The Alpha's Desire 3 (6 page)

Chapter Five

When my eyes opened again, nothing looked or even felt familiar. That suspended state, the moments between sleeping and waking, when the world around you comes into focus, grew scarier rather than my brain finally figuring it all out. My body had felt rested for a few seconds before the typical shortened breaths and harder, faster heartbeat resumed. I was beginning to find fear and panic more normal states than calm anyway, these days. Since I’d met Lex, not only had my heart opened up, but so had the parameters of my world.

Where I’d once only known a boring job, a few good friends, and the luxury of slipping away into fantasy, whether reading it or watching it or writing it, I now knew so much beyond even my wildest imaginings to be true. Werewolves, and more than one kind, of course, Royals and magic, and now, whatever this was. I could only assume as the memories flooded back to me, took hold in my brain, that whoever had taken me from the battle had brought me to wherever it was that I now lay.

As I accessed my surroundings, little trickles of memories, more and more of them, most too much to bear, continued to come back to me, bringing alarm and confusion, leading to dismay and terror, which tightened my already constricted airways even more. Even now, more aware, as I awakened fully, so much didn’t make sense. While I waited for a headache to spring to life, the blood to pump in time with my heart, through the restricted and stressed out veins in my head, from my errant thoughts, nothing came. In fact, I could barely feel my body once again. I had the strange inclination that there was something in the air here that didn’t let my body feel its true feelings or appropriate sensations for my state. Just like when I’d calmed, felt healed, just being in that woman’s arms, the bionic woman who’d flew with me here.

What I did feel was weighted. In a bed of silky sheets in a luxurious metal color, shiny and silky, beyond any quality of covering I’d ever slept on, I lay there. I found myself, with further investigation by only lifting my head a mere inch from the sheet, to be covered in an equally modern and elegant comforter of equally shiny grey, a shade off but matching, with sleek black stripes and deep amethyst diamond shapes. I couldn’t move the rest of my body. Not, as in I couldn’t, as I wiggled toes and fingers slightly. Plus, I had the slight sensation of light breathing now, the fire of panicked panting gone already as if by magic. Still, the effort to even roll over seemed too much to bear. For a second, I wondered if the comforter was made of actual lead, but moving my fingers up, it felt light and soft.

Pain came as a distant memory. The sting and burn in my leg, the throb in my head, and the metallic smell of blood mixed with the dirt road all came back to me. The sound of the crashing of metal from the car we’d been in being blindsided, as if from out of nowhere... all were memories only. I cringed, though all I felt was a weighed peace that made no sense to me. I could not have slept long enough to sleep off those injuries. Something had to be dulling my body, my mind. Drugs were the only thing I could assume, masking the pain, maybe calming me despite myself. This wasn’t a hospital, obviously, as there was no IV or beeping machines hooked to my arms, but still, whatever they’d given me, I grew thankful for it, especially given the fact that I could think still.  Even the rising panic from waking here in this strange place soon grew to a dim glimmer in my head. 

Not only did I not smell blood or dirt, but only the floral scent of soap on my skin. I’d been bathed, hopefully by the woman, and had to wonder if I wore clothing. Moving my fingers again, I pulled up another silky material that seemed to be wrapped around my body, or so I hoped. Didn’t get too excited about it, of course. I wondered what sort of mind-altering drug they’d laced my pain meds with.

The clean, fresh scent of my skin, maybe lavender and vanilla, was overridden only by some sort of lush, maybe even sensual, sweet and spicy mix of maybe jasmine and sandalwood.  Rolling my head to take in my surroundings further, I noticed that candles in black and purple glass containers, of all sizes of pillars, surrounded the head of the bed, set on a glass shelf that hung on black wrought iron rods on the metal covered wall. Instead of paint or wallpaper, they’d used a sheet of wavy metal as a wall covering. Definitely, no hospital at all. At least not one I’d ever seen the likeness of.

This bed I was more or less paralyzed in, and couldn’t find it in myself to care, was in a loft, I found. Looking around, I saw that my room hung above what appeared to be a huge, modern loft apartment that had to be owned by some millionaire by the looks of it. I’d, of course, never seen the likes of such a place outside of images on the internet, but here I was among vast rooms filled with elegance that seemed unreal. The whole irony of that, given the events of the past days, brought the grunt of a small laugh to my lungs, though it died out without producing any real sound. I only felt the aftershocks of it ripple through me.

Eagerly now, I scanned what I could see below me. The main floor had an open floor plan with extremely high ceilings, enough to accommodate many open lofts above, circling the ceiling. Down there, as far as I could see, everything was in white or black with varying shades of grey, with the exception of the amethyst color that was sprinkled in here and there, making for a dramatic effect on each surface it graced. From a wealth of white leather couches and recliners strung around in a cozy order to furniture of glass and black wrought iron, and on to the stainless steel kitchen off to the far side, the place screamed money, a great display of wealth and modern good taste.

On the side, my loft bed was hung in what was a u-shape of similar loft bedrooms, easily fitting in underneath the vaulted ceilings here, too. While all the bedroom lofts were different, some similarities emerged, like the coverings on the walls behind the beds being actual sheets of metal, in a broad scope of styles, and still it all went together flawlessly, as only an interior designer could affect.

The place seemed to be empty, though. No people, or whatever the woman that had snatched me was, were anywhere. All beds I could see were made, and not a soul could be seen in the place. Again, fear hinted and then easily subsided. I amused myself, thinking that that alone, the fact that I couldn’t feel or hold onto the feelings or sensations of fear, should cause me to panic. But, I didn’t. Or, I couldn’t.

I attempted to sit up, but again, while I realized I could, getting my head just a few inches off the pillow proved exhausting. I dropped back down to the bed with a grunt followed by a moan. In seconds, six strangers appeared around my bed, their bodies forming from the blur that had quickly risen up after I’d made noise.

While my breath initially caught, it soon regulated to a smooth, shallow rhythm again. My heart beat light and slow like I didn’t have a care in the world, though some faint glimmer of a thought told it to overreact before I lost hold of the idea. No pain, no real prominent emotions, no will to move, I briefly wondered exactly what drug they’d used on me, as I couldn’t even manage the fear of what they would do to me next. The thought simply floated in and out of my consciousness before I could latch onto it properly, or as one would expect to do in such a situation.

As a slim woman sat down on my bed, a slight smile forming, I remembered her to be my fanged savior. I squinted as auras grew around all of them, bright but not white, more a grey that fit right into the surroundings. I’d not seen hers before, as we’d flown over the ground here, but now, the slight dull shimmer of it grew around her to match the others. All slim and rather pale, not as in angelic or ghostly, but just from a lack of sun or as an obsession with sun-covering would produce. If indeed vampires, they weren’t at first appearances as I’d have assumed they would be. Still, they stood there around my bed rather rigid and fierce, but not menacing. Maybe that was the mind-altering drugs, too.

“Where am I? What are you?” I managed, still laying there prone, somehow unable to appreciate this peaceful state that made no sense. “Why don’t I feel what I should? What did you do to me?”

“You are safe, and among friends... well, ‘allies’ is maybe a better term since you don’t know us,” the woman sitting on the bed said in a deep, soft voice. Comfort washed over me.

“Why do I not feel pain, or fear?”

“That is us. We are protecting you from both so you can rest here and heal.”

“You drugged me?” I calmly asked.

“No. Not exactly. All natural, I assure you. Please, do not worry yourself about it all now. Just rest. Know we are here to protect you, to help you. That is all that should concern you now, in this moment. I saved you. Keep that in mind. You sustained some injuries in your accident, and your body needs a little time for us to heal it.”

“You will heal it?”

“Yes. Please, no questions. Not quite yet. When you are stronger, we will talk. You must rest while we decide what is best, for you and for your wolves.”

Lex.
The name went through my head, bringing images of his sexy amber and gold eyes looking into mine, images which were quickly replaced by his clawed and bleeding wolf form. Panic swept through me, bringing a sort of comfort to feel, as in that it felt right associated with the thought of him. While I’d thought of the car accident, the battle that ensued afterward hadn’t come back to me until this moment. They had my brain moving slowly, too slow to really think anything through. Had to work to their advantage, whatever it was they were after. 

I held onto the memory as long as I could, like a lifeline, the panic a friend, familiar, asking as I began to hyperventilate what had happened to not only Lex, but what had become of Vivian and Riker, too. I remembered the other carload of wolves in bloody, lifeless heaps around the battle.

“Please, calm down, Christina,” the woman sitting on the bed said as she put her hand on my arm.

I swore she rubbed calm right into me, but I fought it, fought with everything in me to hold onto my images of Lex in my mind, to get some answers.

“Feeling like this won’t help you heal. It is only by healing that you can help them. You would do well to concentrate on that,” she continued on as I continued to pant, forcing it, pretending even, as the calm invaded.

“I need to know where Lex is. Is he okay? Vivian? Riker?” I got out.

The stress of this internal fight wore on me quickly, making my weighted body even more fatigued. I didn’t comprehend why that was what continued on. The only explanation I could come up with was it was a side effect of the so-called natural drugs they were feeding me. They had to have been feeding them to me in my sleep, which made no sense, as again, nothing was hooked up to me.

“Lex, Vivian, and Riker are all alive. The man in the black suit and his gang of wolves took them. That is all you need to know for now. Please sleep. We beg of you to heal. I will explain everything when you are ready to hear it.”

My world fell to black again.

Chapter Six

In a dream, a mix of realities and fears, an obvious mix of the anxieties these supposed vampires had subdued, as I’d come to realize later, Lex and I were chased by a pack of original wolves through the forest we’d run through in our earlier shared dream of the Royal island. Here, I felt all the terror and trepidation that my real world right now made impossible.

In the beginning, it had been the cracking and breaking of bones, a harsh noise that set one’s teeth on edge, which had alerted Lex and I, in my dream state, of the coming werewolves. The tearing of their human flesh, the growing of their fur-covered hide, made me nauseous to hear. The physiology behind their transformations was brutal enough to make one want to help them if there was only a way to make them stop attacking us and listen. I could easily see why they hated Lex and the others. The brutality, the reason they called their gift a curse, was just too much for a mind to bear, let alone a body.

In a juxtaposition so great it had to be brutal for them to see, both Lex and I took off on a run, in our human forms, eventually coming to a minor cliff, maybe fifty feet above a slow moving stream. We paused a second, looking back over our shoulders to the oncoming mass of wolves, before we leapt over the edge. With a gentle lift over a sheerness of wind, we stretched out our torsos and limbs, relishing the freedom of this leap which would kill any other humans, before tucking our limbs in a bit to allow for our own transformations.

Watching him, I saw his graceful, hulking body flying free over the treetops, curl in like a cat before a flash of power, and visual magic wrapped around his body, though it had burst forth from inside of him. The red and yellow, soft flame-like energy swirled around him, seemingly blurring the lines of his body until they effortlessly transformed into his wolf form. When we hit the soft, leaf and vine covered earth just before the stones and water, he landed as an overgrown wolf, and with all the beauty of such an animal.

I landed beside him, glancing up above us to see the pack of maybe six wolves stop, sending dirt and branches, and other earthly debris, over the edge of the cliff. While Lex and I leapt from rock to rock over the sparkling water, the clear liquid trickling over smooth brown rocks, the six pursuers jumped from the cliff. With their own gifts and abilities, they were also to take such an impossible leap with the effortless grace of an animal jumping from one plot of ground to the next.

They landed and paused, and took to the stream as Lex and I took off on a full run. From time to time as we bounded along, I looked back over my shoulder to see them running, jumping, going over and around each other as they traversed the beautiful countryside of the island. Nothing about how they moved, with the exception of the size of the bodies that did the moving, looked anything different from what one would watch on Animal Kingdom.

Glancing to my Lex, who kept perfect stride beside me, the power in his muscles, each flex and contraction of the plump bulges in his legs, brought about an awe of him. In this dream, it seemed ordinary, and yet, I knew that outside of being chased, I’d think of that moment, that sight, and want him with a desire indescribable, fierce and wild, as our sex had become in this moment in the future. As with dreams, times seemed irrelevant, and the thoughts that come are often untimely, without a definitive or proper origin.

It made no sense that I knew this to be a dream, and felt my own body, in my time, stir, heavy, in a struggle, beneath the blankets. Maybe it wasn’t a dream or premonition at all. Maybe it was some drug-induced hallucination. Either way, I had only to ride it out, with the images in my head, and be grateful to see my Lex up and moving again, full of health and vigor. This was what my mind wanted to see, I supposed. In fact, as we continued to run, the setting around us changed. The lush and vibrant landscape, magical in color and appeal, faded, and became an everyday run of the mill woods, the leaves a duller green, the bark on the trees more old and aging, with each stride we ran.

My wolf lungs began to burn, and I tripped and stumbled over angry looking coils of tree roots sticking out of the ground, eventually falling, the earth hard and scraping up my back to human flesh. I rolled, briars sticking into my skin, burning my flesh, as the Lex that stopped beside me looked tired, his eyes glassy. I smelled the metallic tinge of his blood before I saw it. He looked beaten and clawed, his limbs curled and contorted in pain, as he limped around my own battered body, his whimper much more animal than human.

I could hear the oncoming pounding of wolf feet as they approached us. Everything around me grew duller, dimmer, as they approached, their run now slow, more dramatic, as I watched helplessly what happened next. The six of the wolves each jumped on my Lex, took him down to the ground while I just watched. I could hear his cries, though in the ball of moving fur, I couldn’t make him out at all.

I tried to move my broken body toward them, I guess clearly willing to die with him rather than live on without him. A surge of pain hit me, like I’d been run over by a truck. Lex dying in my mind, the panic surged, tightened every muscle, and made each function of my body harder to maintain. I woke myself up, or came out of this hallucination, to find my female vampire savior, or at least that is what I was calling her without further explanation, beside me on the bed, lifting my head which throbbed, the full extent of my injuries apparent in every move.

To my lips, she held a glass of a liquid too brownish red and thin to be blood to my lips. As it flowed into my mouth, I instinctively swallowed, the earthy, spicy taste not great, but not revolting and gag-worthy either. Instead, it tasted like some strong green tea, overloaded with chai-like spices, and a tad on the bitter side. I swallowed hard, the attempt painful, though it worked. I grew grateful to find this substance not bloodlike at all, not thick, not warm, not metal tasting. At least there was that.

I could feel the sweat on my brow chill, covering my back, soaking whatever I wore. I shivered as a fever obviously broke, almost immediately from whatever she’d poured down my throat. The last of it gone, as she moved my head slowly back down to my pillow, everything calmed, from the pain to my breathing to my thoughts.

“What? That? Lex?” I stumbled over the words like a drunk, only getting out the last word of each of the questions that came to my head from what had happened... what was that, as in the drink, and how was my Lex?

“Shhh, quiet now, dear. You really need to rest. I’m sorry. I underestimated your injuries. I waited too long to get you another drink. Your fever spiked and must have brought on a fevered dream. I heard you moaning up here, and came in a flash. Now, you can get some more rest. Sleep well, girl with Royal blood,” she hummed, as if a song to my ears, and I grew sleepy along with my forced numbness and relaxation.

I watched the woman who spoke somewhat strangely walk slowly this time down the stairs. Blinking, trying hard to stay awake a bit longer, I watched as she walked onto the main floor and into a crowd of others. To my eyes, my drugged state, it appeared she was having a party. Many of them, a nice crowd for the size of the place, lingered around. Many had drinks in their hands, all a red wine looking to be in crystal wine glasses. I saw someone pouring the liquid from one of those wine decanters. Food also littered crystal plates, but what it was, other than fancy finger type appetizers, I couldn’t be sure from this distance.

The smells, however, were amazing... elegant, not overbearing, maybe meats and cheeses, the fresh aroma of bread mixed in with a few faint spices. My stomach actually growled. The conversation had a nice, low roll to it, which lulled me into sleep like a lullaby. I fought it, though, wanting to know more, watching the woman move from one cluster of people to the next, talking, her hand lightly brushing another, or running over an arm, in a comforting, friendly manner.

They all seemed to get along, to be having nice, easy conversation. I didn’t see laughing, or anyone acting out or up, but just calm conversation, friendly by all appearances. The sight brought comfort, even though the drink, and the woman’s brief presence, had calmed me and made me pain free.

I figured I should find myself thankful for the mercy they’d shown me. All that could make this better was if they had also saved my wolf. I struggled to get upset, not knowing where he was, if he was alive or dead. I thought that, earlier, someone had told me he was alive, but with my thoughts the way they were, I couldn’t remember. The words from below floated to me, more so as I closed my eyes. They did play out like a nonsensical song in my mind as I fell back onto that blackness, the ever-coming blackness that plagued my current existence, taking more of my time, I could only imagine, than my waking states.

Lex
, I thought last as it swallowed my consciousness up.