by Alexis Davie
Pike gazed out the large window of his living room at the abandoned streets of the French Quarter, and he suddenly felt uneasy. Something was wrong. His wolf intuition was going crazy and he glanced at his phone, and within a few seconds, it rang. Pike reached out and grabbed it, answering it as fast as he could.
“Boss, it’s Talon. There was a minor complication with the job.”
Pike Larsson, one of the most powerful Alpha wolves in the entire country, had moved down to Louisiana for some peace and quiet. After his violent past which involved his sister and his former pack, Pike had decided to settle in New Orleans until things cooled down. His Betas, Talon and Reed, whom Pike had known ever since they were kids, followed him, and soon the trio had started their own pack—now one of the largest in the state. He had sent them on a job earlier this evening to recover stolen artifacts which had belonged to Pike’s sister, Ava, and Pike hoped they didn't fuck it up. Usually, he could count on them, but judging by the tone of Talon’s voice, this wasn’t just a minor complication as he had stated.
This was huge.
“What happened? Did you manage to get the trinkets?”
“Trinkets” was their code word for anything that involved artifacts of his family, or any kind of information. Since New Orleans was crawling with little stores that sold various kinds of trinkets, he felt it was appropriate to use it, in case they were being watched or their conversations were being listened to.
Sure, it may have sounded a bit paranoid and obsessive, but it had happened before, and Pike knew it was only a matter of time before it happened again.
“Yeah, we got them, but we ran into a bit of trouble on the way back.”
“What kind of trouble?” Pike asked as his chest tightened, his green eyes darkening as he paced around the living room.
“We ran into Frank.”
“And?”
“He had a gun so we kind of killed him.”
“You kind of killed him? How the fuck do you ‘kind of kill’ someone, Talon? Didn’t I tell you to leave Frank to me?”
“We didn’t have a choice, he was carrying.”
“That doesn’t make it right. I hope no one saw you,” Pike muttered.
“Well, that’s the minor complication I was talking about.”
Pike stopped in his tracks and his shoulders slumped. “Oh no. Don’t tell me someone saw you…”
“Someone saw us, fur and all.”
“Fuck,” Pike growled. “Did you take care of it?”
“Kind of.”
“Holy shit, Talon. I am getting pretty tired of this ‘kind of’ bullshit of yours,” Pike hissed.
“We captured it,” Reed announced with a proud snigger.
“It?”
“A human,” Talon answered.
Pike pursed his lips and paused for a moment. At least his Betas didn't kill two humans in one night, one guilty, one innocent. Maybe Pike could use his compelling powers to convince the human he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He had done it before, but he preferred not to.
Free will was not something Pike liked to mess with, even if the power to control it had been bestowed on him upon his first transformation.
“Where is it?” Pike asked.
“In the trunk of the SUV,” Reed answered from the other side of the phone, sounding quite amused with himself.
“We should be at your house within the next few minutes,” Talon reported.
“Good. Bring it in. I’ll have a chat with it,” Pike answered.
“Sure thing, Alpha. We’re pulling up now.”
Pike disconnected the call and noticed the lights of Talon’s SUV illuminating the street below. Pike reached over and pressed a black button on a panel against the wall, resembling a light switch. The low, humming sound of the garage door filled the air, and the engine of the SUV purred as it pulled inside.
Pike stepped away from the wall, grabbed his almost empty glass of bourbon from the table, and drank it down.
Pike made his way down to the office, where he’d usually conduct these kinds of interrogations, and leaned against the wall, waiting for Talon and Reed to arrive with the human.
Their footsteps grew louder as the approached the office, and Reed was the first one to enter. He had a scratch on his cheek, and he didn’t look too happy about it. Pike glanced at Talon when he entered, but his attention was immediately caught by the young blonde woman Talon had tightly in his grasp.
She was in her mid-twenties, very petite, and very pretty, despite being a bit banged up by the Betas. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was tousled and disheveled, and her blue eyes were wide and filled with terror. She smelled of beer and cigarette smoke, and Pike gathered she worked in a bar, or a pool hall, as she was completely sober and responsive. The only things she had in her bloodstream, besides blood, were fear and adrenaline.
Pike glared at her, unable to move, as there was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place it. Her eyes reminded him of a time he’d much rather forget, but the worst thing was he couldn’t say why.
“Strap her to the chair,” Pike ordered once he regained his composure and turned away.
“No, stop. Please, don’t do this. I didn’t see anything—”
“Quiet,” Pike said, and her incessant pleading stopped abruptly. “You’ll have plenty of time to talk. Now just isn’t the time.”
Pike waited for the clicking sounds of the restraints and turned around slowly. “You two can wait for me in the garage.”
Talon and Reed nodded obediently and left quietly and swiftly.
Pike turned to the young woman and studied her for a few moments before approaching the chair in which she was restrained.
“Who are you?”
She peered up at him and answered, “I am literally no one. I didn’t see or hear anything. Please just let me go.”
“What’s your name?”
She glanced at him with reservation and took a deep breath. Finally, she answered, “Farrah.”
“Okay, Farrah. This is how it’s going to go,” Pike told her. “I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer only what I ask you. Nothing more, nothing less. Straight and concise answers. No more begging, no more pleading. Do you understand?”
Farrah nodded and bit her bottom lip.
“Good. Now, I’m going to ask you again. Who are you?”
“I’m Farrah.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Farrah. I’m Pike.”
Farrah glanced at him wordlessly, and his jaw clenched slightly. “Where did you see Talon and Reed, the two men who brought you here?”
“I was walking back to my car after work—”
“At two in the morning?” Pike asked and crossed his arms.
“I work at a bar on St. Charles Avenue. We always close that time of the morning.”
Pike remained silent and waited for her to continue.
“I saw your two guys in the parking lot, talking to another guy. He had a gun. I hid behind a truck.”
“What did you see?” Pike lowered his gaze and stared at her menacingly.
Her breathing became ragged from fear as he slowly approached her, closing the distance between them gradually. Tears started to form in her eyes and her lips trembled.
“The other guy pointed a gun at them, accused them of a bunch of things.”
“What kind of things?”
“I-I don’t remember,” she stuttered. “All I remember were these strange sounds and when I looked again, two really big wolves were standing where the men had been. They…”
Her voice trailed off as a tear ran down her cheeks.
“They killed him, or ate him. I’m not sure, but there was nothing left of him. I tried to make a run for my car, and they saw me. They stuffed me in the trunk of their SUV and brought me here.”
Pike nodded tentatively but didn’t say a word.
“You’re not going to kill me, are you? Because I promise I won’t say anything to anyone.
They won’t believe me anyway,” she said, a pleading tone in her voice.
Pike’s jaw clenched for a moment as he contemplated the possibility of having this fragile, little human taken care of, to silence her, despite her promises of not telling anyone what had happened that night. Pike knew he couldn’t trust her just because she was beautiful and because she had managed to stir something up inside him. No one else had ever been able to do that to him, and he wondered whether there was something special about Farrah. Not necessarily supernatural, but maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t like other humans. Maybe she wasn’t lying about not telling anyone about the wolves she saw. Maybe she wasn’t manipulative and untrustworthy like the others.
But could Pike really take that chance?
“What else did you see?”
“That was it. I swear I wasn’t spying on you or your brutes.”
“My brutes?” Pike echoed with disdain.
“They work for you, so that’s exactly what they are.”
“And what makes you say that?” Pike asked, his eyes darkening.
“Despite what I might look like to you, I am familiar with the way cartels and gangs work, you know. My dad…”
Her voice faltered and she lowered her gaze as if she were ashamed of her family.
“Was he part of a cartel, or a gang?” Pike probed. He knew he recognized her from somewhere, but he just couldn’t figure out from where and under which circumstances. He was fairly certain that he would have definitely remembered seeing her, as well as recalled the sudden rush of feelings she awoke in him. Still, he wasn’t sure.
“No,” she answered and turned her gaze back to him. “He had gotten himself mixed up with a drug dealer and it put his life in danger.”
“Where is he now?”
“My father or the drug dealer?” she asked.
“Your father.”
“He was killed five years ago. Gunned down in the street close to our house.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Like you really mean that,” she scoffed.
“I know what it’s like to lose a father—”
“Spare me the sob story. What are you going to do with me?” she demanded, her voice raw and hoarse.
Pike turned away from her and glanced out the window of the office. “I don’t know yet.”
“Well, my friends are going to notice I’m gone, so you have two options.”
“And what might those be?” he asked and slowly turned toward her.
“You can either let me go, or you can just…” She paused and took a breath.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he muttered.
“Why not? You ordered your henchmen to kill that other guy.”
“He wasn’t like you,” Pike answered without thinking. When he glanced at her, her brow furrowed.
“What does that even mean?” Farrah asked.
Without responding to her question, Pike stomped out of the office, leaving behind a near-hysterical Farrah, still restrained in the wooden chair.
“Wait! Please don’t leave me here. I’ll shut up. I promise. Please don’t leave!”
Pike rushed down the stairs and opened the door which led to the garage. Talon and Reed turned toward him but didn’t say a word to Pike, as they knew when it was expected of them to speak first. They also knew by the expression on Pike’s face that he didn’t want to hear a word from them.
“I told you to always check your surroundings. A mistake like the one you made tonight could have ended up so much worse. Luckily it didn’t, but if it happens again—”
“It won’t, Alpha,” Talon interjected bravely.
“Good,” Pike said simply. “As for capturing the human and bringing it here, you did the right thing under the circumstances.”
Talon and Reed nodded simply, but Talon spoke again. “What are you going to do with it, Alpha?”
“I don’t know just yet. Something about her seems familiar to me.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” Reed pointed out. “She reminds me of someone.”
Pike nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you have her ID or something?”
Talon reached inside the SUV and handed Farrah’s bag to Pike. “Here’s her bag.”
“Great,” Pike answered. “Find out everything you can about her.”
“Will do, Alpha,” Talon said with an obedient nod.
“Where are the trinkets?” Pike asked, remembering the purpose of their mission that evening.
Reed opened the back door and retrieved a leather satchel from the back seat. “It’s all in there, Alpha.”
“Thank you. And Frank is taken care of?”
“We made him disappear, all right,” Reed sniggered and nudged Talon in the side.
“In the future, make sure there’s no one around you when you shift. That human in my office, even though she seems terrified and harmless, gives me a weird feeling that shit’s about to get real complicated.”
“It’s always complicated with humans. Bunch of pussies,” Reed muttered.
“Good work, though,” Pike said as he slipped the satchel over his shoulder.
“We’ll be back in the morning with all the info on the human.”
“Farrah Walker. I already checked,” Talon pointed out.
“Farrah Walker?” Reed frowned. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. Now go.”
“Yes, Alpha,” both Reed and Talon answered.
Pike bit down on his lower lip as Talon and Reed climbed into the SUV, and he pressed a black button against the wall. The garage door opened and Talon drove the SUV out of the garage and disappeared down the street. Pike pressed the button once more and watched the door close again.
While he walked back up the stairs, he rummaged through her bag and found her wallet. He took out her driver’s license and his jaw clenched.
“Who the hell are you, Farrah Walker?”
The name rang a bell in the back of his mind, but he still wasn’t sure why. He dropped her bag and her wallet on the table at the top of the stairs, beside the banister, and heard her trembling voice as she called out to him from the office.
Her voice was desperate and terrified, and a memory he’d much rather forget flashed in front of his eyes.
Pike was back in Massachusetts, the night before his entire life went to shit. The night he had captured a human girl who had seen him shift into a wolf. He had been reckless in his hunting endeavors and she had seen him running through the trees. Pike’s father, the old Alpha, Razlo, had taught him that whoever witnessed a shift would need to be silenced.
Permanently.
Pike had noticed the young woman a few times in the village, but had never spoken to her before. Sure, he had thought she was pretty, with her long, golden hair and dark brown eyes, but he had never truly felt anything for this young human. He had been raised not to feel anything for the humans, as the only thing they wanted was to get rid of all the wolves in the area. Despite their fragile bodies, their hearts were vicious and cruel. They felt so very threatened at the smallest thing, and it showed by their reckless pursuit of power.
The young woman, whose name was Lisbeth, was the daughter of the founder of the village, and of course, she was always expected to accompany her mother and father everywhere they went. It was just unfortunate—or perhaps it was just dumb luck—that Lisbeth had decided to stroll through the woods and had come across Pike, who needed a release from the humans.
They had come face to face with one another and before she could even start to run. Razlo caught sight of her before Pike could tell her to run. Razlo was on top of her, his claws against her chest. She screamed, her voice still echoing through Pike’s mind, especially now as he listened to Farrah’s screams from the office.
Pike didn't want to make the same mistake again, even though the two women were incomparable. Pike had been convinced—or at least he tried to convince himself
to make him feel better about the situation—that Lisbeth would have run straight to her father and told him she had seen a wolf in the woods. Then a hunting party would have been sent out and either Pike or a member of his family would have been caught, and he couldn’t allow that to happen to his family. So Razlo did what he had to do, or at least what he told Pike he had to do in a situation such as this.
After he had killed the young woman, slicing her neck with his claws, he dragged her into the deepest part of the woods, where no one would ever be able to find her. He dug a hole and buried her inside.
Her family had spent weeks, months, searching the woods for her body, but they never found it. Pike and his family were even asked to join the search, and they did, pretending they knew nothing about her disappearance, and seeming very concerned for the founder and his family.
Such hypocrites.
Although her body had never been found, Pike still remembered the exact spot where Razlo had buried her body, and he still heard her screams in his mind. The prayer she uttered as tears streamed down her cheeks. The gurgling of the blood spewing from her throat, and her lifeless eyes staring up at the sky, haunting him with every second that passed.
He didn’t want that to happen again. He couldn’t allow another innocent human to be murdered.
Especially not this one.
She was different.
He could feel it, he just didn’t know why.
Was it because the world seemed to spin slower and faster at the same time when he looked at her?
Was it because the gnawing guilt inside him was finally fading away by the blue of her eyes?
Or was it because the screams inside his mind finally stopped when he heard the pounding of her heart, even from across the room?
3
The door of the office suddenly burst open and the hot guy who had been interrogating her was back. Despite the terror pulsating through her entire body at an all-time high, there was something about his presence which made her feel calmer. Being left alone in his office, surrounded by books lining the shelves and a creepy-looking wolf mural on the wall, made her skin crawl.
Was Pike also a wolf?
He had to be, as his eyes glowed from time to time while he stared directly at her.
