by Nora Ash
Why did this have to happen to me? Why? What on Earth caused my body to betray me like that?
All of a sudden I can’t take it anymore. I need to get out of my small, dank apartment that still reeks of my humiliating desperation, and I need to get out now.
Irritated, I wipe at my eyes until my vision clears, before I throw on a sports bra and my jogging suit, shove my feet in my trainers and head out the door.
Chapter Three
I take the back roads to the park, avoiding the throng of late-night shoppers and commuters. It’s after nine PM, but in a city like this there are always people on the streets. Normally, I like being a city girl, but right now I’d give a lot to live in a remote hick town down South.
Of course, if I did, the entire town would likely know exactly who caused the embarrassing catastrophe at Town Hall last night.
Probably another lovely side-effect of Presenting.
I huff and jab my headphones in as I pass through the wrought iron gates into the dark park. Even in the relative silence, the sounds of the city around the patch of green still grate against my raw nerves. Probably another lovely side-effect of the hormones still lingering in my blood. Irritated, I turn up the volume and lose myself to the thrum of the bass.
That’s probably why I don’t notice them until it’s much too late.
Fifteen minutes into my jog, a flash of light from behind a mass of bushes further down the path finally alerts me to the danger.
I pause, my steps faltering when the light abruptly disappears—as if someone shut it off to hide their presence.
Frowning, I fumble with my ear phones until the music fades into a low rush that mixes with the sounds of the city. Shuffling from where the light was seconds ago, like feet against grass, prickles at my ears.
“Hello?”
Hello. Not the brightest thing to call out into the dark. Flashes of statistics run through my mind as my heart rate picks up, headlines of violent crimes committed by the numerous gangs plaguing the city making me nauseous with fear. What am I doing here? No woman in her right mind goes out after dark, not to remote locations like this park!
But I was too lost in my own frustration, too hazed by the remnant hormones to think clearly.
“Hello yourself, darling.”
Every hair on my body stands on end at the mocking purr from further up ahead. Two large men step out from behind the bushes, one of them casually waving the knife in his right hand at me.
“Well, don’t you just smell delicious,” the other says, his lip pulling up in a mock-smile. “All ripe and ready for a fat knot.”
Alphas.
I step backward, clenching my fists as I suppress a whimper. Now’s not the time to start blubbering. Without giving them any time to preempt it, I spin around and run.
Loud whoops sound behind me.
“It’s no use running, bitch!” one of them shouts. I keep running, as fast as I can. I’ve made it further into the park than I realized, and I mentally cuss myself for being so stupid. I know the damn statistics, I know what happens to a lot of women bold enough to go out on their own after dark. But call it deluded optimism or even just pure stupidity—I never thought it’d happen to me.
It won’t, I silently promise myself, in between ragged gasps for breath as I sprint along the gravel path as fast as I can. I’ll outrun them, I’ll make it to the still populated streets—I won’t become another statistic. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!
The crunch of gravel fifty yards further up the path makes my heart skip a beat, relief flooding through me. Someone’s here, someone will help me—
The relief turns to icy dread in my veins when three large, dark shapes appear, blocking the path as they look at me. I stop cold, the fear in my gut reaching my throat.
Oh, God.
“Heeeere, pretty girly,” one of the newcomers coo as he takes a menacing step forward. “I’ve got something real big to show ya!”
Footsteps from behind me makes me spin around again, in time to see the two other alphas round the corner behind me in an unhurried jog. Both their faces are twisted with ugly smiles.
“Leave me alone!” It’s meant to sound confident, but it comes out as a desperate squeak.
“Don’t pretend like you’re not gagging for a fuck.” The bigger of the five grabs his crotch. “Give up your cunt willingly and we’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt. Much.”
As terrified as I am and despite the wave of nausea that suggestion brings, some part of my brain is still functioning above the paralyzing fear threatening to take over. In their faces I see a complete lack of empathy and know they’ll never listen to reason, and so I do the only thing I can. I keep running.
“Wrong choice, bitch!”
I don’t turn my head to see who shouts the insult after me—I only focus on throwing myself through the thicket surrounding the path. The branches rip at my clothing and skin, drawing painful gashes in my flesh, but I don’t slow down. If I do, I’m lost.
Only when I hear the unhurried sound of footfall and whoops from my left does my attention waver, and with a sick sense of dread I realize I’m being herded. They’re herding me, like an animal, and I don’t have time to figure out where to as I desperately crash through the undergrowth, heart pounding and the prayer of ‘Please let me get out of this unscathed, please, please, please,’ running on repeat in my frantic mind.
Perhaps that’s why I don’t hear the rush of the river before it opens up in front of me, wide and deep.
I come to a halt at the very last moment, staggering on the edge of the slippery bank for a few seconds. When I regain my balance and spin around, the five alphas have formed a loose half-circle around me, about fifteen feet away. Blocking me in, with the cold river in my back.
“Told you not to run,” the alpha farthest to the left purrs, the sound grating against my nerves. I’ve only ever heard alphas on TV make that noise, but this is such a cruel, mocking version of what’s supposed to be the most comforting sound in the world it only makes every hair on my body stand on end.
“Please… don’t hurt me.”
It’s the wrong thing to say—it’s a stupid thing to say. We all know that they will hurt me, and take pleasure in doing so, but I can’t stop the plea from bursting past my lips. Maybe somewhere, deep in one of them, there’s a shred of humanity left close enough to the surface to hear me.
“Oh, darling,” the man front and center, their leader, purrs mockingly, making another shudder of discomfort at the sound wracks my panic-frozen body. “If you didn’t want it to hurt you shouldn’t have run, now should you? You’re gonna learn your place tonight and, baby, it’s gonna hurt.”
“Well, that and seeing how many cocks she can fit at once,” a voice from the pack shouts, which is immediately accompanied by rough laughter. Tears of absolute terror obscure my vision, turning the pack of alphas into a menacing blur of heavy bodies.
“Time to open your legs, cunt.”
This time, what bursts from my throat is a distressed cry, loud and shrill, and with it the numbness retreats from both my brain and my limbs.
“No! No, no, no!” I scream my denial out as they rush towards me, try to strike at them with my hands and feet, but they are too many and way, way too strong. I cry out again when a large hand impacts with my face, the slap momentarily dazing me with the pain shooting to the receptors in my brain, and then I’m face-down on the cold, muddy riverbank. Hands pin my arms down, hands press my face into the mud and a knee in the small of my back stops my wild attempts at fighting back as my clothes are ripped from my body.
Oh god, this is really happening. They will all take me, hurt me, use me, I think, praying despite all reason that they won’t. That somehow they’ll choose to stop.
My pulse is pounding in my throat and I can already taste the bile. This is not like being part of some statistics, not by a long shot. This is a living nightmare where I can taste, smell and—worst of all—feel every pull to
my hair, every rip of my clothes against my skin as they tear at it in their savage urge to get to my unprotected body.
Their shouts become louder. At first I assume it’s from the mounting excitement, like a pack of dogs yipping while they rip their prey apart, and I close my eyes in a feeble attempt at shielding at least a small part of myself from the brutality. But then the hands and bodies pressing me to the ground disappear.
The shouting, which my brain has muffled until it was only noise, as if to spare me the crude details of what will happen to me, slowly transforms back into distinguishable voices.
Anger. Fear. Pain. Some even sound as shrill as I did just moments ago.
Perplexed, I manage to roll to my back, but the sight that meets me makes me wish I hadn’t.
The gang, or, the two who are left standing, have huddled together with their backs to each other, knives at the ready. Both are bleeding from long slashes to their arms, legs and torsos. The other three are ... I gulp and quickly look away from the savagely butchered bodies on the ground only a few feet away. Before my eyes manage to avert themselves from the gruesomeness display I recognize the cruel leader’s cold eyes staring up at me from underneath a near bush.
His body is no longer attached to his head.
Chapter Four
A shadow moves in the darkness, and death follows in its wake. The faint light from the city reaching into the park gleams off cold steel as the newcomer finally makes himself known.
He whirls across the grass, and I hear the sick sound of metal slicing through flesh followed by wet gurgling. When the two remaining men fall to the ground, he finally stands still, staring down at the unmoving bodies. His victims.
He is a huge man, bulging muscles clear even in his shadowed outline. An alpha, no question about it.
It’s not until he turns his attention to me that I notice the black mask covering the top half of his head.
No one with good intentions ever hides their face, and a new layer of goosebumps break out across my skin as I stare up at the silent alpha.
The silent killer.
Will he hurt me, too?
I don’t dare take my eyes off the dark figure to glance at the slumped bodies I know litter the ground around us, but every hyper alert part of me knows they’re there, the deadening silence enveloping us an imposing contrast to the fight just seconds ago.
He tilts his head, obviously looking at my still-sprawled form on the muddy ground, and my heart threatens to jump out of my throat.
“P-please. Don’t kill me.” It’s a ridiculous plea, but I can’t stop it from spilling past my lips even if someone who can kill with such ease as this alpha is unlikely to have an ounce of mercy in his body.
The alpha grunts, a sound of disgust or surprise I’m not sure, but when the steel dagger in his hand gleams against the faint city lights, it’s because he wipes it on his pants before shoving it into its sheathe. A large hand extends toward me, hovering in the air above my face.
I stare mutely at the appendix. Is he… offering me a hand up?
The gesture seems so grotesquely out of place, considering the gore surrounding us, that I can’t help the snort of amusement that breaks out of my fear-clenched throat. Horrified with myself, I slap a hand across my mouth, but he doesn’t react to my faux pas. The hand still hovers above me, waiting for me to grasp it.
Well, if he wanted to kill me, he would have done so by now. Probably.
I move my hand from my mouth and carefully place it in his, my fingertips brushing over soft leather as I do. He’s wearing gloves.
Strong fingers close around my hand, and without preamble I am hoisted up off the ground to stand on my own, shaky feet. The alpha releases his hold on my hand the second I’ve regained my balance.
“T-thank you,” I manage, not entirely sure if I mean for the hand up, or for saving me from the gang.
He saved me.
It’s not until that moment it fully dawned on me that… that he killed those men to… save me?
“Did you… you killed them… for me?” I babble, my panic reaching new and unprecedented heights. “Oh God, am I an accomplice to murder? Shit, fuck, this day just cannot get any worse!”
It’s not the sanest response to getting rescued from gang rape, some far-away part of me recognizes, but that part is somehow removed from the rest of me—who’s busy having a complete break down. Pants around my ankles, top ripped and smeared in mud and the tone of hysteria clear in my increasingly high-pitched voice.
A large hand closes around my right shoulder, the strength in it evident from even the light squeeze that finally breaks through my hysteria.
“Calm yourself.”
His voice is deep and gruff and one hundred percent alpha. It resonates down my spine and into my muscles, easing some of the tension in my body as only the authoritative command of an alpha can. I stare up mutely up at him, not sure if I am thankful that he’s stopped my spiraling breakdown or angry that a murderous stranger can have that sort of impact on my body. I shouldn’t be any kind of calm right now, but my treacherous biology gives exactly zero fucks about what I think it should be doing.
“I’m sorry,” I say when he releases his grip on me again, finally realizing that freaking out on the guy who just saved me from the ultimate pain and humiliation is neither polite nor particularly smart. Even if he did just kill five men in cold blood in front of me, and I still have no idea what he wants from me. If it’s sex he’s after, he could have taken it by now, and my life along with it.
I blame his alpha-influence over my nervous system for why I’m not more scared of him. Sure, my pulse is still drumming rapidly in my throat, but I’m not frightened for my life. I should be. I should be begging him for mercy or trying to run from him, however futile such an act would be.
“Um… I really appreciate it.” I feel stupid even as I say it, partly because of the sentiment and partly because it finally dawns on me that my pants are still around my ankles. I want to bend to pick them up, but the urge to not take my eyes off him is stronger. Yeah, I might not be as scared as I ought to be, but even his influence can’t completely numb out the rational voice in my brain screeching that I’m alone in an abandoned park with a masked killer. He’s a predator, there’s no question about it, and every instinct in my body’s telling me that sudden movements is a very bad idea.
“I don’t have any money on me, but—” My lips quiver when he takes a single step toward me.
“B-but if I can do anything to repay you, I will,” I quickly stutter, the threat of his presence suddenly much sharper in the most primal part of my brain thanks to the too-close proximity of his huge body.
Yeah, he’s an alpha all right. It’s not just the sheer size of him—it’s the powerful aura rolling off him in waves even as he keeps his body immobile in front of me. That unquestioning demand for submission. The completely unprovoked thought that he probably smells headier than any other male on the planet flashes through my mind, and I blink in shock at its unexpected passing.
“You think I am some vigilante saving damsels in distress in the hopes of a reward?”
His voice is surprisingly soft, though the alpha gruffness in it never wavers. It is velvet wrapped over an iron core, and it makes me shake, though I don’t know why.
“No.” There is nothing velvety about my own voice. It’s as shaky as my body, hoarse from stress and screaming. It’s the voice of prey, and I hope it doesn’t trigger whatever violent instincts an alpha his size is bound to have in abundance. “I don’t. But… who are you? I-if you don’t mind me asking.” I tag the last bit on when the idiocy of asking a masked killer for his identity hits me like a brick wall.
“I know who you are,” he says, ignoring my question. I feel his eyes still shaded in the darkness trail up my body. The sensation makes me shiver despite the blood in my veins heating up. Fucking alpha. I never feel anything but mild fear and loathing for his kind—why is he different?
; “You’re the reporter who nearly caused a riot at Town Hall last night.”
I gape up at him. “H-how do you know that?” Real smart admitting to that, but the surprise of his statement catches me off guard.
He cocks his head, the shape of his sensual mouth flattening into a line. “Who do you work for?”
“K-KTP News,” I stutter, taken aback by the suddenly threatening undercurrent to his otherwise calming voice.
“I know your network,” he sneers, and this time I’m sure I can detect anger. My ever-looming fear hikes up several notches in response. “What I don’t know is who sent you to that press conference high as a kite on heat-hormones. Who’s behind this? Who wants to discredit the Liberals bad enough to shove a foolish young girl on the cusp of Presenting into a roomful of alphas?”
Despite the insult of being called ‘a foolish young girl’ at the age of twenty-six, I can’t muster so much as a frown. For every word his voice gets sharper, and the alpha pheromones in the air turn from placating to aggressive. He’s pissed, and it’s wrecking havoc on my already frayed nerves.
“I…. I wasn’t on any hormones. I-it just happened. I’m not trying to discredit anyone, I swear!”
“Bullshit,” he hisses, and then he’s right in front of me, the heat from his body radiating against mine. He grabs me by the back of my neck, cupping my head as he pulls me in while simultaneously dipping his face to my throat.
I whimper in confused panic, but the firm grip on my neck keeps me from trying to fight him off. I stand frozen, paralyzed like a kitten in its mother’s grasp, and stare with huge eyes as he draws in a deep breath of my scent. His breath tickles across the skin of my throat, making every hair on my body stand on end, my nipples harden painfully against my ruined top.
“You still smell like desperation and sex.” This time his voice is a low growl, the frustration still evident, but there’s also a rich, sultry quality to it. “Like heat. Tempting any alpha you pass by. Do you want to get raped?”
