked, what it took away and then what it offered. To come through all of this and get some sort of reality check, a small calling to help those less fortunate... that was a gift in my eyes. My heartbeat grew more erratic, my energy within more fierce, as I began to feel Lex more and more. I gripped the dashboard in front of me, as if holding on, holding myself here, not to rush to him. I’d promised myself, though, to take orders, to follow protocol, to heed their experience in order to best save him.

The place was scary enough to warrant that anyway. As we’d driven, I’d actually seen a shady type of deal going down, just three figures in the shadows, between two cars, something exchanging hands. I assumed we could possibly run into more trouble than just true werewolves in these parts. Luckily, I didn’t need to fear that sort of trouble with a band of vampires leading me to Royal werewolves.

I was trying to not crawl out of my skin, feeling him so strongly now, and his agony, his suffering, even his own worry, with this proximity. I scoped out the area, as I noticed the rest of them doing while we awaited the arrival of the Royals, our line of cars tucked into the night on the far side of what had once been a large parking lot.

This was just the sort of wretched place I assumed the true werewolves would think to hide out. I only hoped they didn’t bother the poor homeless trying to make it a home. From the writing on the building, this one had been an old paper mill. Made mostly of white bricks, many of the five stories were missing large sections of the walls. Brick piles lay on the ground beneath them, making it look dangerous to go near the place at all.

Still, those holes let the homeless in, but apparently only into the lower floor. I could see those fires burning through the cloudy walls of windows, throwing shadows of human forms and maybe old machinery that had been left behind. The remaining floors were pitch black. Looking at the looming structure, wondering just where they were in it, and who was guarding them, I saw a flicker of light on the top floor.

“Look! Up there,” I exclaimed in the quietest voice I could manage. “I see a light on the fifth floor, all the way to the back. I just see it from time to time. Yes, right then. Did you see it? I bet they are up there. Of course, they would have drug them all the way up there.”

“It gives them leverage to be on the offensive rather than the defensive,” the raven-haired vamp behind me in the back seat said. “I’m sure, here, they are armed with guns. We’ve seen it before, paranormals hiring human bodyguards who are nothing more than dispensable bodies with guns, an ambush for the enemy. It helps alert them, giving the enemy, us, a wall of bullets to work our way through before we get to the real battle.’

“How do you fight that?” I asked, imagining running head first up the stairs, only to end up falling down the stairs in a rain of bullets.

“With the Royals, they use their magic as a force field. Bullets sting, but don’t hurt us. They only slow us down. They know all of this. That is why I said it is more an alert to them than anything, that the enemy is coming. While we fight our way through the humans, they line up to attack us.”

“Great. Is someone going to teach me how to do this force field of protection thing? Because I’m sure bullets are going to do a lot more than sting me,” I said, insisting to myself that I would not, could not, lose my nerve here.

“If they don’t have time,” Nira said, “one of them will make sure you are behind theirs. No one is going to let anything happen to you.”

I just nodded, until I was startled by a sound beside the van I was in. It sounded like we were already under attack from the increase in footsteps scraping along the gravel. Beyond the rustle of feet, and the kicking of a few small stones skittering to find another place to rest, came muffled voices.

“The Royal werewolves are coming in from the other side of the district. We didn’t want to drive too many cars even this close,” Nira assured me, though it did nothing for my increasingly rapid breathing. I heard the clicks of car doors being opened and closed with care, so as not to draw any premature attention our way.

From this point on, as we got out of our cars, there was a flurry of hushed activity as groups formed and final plans were hammered out. While there was not time for introductions to this new set of Royal wolves, I was assigned to a hulking man who came up beside me. While his grin was welcoming, his greeting brief but warm, I’d never get used to them all standing around naked.

They’d traveled the last way as wolves, and then transformed back as they met up with us. That left no time for clothes again. For them all, though, it just seemed to be a way of life. I figured that if I got the chance to make that dream we’d shared come true, to run through the woods together as wolves, side by side, Lex and I, that being naked afterward would probably be the least of my concerns. Guess I’d have to adapt, eventually. If I ever became a wolf myself, I’d have a lot of mind-work to do. But, I had to put that all out of my mind. I was minutes away from saving Lex, and hopefully Vivian and Riker, too, before I could get to a point of making that dream a reality. Small steady steps now. Saving. Meeting. Learning. Wolfing. In that order. Still, all I really needed was the first.

As we fell into groups, set ourselves upon our directions to approach the building and then the stairs, I just stared at the flickering of light several floors above me. This was where we would fight the true werewolves. This was where, in a short amount of time, I hoped, I would get my Lex back. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would do so or die trying.

Find out what happens next in The Alpha’s Desire part 4 here:
http://amzn.to/1BElsuY