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  Hunted by the Alpha (BBW Paranormal Erotica– Werewolf Mate)

  By Mia Harris

  Follow Mia on Twitter!: @miaharriswriter

  Copyright © 2013 Mia Harris

  Cover image licensed by Fotolia

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Adult Reading Material

  Hunted by the Alpha (BBW Paranormal Erotica– Werewolf Mate)

  Erin tried her hardest to smooth her flyaway hair back as she turned to her friend and colleague Craig and complained to him for opening the window.

  “Hey! Wind it up! You know how my hair gets all frizzy and awful when the wind goes through it,” she said.

  Craig didn’t take his eyes off the road as a slow grin spread across his face.

  “Well, I’m the one driving, so I get to pick the music and also whether we have the windows down or not,” he replied. “Besides, who cares what your hair looks like? We’re going to Faelan Rapids to research, not for you to pick up men.”

  “Oh, haha, very funny,” she said, playfully swatting him on the shoulder before turning around and looking at the third member of their little crew, Caitlin.

  “You awake?” she asked.

  Caitlin grumbled.

  “I am now, thanks to you two arguing over the window. Are we nearly there?”

  “Yep. Five minutes out.”

  The three were on their way to the small Maryland town of Faelan Rapids to conduct research and start filming for their latest documentary on paranormal events. Basically, they were a modern-day X-Files crew – they traveled around investigating supposedly paranormal happenings and found scientific explanations for them.

  So far, they hadn’t investigated a single case that couldn’t be explained with science and reason, and their documentaries had proven to be very popular across a wide demographic. Craig was a geologist, Erin a biologist, and Caitlin had studied psychology and anthropology before signing on as the main host for their show. Craig and Erin took care of the filming, and all three of them shared the burden of research before and during the filming process.

  “Wind that window up, Craig,” Caitlin said from the backseat. “Erin might not need to have decent-looking hair, but if you guys are going to be filming me today, I’d rather not look like I’ve been dragged backwards through a hedge.”

  Erin grinned back at her and then turned to face the front again. She doubted that Caitlin could ever look bad; she was one of those women who managed to look good all the time, no matter what the circumstances. Caitlin could eat whatever she wanted and still look nice and slim on camera, whereas Erin was constantly trying to diet her way down to the size fourteen she had been in high school.

  Granted, size fourteen was still nowhere near as skinny as Caitlin, but it seemed a more attainable goal for her right now, given that she had been carrying around what she considered to be far too many extra curves for several years now. If she was going to lose weight, she wanted to do it the right way, with healthy eating and regular exercise.

  The exercise wasn’t hard to do, considering how she and her two colleagues managed to get in a lot of hiking in their line of work. In fact, the trip to Faelan Rapids would be great for that, seeing as they were going to be camping in and hiking through the surrounding forest.

  Locals from the town had contacted them a while ago, claiming that the forest was haunted and they wanted a possible explanation for the things they had seen. The paranormal activity that had supposedly been witnessed by generations of the town’s inhabitants included ghost lights over the trees, strange sounds in the otherwise eerily-silent forest, and mysterious disappearances.

  Others had made claims of seeing terrifying monsters with bright green or yellow eyes stalking them while they walked through the woods, and to the documentary crew, that was the strangest thing about the case. None of them could wait to start their research, and as they arrived in the town and pulled into a local diner five minutes later, they smiled excitedly and started to get their gear out straight away.

  “Okay, we need to speak to the local Sheriff. He is meeting us in the diner, and he seems to have a decent idea of what’s going on around here,” said Craig. “We’ll do it pretty casually, so don’t worry about structuring it like a normal interview.”

  “Even the Sheriff here thinks the woods are haunted?” Caitlin asked, arching one eyebrow. “That’s a bit crazy.”

  “Well, I talked to him on the phone,” Erin replied. “He actually seemed really level-headed. Said he is sick of hearing all these legends and so on, and he just wants to get a proper explanation for it all so that the townspeople will stop being too scared to enjoy the forest.”

  “Right.”

  Caitlin smoothed her hair down, applied a coat of mascara and coral-tinted lipgloss, and then gave Erin and Craig the thumbs up.

  “Let’s go.”

  The group entered the diner, and as the bell on the door sounded, a tall man stood up and greeted them with a firm handshake. He had kind eyes, a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, and the badge and uniform he wore told them that he was the Sheriff.

  “Glad you could make it,” he said. “I’m Jim. By the way, this is my Deputy.”

  He motioned to another man who was on his way back from the bathroom, and Erin was immediately struck by how attractive he was as he strode over to them. He had longer than average brown hair, but for some reason it suited him and went perfectly with his striking green eyes. Erin had never even seen a man with green eyes before, and she couldn’t help but stare with her mouth slightly open as he grinned and shook Craig’s hand before offering it to her.

  “Call me Scott,” he said. “We’re pretty informal around here.”

  Erin finally found her tongue and responded, trying to hide how attracted she was to him and failing miserably as her cheeks turned cherry red.

  “Um… nice to meet you. I’m Erin,” she said. “This is Caitlin.”

  The gorgeous Deputy turned his attention to Caitlin, and as he smiled and shook her hand, Erin’s stomach sank. No matter what she did, she would always pale in comparison to her gorgeous, slim colleague, and Scott was exactly Caitlin’s type of man as well as her own – tall with chiseled features and a muscular frame. Knowing Caitlin, they would probably be in bed with each other by that night.

  As they sat down, it suddenly occurred to her that they were meant to be camping in the forest together that night, and her heart fluttered slightly as she realized that Caitlin wouldn’t have a chance to go home with Scott. On the other hand, though, neither would she. Not that I’d have a chance to anyway, she thought, avoiding his piercing green gaze as she sat across from him.

  “So,” Craig said to the Sheriff as he held up a camera, “tell us more about the forest. Do you mind if we film you?”

  “Go ahead. Well, I’ve lived here my whole life, and legends of those woods have been around as long as I can remember,” the Sheriff replied, stroking his bearded chin as he glanced at the camera lens. ”When I was a boy, even my grandparents told me stories about the place. All kinds of strange happenings. My daughter is a fan of your show, so I figured it might be worth getting in contact. I know there must be a rational explanation for it all, and I’d really like the people here to start enjoying the woods. No one even hikes around here, and it’s such a shame, because it’s such a beautiful area.”

  “Could you tell us more about the so-called paranormal events?” Erin asked.

  As she spoke, she thought she saw a flash of bright yellow-green out of the corner of her eyes, and she glanced over at Scott, who was staring right at
her. It seemed as if the light had simply just reflected strangely against his eyes, so she turned back to the Sheriff and waited for his response.

  “Firstly, it’s an oddly silent place. I’ve been out there a lot, and I’ve never experienced a forest like it. Dead silent, all the time. That alone is enough to scare some of the locals. I already told you about the ghost lights, right?”

  “Yes,” she replied as Craig and Caitlin nodded alongside her.

  “Yeah, well they are a regular occurrence. Just orbs of light, hovering over the forest in the distance. And then there’s the children.”

  “The children?” Erin asked, raising her eyebrows as her eyes widened.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve received countless reports over the years of people hearing giggling children out there. Right in the middle of the woods, where there shouldn’t be anyone. These are reports from daredevil teenagers and young adults, though. They are the only ones brave enough to go that far out there. You know, they dare each other to try and spend the night out there… that kinda stuff.”

  “Giggling children… hmm, okay. What about the disappearances?” Craig asked, his eyebrows knitting together.

  “A few people have disappeared here over the years. But to be honest, they were mostly…well, they had problems with drugs. No one was that surprised when they disappeared from the town. For all we know, they just ran off,” the Sheriff said. “Still, it’s not just that. A couple of tourists tried to camp out there once, and they disappeared too. Never heard from again.”

  A chill ran down Erin’s spine at his words. Even though their mission was to find rational explanations for everything that was reported to them, the idea of people simply disappearing into the woods, never to be seen or heard from again, bothered her more than anything else. She couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying than being taken away by something in the woods, or being trapped helplessly there for whatever reasons… the idea made her mouth dry up and her breath catch in her throat, and she wondered if camping in the forest was such a good idea.

  Pull yourself together, she told herself a second later. There’s no such thing as paranormal events. We’ve managed to disprove all of them so far.

  “Oh, and how could I forget?” the Sheriff continued. “We’ve also had reports of strange creatures in the woods with yellow or green eyes. Of course, they are probably just wolves or something similar. When a person is scared, their minds can play all sorts of tricks on them.”

  “Exactly,” said Craig, his tone calm and confident. “That’s what we aim to prove most of the time. Humans are completely irrational beings, and they are quick to jump to paranormal conclusions when there are perfectly reasonable explanations.”

  The Sheriff smiled and nodded, and while the group ate, they plotted out exactly where they would be camping on a map he had had pulled out of his pocket.

  “Okay, these spots here would be good,” the Sheriff said, marking crosses on the map. “This first spot is only a mile or so in, and we’ve had lots of reports of weird events around there. So you could stay there tonight, and then move on to….”

  He marked out another spot before continuing.

  “Over here. This is where the tourists apparently were before they disappeared.”

  Another shiver ran down Erin’s spine, but she dismissed it as Caitlin and Craig chatted excitedly. Neither of them seemed even remotely concerned, and Erin felt ridiculous for being so worried.

  After finishing up the talk with the Sheriff and his Deputy, the group headed back to their car and drove through the quaint old town before arriving on the edge of the forest, where they had been told they could park.

  “Everyone grab a bag, and then let’s head off,” Craig said.

  They trudged through the dense forest in silence for a while, being careful to follow the map that the Deputy had given them, and within an hour they were in the first camping spot, one mile into the forest.

  The Sheriff hadn’t been exaggerating about how eerily silent the woods were. Usually, there would be birds chirping and other sounds from forest-dwelling animals, but there was nothing; only the sounds of their footfall echoing through the area.

  Finally, they reached a clearing. A stream ran alongside where they set their tent up, and Caitlin looked over at it and analyzed the map as Craig and Erin collected sticks to build a campfire with.

  “Hey guys, this stream comes off the Faelan River. The waterfall that gave the town the ‘Rapids’ name isn’t far off,” she said.

  Erin dropped a heavy bundle of sticks and looked down at the map.

  “Hey, you’re right. We should visit the falls if we have time. They’re probably amazing to look at.”

  The evening was already approaching, but that didn’t bother Craig in the slightest. He got the fire going, and then sat down next to it with his legs crossed before pulling out a book from his backpack.

  “Okay, I think it’s fairly obvious why the place is so quiet,” he said, glancing up from his book a moment later.

  “Why?” Caitlin asked.

  “Look at how densely packed together the trees are. The density blocks the wind, which contributes to the silence. Not only that, according to this book on local wildlife… well, there isn’t any wildlife. Not in this forest anyway.”

  “That’s weird,” Erin replied.

  Craig shrugged.

  “There’s a lot of forests in the world that lack wildlife, as surprising as that is. Look at Aokigahara in Japan. Dead silent for the same reasons.”

  “Well, that’s one thing we can cross off the list,” Caitlin said, getting out a pen and writing some notes on a pad. “What should we look at next?”

  “I think we should just hang around here for a while and see what happens. I’m hoping some of those ghost lights show up. There’s quite a few rational explanations for them, and I suspect I know why they are showing up around here. We’ll see, though,” Craig replied, rubbing his chin.

  “Are you thinking bioluminescence?” Erin asked.

  “Nope. That was my first guess, but then I noticed something on the map.” He pointed to a spot on the map a mile or so from where they were and then continued. “See this little marshy area? I bet that has something to do with it.”

  He didn’t say anything more after that, and simply looked at the two women with an enigmatic grin. Caitlin rolled her eyes, and sipped on a bottle of water.

  “I assume you’ll tell us more later.”

  “Sure. But not yet,” he said.

  An hour later, night had fallen, and the only light in the area was the warm, flickering flames of the campfire. Caitlin had bought marshmallows to toast, and Erin declined when she was offered one. Last thing my diet needs is more sugar, she thought, pursing her lips and watching enviously as Caitlin shoveled more and more down her throat.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she suddenly saw a light hovering in the sky, and her head jerked over to the east.

  “Hey, Craig! We’ve got a ghost light!”

  Craig immediately turned one of the cameras on and started filming the orb as it flickered over the trees in the distance. It was an odd bluish-purple color, and it moved slowly around in the night sky as the three colleagues rushed towards it, making sure they took the map and several flashlights with them.

  “Where exactly are we going?” Erin asked, panting and trying to catch her breath as they hurried east.

  “The marsh. It’s only about a mile away,” Craig replied.

  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the marsh, and Craig kneeled down beside the water and took a sample of it, along with some nearby mud.

  “Okay, here’s my theory,” he said. “Very basically, it’s thought that ghost lights can be caused by the decay of organic materials in rivers and marshlands. I’m going to get these samples tested, and I’m willing to bet that’s what’s causing it.”

  “How does that work?” asked Caitlin.

  “Well, when it decays, it releases certain gas
es into the air, causing photon emissions, and that’s what produces the strange lights. Pretty cool, huh?”

  Erin nodded as he explained it, wishing she had thought of it as a possible explanation. She had read about gases causing ghost lights years ago, but it hadn’t occurred to her in this case at all.

  After filming the light for a while longer, they trudged back to their campsite and talked for a while before stamping out the fire and getting into their sleeping bags. Even as she snuggled up into hers, Erin still felt the chill of the night air, and goose bumps prickled over her skin as she rubbed her hands up and down her legs and arms, trying to keep warm.

  The three of them were all sleeping in the one tent; none of them minded sharing. As her eyes closed and her mind drifted off to sleep, she was rudely awoken by Craig prodding her and whispering into her ear.

  “Erin! Wake up! What the hell is that sound?”

  She rubbed her eyes and sat up, and saw Craig crouched over her. Even in the dim light, she could see that his face was pale, and his forehead was lined with concern.

  “What sound?” she mumbled, cocking her head to the side.

  A second later, she heard it, and a chill shot down her spine as adrenaline suddenly surged through her veins, making her heart thump loudly in her chest like the fluttering wings of a trapped bird. A baby or small child was giggling not far in the distance, and her stomach lurched as her eyes met Craig’s panicked gaze again.

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered. “The giggling children the Sheriff mentioned. What the hell could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied before gently prodding Caitlin. “Hey, Caity, wake up… quick.”

  Caitlin sat up, and just as she did, all three of them heard the giggling sound, louder this time. Erin’s heart was beating so fast that she was sure it would explode out of her chest, and a second later Caitlin started to laugh.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Erin hissed. “This isn’t funny.”

  “Yes it is! You should see your faces right now. Oh, man… it’s hilarious,” Caitlin replied. “Listen to it again. Properly this time.”