Bonded to the Alpha

by Robin Moray

  Callum nodded, not sure where this was going. "Yeah? But I don't–"

  "Well, we're not in a movie about vampires." Jackie looked uncertain for all of a moment before reaching for her door handle. "We're in a movie about werewolves."

  * * *

  Nero felt it when Holly died. Before that there was in his awareness of her only the feral savageness of her moon-frenzy, a chase, a hunt, some pain – that was nothing out of the ordinary for her. Holly liked to play with her food, and when Holly played she played rough.

  When she died, though, it smacked the breath from Nero's lungs, staggered him to the ground. It hurt, and he howled with it, felt the bond between them fragment into dust and the agony of it forced him to shift, four legs twisting clumsily into two.

  He pushed himself up from the ground, bare palms against the wet leaves, and tried to breathe. Holly. But he knew.

  Shauna came up out of the undergrowth to press a wet, worried snout to the side of his face, and he felt her unspoken, Are you okay? but he had nothing for her, because no, he wasn't, would never be, oh Holly.

  "I'm fine," he said, but he knew she could smell the lie on him, could hear his heartbeat skip with it, and she nuzzled into his shoulder in an offer of comfort that he could not refuse.

  He shoved himself up onto his heels, blinking human eyes in the sudden dark of the forest, and a wave of nausea nearly brought him down again. But.

  "Holly's dead," he said. That was all he could say.

  Shauna pulled back a step, her head coming up to stare at him.

  "She is," he insisted. "I felt it. She's gone."

  Shauna, in her tact, did nothing to question how much he clearly did not care, only huffed, sat back on her haunches, watching him with bright silver eyes and waiting for whatever came next.

  What was next? The pack were circling, some of them watching from the shadows, and he could not afford the appearance of weakness, could not stay in this helplessly human form for long. He tried to shift, and the pain of it nearly brought him to the ground again. He stopped trying at once, knelt there in the leaf-litter, palms braced on his thighs, and breathed in and out, exhaling the nausea that threatened to overcome him.

  Gentle wolf-steps on the forest floor morphed into the heavier tread of human feet, and he looked up into Ria's face as she knelt down by his shoulder. "Holly's dead," she said flatly, no mercy in it, and he nodded because that was all he could do. "We'll find whoever did it."

  For vengeance, she meant, but Nero didn't want it. "There's no need."

  "The pack needs," Ria snarled, eyes flashing silver in the dark, and he knew she was right. They would never permit Holly's murderer to go free. If, indeed, there was a murderer and not just an accident to blame (though what kind of accident could kill a werewolf he didn't know). "It's the law. And if it was a Hunter," Ria added, quiet but not quiet enough that the others wouldn't hear, "we have to. The cubs."

  She was right, of course. A Hunter signified a Hunt, and Nero could not allow it. An alpha could not permit Them to run free in the pack's territory.

  "All right," he said, and he shook himself, forcing his legs to lift him up. No good to remain on his knees in front of the others, not with the pack as vulnerable and fragmented as Holly had made it. He needed to be strong for them, otherwise...

  Hamish was sitting across from him, half-hidden in the shadows of the trees, watching and giving nothing away. He would take advantage of this, if no-one else did, and that thought straightened Nero's spine.

  "Go on," Nero said, "find out who did this, and ... bring them back alive."

  Ria huffed, cocking her head. "As if any of us would take your kill," she said, and she shifted, dropping back onto her paws and darting off into the woods. Several of the others took off after her, melting into the shadows like shadows themselves, but Hamish stayed, watching and waiting, and Nero tried not to growl at him because now was not the time.

  Shauna pressed her nose into his palm, whining softly, and he forced himself to turn away from the other male. It would be a long walk back to the den on two feet instead of four, and he did not relish the feeling of those eyes on his back.

  * * *

  "Werewolves," Callum said again, tasting the word. It sounded so ludicrous. "You're kidding me."

  He was perched up on the vanity cabinet in the bathroom of their father's house, one foot braced against the lip of the bath. Jackie had made him take his pants off and was fussing about with a squeeze bottle of saline solution. Callum tried not to look too closely at the bathroom. It was familiar, with the old green paint peeling up off the concrete floor, the claw-foot bathtub that was so hard to mop up under. It was the same, in most ways, except someone (Jackie, he assumed) had stuck some violets in a medicine bottle on the windowsill, had hung a new shower curtain with big bright sunflowers on it, and the soaps weren't cheap yellow cakes but some kind of clear amber stuff that smelled citrusy and fresh. Four years. Callum wasn't sure if he disliked the changes or the things that were familiar, but either way being in this room made him feel twitchy and tense and younger than he liked.

  Jackie laughed, low and bitter. "I wish." She rinsed out the wound on his leg, carefully he supposed but he couldn't help but wince at the sting. "Shit, Cal. This is ... shit."

  "Full moon," Callum said slowly, "werewolves. And it bit me. So ... what, am I going to turn into a werewolf now?" He snorted, and Jackie was supposed to laugh, but instead, horribly, she combed a hand through her hair and yanked hard enough he expected to see dark strands come away between her fingers.

  "I don't know! I don't think so. You ... we killed it. I don't know if ... maybe that helps." She washed her hands in the sink, and wouldn't look at him.

  "You 'don't know'." The bite was swollen and awful, and he'd been worried about tetanus and rabies but this was too much. "You 'know' there are werewolves but you 'don't know' if I'm going to turn into one?"

  "This doesn't exactly happen every day," she snapped, shutting off the faucet with unnecessary force. "I know there are werewolves but I don't know much else, all right? Dad never–"

  "Dad? What ... did Dad make you think werewolves were real?" That was just it. "Dad was a deluded drunk, Jackie. Dad said a lot of things."

  "And some of them were true."

  Fuck, no. "Dad convinced me we had to put out bowls of milk to keep snakes away," Callum said – reasonably, he thought, but the look Jackie gave him was exasperated.

  "Yeah, he told us it was for snakes but ... come on, little brother, what would you have thought if he'd said 'fairies'?"

  Callum opened his mouth, couldn't remember what he'd been going to say, and shut it again. It took him a moment to think of anything at all. "I'd have thought he was drunk."

  "Well, maybe he knew things that drove him to drink." She sounded so exhausted, as if the effort of all this had emptied her out, and Callum wanted to ... he didn't know. Things with Jackie weren't easy. He couldn't just put a hand on her shoulder and, oh, hug her. He didn't know how.

  Still. "Jacks. The 'fairies' thing isn't really selling me on the 'werewolves', you know."

  "Okay, fine. Riddle me this, little brother," and she fixed him with a much more 'Jackie' kind of look. "You think you stabbed a wolf to death like that? You actually think you stabbed a wolf to death. With a hunting knife."

  "It was just a big dog."

  But Jackie was stubborn. "A wolf, Cal. On a full moon night you stabbed a wolf in the heart with a hunting-knife inlaid with silver, and it dropped like a stone. Does that sound normal to you?"

  "Nothing in this family is ever normal," Callum argued. "Look, it's just a dog bite. I'll go to a clinic in the morning and get shots or, or whatever, and get my car towed, and then ... then we can go through Dad's stuff, just like you wanted. Okay?"

  Her glare was awful, but still comfortingly familiar. "Fine! God, you're always so stubborn."

  How would you know? But saying it would have been too low a blow. "And you're not?"r />
  She dressed his leg and his arm, handed him things to make up his old bed, and between that and 'goodnight' she didn't say anything.

  Chapter 2

  Jackie came for him in the morning, woke him up with a cup of cheap instant coffee, and asked him how he was feeling.

  Callum felt like he'd been hit by a train. He didn't tell her that, though, just scowled at her and drank from the cup, hating the awful armpit taste of it. "I'm fine," he said, though his arm ached and his leg ached. "I'll go see ... Dr Lewis? Is she still around?"

  Jackie made a disgusted sound in her throat. "Yeah, she is. Look, I know you don't believe me, but I don't think you should be out and about on your own. What if I'm right?"

  "Then I should go, right? If this was a monster movie, I'd come after you when I changed, wouldn't I?" It was hard to grumble at her from the depths of a Power Rangers quilt on his old single bed, when she was so perfectly dressed, hair braided neatly into a bun. No lipstick today, but there was liner around her eyes and, yeah, her hair so neat. Nothing like the sister he remembered.

  She shook her head. "Idiot. I have to go to work. But, have lunch with me, will you? Don't do anything stupid."

  "I'll try," he said, hating her a little for treating him like a highschool kid again. But, that's probably how she remembered him. That's how he remembered her, after all.

  It was weird to be back in his old room. Everything had been boxed up, shoved into the wardrobe. He guessed that had happened a long time ago, maybe when he left. He rummaged around in a bag of old clothes, before having to admit that none of the jeans in there were going to be long enough for him anymore. He pulled out a Spiderman t-shirt. It had always been oversized but now it stretched across his shoulders, making him look, okay, a little scandalous. Fine, whatever. There were work-pants in another bag, tough cotton with ragged cuffs, but they fit and that was all that really mattered. At least he could go out and face the world without looking like the victim of a violent crime.

  Raglan hadn't changed much in the last four years, not in any way he hadn't expected. It had never been a big town, never a lot of money in it. He remembered his father's friends being laid off, remembered watching the graduating seniors skip out west to find work, remembered how the fights between his parents teetered back and forth between money and his father's drinking. And then, when push came to shove, his mother had borrowed the money for a couple of plane tickets off her parents and they'd just ... gone.

  It felt so strange to be back, now, to see the bowling alley boarded up but a Vietnamese bakery open on main street. Not everything was completely depressing, though enough of it brought back weird memories he didn't want to deal with to make him feel twitchy and anxious.

  Dr Lewis was surprised to see him but seemed glad of it, anyway. "Callum!" she said, leaning back in her chair and smiling. There was more gray in her hair than he remembered, but at least she still did it the same, pulled back into a severe knot. Sort of like Jackie did now, but on the doctor it looked right, normal, the same as always. "I heard you were back, but I didn't expect to see you. How are you?" Then she waved a hand, the same as she always used to. "Can't be too good, if you're here. What's the trouble?"

  "Dog bites," he said, and he rolled up the leg of his pants to show her the bandages. The pants were Dad's, he was pretty sure. He couldn't think of any other reason Jackie might have mens pants just hanging about, and if they weren't he didn't want to think about it anyway.

  "Neatly done," Dr Lewis said, one hand hovering over the bandages. "So, you're staying with Jackie, are you? How nice."

  He didn't answer. Dr Lewis didn't seem to need an answer anyway, just unfurled the bandaging and frowned at the teeth-marks underneath.

  "Well, it's not too deep, and it's very clean. But let's wash it out, just to be sure."

  When he showed her the other bite, on his arm, her mouth went thin with disapproval – he wasn't sure why – and she cleaned that too, bandaging him up again and writing out a prescription for some kind of antibiotic. "You won't need a shot," she said sternly, bundling him out the door, "you're up to date. But come back if it doesn't heal up."

  Which was that, it seemed. Callum shook his head, and went looking for someone to tow his car.

  There was only one mechanic in Raglan when Callum left, but now there were two. He heard the whole story from Carly at the drugstore while he got his prescription filled. The story was pretty boring, but at the end of it she advised he walk down the main road to see Geoff and Ernie.

  Callum remembered both of them from school, Ernie big and quiet, his older brother loud and cocky, with a fire-engine-red pickup that the seniors gathered around at break. Geoff wasn't there when Callum showed up at the garage, and Ernie didn't seem to have changed much, barely seemed to recognise him, just nodded carefully as Callum tried to explain that he needed a tow without using the words 'wolf' or 'werewolf' or 'my sister seems to have gone crazy, how about that?'

  Ernie made some slow, careful notes in a ledger, and then told Callum to sit tight a moment before going into the back room to make a phone-call. Callum could see him through the glass. He had his back to the window, big dependable shoulders stretching the soft fabric of his t-shirt. Callum looked away quickly. Best not to look.

  On the drive out through the forest, Ernie didn't put the radio on, or make small talk. It was uncomfortable, at first, and then okay. The trees weren't so forbidding during the day, and Callum had time to focus on the throb of his leg. Urgh, his jeans were trashed. He'd liked those jeans. It was hard, with his height, to get ones that were long enough.

  The battery, when they found the car, was completely dead. No-one seemed to have taken anything, all his stuff still jumbled into the back seat. It was all damp from sitting out overnight with the door open. Nothing stolen, though. Jeez, everything was so safe here, Callum had forgotten.

  "So, um," Callum said, turning back to Ernie who was doing something technical in the back of his truck. "I guess I'll just–"

  "Hey, Ernie." A woman stepped around the front of Callum's car. She was pretty, with short hair in neat twists, dressed in jeans and boots and a khaki nylon jacket. She looked like a park ranger, sort of, only minus the hat. She must have come down out of the trees. "Hey, Callum. Been a while."

  It took a moment, but then he saw it. "Vonnie Foss?" She'd been friends with Jackie when he was a kid, before a fight about something Callum hadn't bothered to understand. He had the uncomfortable realisation that she'd seen his naked ass a whole bunch of times, when he'd been too young to give a damn. Jeez.

  She smiled. He hoped she wasn't remembering him six years old, in nothing but mud, and he couldn't help the flush of blood creeping up his neck. "This your car?"

  "Yeah?" Maybe she was a park ranger, then. "I mean, yes ma'am."

  The smile kicked up in one corner. Great, now she was laughing at him. But then it smoothed away into something stern. "You were driving last night? Didn't you all have some big family thing over at Robert Kelly's place?"

  "We did. I left. I ..." he shrugged, "didn't have much to say to anyone, I guess." He really didn't want to talk about it. "Listen, if this is about the dog–"

  She cut him off. "Looks like something hit you pretty damn hard. You okay?"

  "Yeah. I'm fine." Except for the ache in his leg. And his arm. "Uh ... are you going to arrest me?"

  It made her laugh. "You think I'm a cop?"

  "No, but–"

  "I work for the Greenacre Woods Trust. I'm just concerned that there's a wounded animal out here that might need my help. Okay?" She smiled. It wasn't very reassuring, somehow. "Now, you hit something last night. Did you see where it went?"

  Callum glanced back at the dark patch of blood behind his car. "It was dead, I thought. When I left it."

  "It might have been in shock."

  Callum remembered the knife going in, how the thing had gone slack against him. "I'm pretty sure it was dead."

  "Well, it's gone no
w. Even if scavengers have dragged off the carcass, we need to go find it."

  "We?"

  Both her eyebrows went up. "We. I'm not a cop, but I can give you a fine for destroying protected wildlife. Or, you can help me look."

  Callum gave up. "Okay! Sure. Just ... Ernie, you'll be okay with this?" The look Ernie gave him showed exactly what kind of stupid question that was. "I'll be back, I guess, in a while."

  "I'll give him a ride back into town," Vonnie added, and Ernie nodded, and that was that.

  They looked along the side of the road a ways, and then, because of something Vonnie found that Callum didn't catch, she led them into the trees. She made better time than he did, moving confidently through the undergrowth while he stumbled. Her boots were better suited to the wet leaf litter and mud than his sneakers. He was going to have to clean them before Jackie let him back in the house, he just knew it.

  "Uh, Ms Foss?"

  She snorted, catching hold of a sapling to cast a wry look at him over her shoulder. "Yes, Mr Kelly?"

  He cleared his throat. "Do you ... do this a lot?"

  "Normally people call it in as soon as they hit something, and don't just leave it there to die," she said in a pointed sort of way. Callum tried not to turn red, but failed dismally. "I don't have to do this much."

  "And the woods are safe? I mean ... it was a pretty big dog. Wolf. Whatever it was."

  "Could have been a wolf. We get a few, now and then. More likely a coyote."

  "I thought they didn't attack people."

  "Anything'll attack you if it's hurt." She glanced at him. "Did it attack you?"

  "Yeah. I mean, it was hurt."

  "Did it bite you?" There was something about the way she asked, something that caught Callum's attention.

  "Yeah. I saw Dr Lewis, she gave me antibiotics. Should I be worried about rabies?"