The man looked back over his shoulder and locked eyes with a man in the audience, clearly trying to impress him. That man in the audience happened to be Alexander, and he wasn't the least bit impressed.
Instead, he stood watching with a twisted feeling in his gut. A kind of all-encompassing nausea, radiating from his stomach to the tips of his fingers and toes, and through every muscle, every nerve-ending in between.
Jesus Christ, he thought, but he tried to smile over at the man in the center of the room as though thoroughly impressed with him.
The naked man turned back from him just in time to see his opponent charging forward across the space that separated them, his fleshy body bursting into fur and muscle and snapping fangs. Alexander wished he could say it stirred some kind of worry within him to witness this unfold, but it would honestly have been a complete lie.
The man in the center of the room leapt back out of the way just as the bear rushed past him, like a matador ushering a bull right past him with his cape. “Hoooo,” he said, grinning at the bear as he skidded around and turned back to face him. “I think I'm starting to understand your technique. See, you know you're too much of a pussy to try and beat me fair and square, so you try to launch a sneak attack on me while my back is turned. Well, if that's how you want to play it, then why don't you hit me with your best shot?”
The bear shot forward again, its jaws snapping at its frail human target. The man stood there, apparently unconcerned. Then, only when the beast was right up on him, he shifted on the spot, transforming into a bear considerably larger than the one charging toward it.
His attacker didn't stop, but struck him with the full force of its weight. Its paws slammed into those of the alpha grizzly, causing him to slide back several inches across the concrete floor with the force of its momentum. A thick cloud of dust exploded upward beneath their feet as the two beasts locked on one another, and no sooner had they stopped than the larger of the two bears heaved his entire weight forward, and slammed his attacker down hard onto his back.
The entire room burst into wild applause, almost sexually aroused by the violence unfolding before their lustful eyes. The entire room, that was, except for Alexander.
Alexander just stood there, watching, the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach growing more and more intense. He didn't know whether it was the violence—which he alone among his sleuth always seemed to hate—or whether it was the connection to the man inflicting the lion's share of that violence, tearing through the flesh and fur of his opponent, slamming him mercilessly into the ground, egged on by the applause of these hooligans all around him.
Probably, it was both of these things. He’d always hated the suffering of others, but in that moment he couldn’t imagine a suffering greater than his own. A sudden, sharp jab of pain against his ribs as an elbow jutted into him made the sickness rise in his chest, up dangerously close to the surface. He held it at bay only by grabbing a hold of his body, and holding in his breath as hard as he could.
“Oh, sorry man! Got kinda carried away there. But damn, Jules is kicking ass out there tonight!”
Alexander turned, staring into the dark face and black eyes of his oldest friend Emmanuel, a fellow omega. “Yeah,” he said, quite poorly faking his enthusiasm. Emmanuel frowned at him.
“Whoa...You aren't looking so hot. You feeling okay? I mean, you aren't worried or something are you? Your husband-to-be has kicked more ass at these things than any other shifter in our sleuth. There's no way he can lose.”
“I'm not worried about him losing,” said Alexander, looking away. He could feel his face getting hot. “I'm worried that he doesn't know when the hell to quit. And please, don't call him my husband-to-be. Just call him Jules.” He happened to look up just as Jules was pinning his opponent down on the ground, raining repeated blows down onto him, refusing to let up even as the fallen bear writhed and roared in agony on the hard floor.
When he looked back over again, Emmanuel was studying him, trying to figure him out. Then a smile spread across his face, a look of dawning comprehension that Alexander found irritating.
“Ohhh, now I see. You're intimidated by him, aren't you? Afraid what a man like that might end up doing to you on your wedding night?” he gave him a playful wink, clearly attempting to lighten the mood. Alexander just scowled at him, and Emmanuel laughed. “Look man, there isn't anything to be afraid of. I know as the omega son of the high alpha you're supposed to be saving it for marriage and all, but trust me. Once you relax and learn to ease yourself into it, there's nothing to be afraid of. Holding back all this time is probably making it seem a lot harder than it actually is. Believe me, once you get the hang of it, Jules is the exact sort of man you want behind the wheel when your wedding night rolls around.”
The more Emmanuel spoke, the worse Alexander felt, until finally it got to the point he simply couldn't take it anymore. His face was hot, his limbs were shaking, and sweat was rolling down, stinging his eyes as he watched Jules tearing away at his competitor.
“I need to step outside,” he said finally, hugging his arms tightly around himself, and rushing toward the warehouse door. There was a hint of remorse in Emmanuel's voice as he forced his way past.
“Hey, look, I'm sorry man! I was just messing around, I didn't mean to upset you! Alexander!”
He threw up in the grass near the woods behind the warehouse, cold convulsions of displeasure rippling across his body as the feeling passed painfully through him. His bouts of nausea had been growing worse lately, but they typically passed before reaching such a severe point as this.
Once the pain of bile had passed through his throat he heaved his body forward, resting against the trunk of a tree. He gasped painfully, trying to catch his breath, his eyes staring off into the unfocused distance. He felt so terrible...So alone, and so confused.
He closed his eyes. He imagined a warm, capable pair of hands sliding along his thin, heaving midriff. Imagined the fingers pushing affectionately through his soft brown hair, the stubble bristling against his cheek as he lay comforted in the man's arms.
It was a fantasy he'd turned back to every single night in the weeks since the two of them had been together. A scenario he constantly imagined, though he knew it could never truly be. But all the same it carried him on, kept him going day after day, night after night, giving him a hope he knew it was irresponsible to truly believe in. He would only end up hurt in the end, he knew, as he'd known that night back at the bar. The night he'd surrendered in the arms of his true alpha and allowed his mind and body to be known in a way that no man had ever known them before.
As bad as he felt in that moment, he could still feel himself growing aroused at the thought. Aroused and uplifted, at the prospect of being swept up in that man's arms. He loved the idea of being carried away from Jules, from his family, and from the entire Sacred Sleuth of Warrior Bears, with all the pointless responsibilities of preserving its dying, outdated traditions.
It was only right, he'd always been told. He was the omega son of the strongest alpha family in the sleuth. Jules was the strongest alpha male in the sleuth outside of his own family, in need of an omega to mate with as a life partner, and claim as his own. It therefore made all the sense in the world that the two of them should be together, that their powerful bloodlines be preserved through the fruit of their union, and the sleuth reinforced by the marriage of two such great and noble families.
It was another piece of the innumerable parts of Alexander's life that had to be sacrificed for the good of the group, another part of himself that had to be dedicated to something much larger than himself, or so he'd always been told. It didn't matter that he didn't love Jules, or that the prospect of ever loving such a violent, arrogant man made his skin crawl. He knew damn well he shouldn't have slept with Chris on that fateful night, and that at the very least, he should have told him the truth about his betrothal.
Maybe, he thought, if he'd done things differently, if he'd told Chr
is the truth, he would have been able to handle things a little bit better the morning after. Maybe he wouldn't have felt like such a traitor to his people, waking up in the beautiful alpha's arms. Maybe Chris could have talked him into running away with him, abandoning his unhappy life for a future he could truly look forward to. Maybe, maybe, a million different maybes.
None of that mattered now.
He'd let it slip between his fingers, screwed it all up before it even had a chance to begin. He'd freaked out and cast Chris out of his life no sooner than he'd entered it. And as many nights as he'd let the passionate episode consume his thoughts, as many times as he considered pulling out his phone and calling the number left behind on the hotel nightstand, he had yet to talk himself into actually doing so. Some nights, he got so far as entering the number into his phone, with his thumb hovering dangerously over the call button. He always pulled away at the last minute, too afraid, too ashamed, to bite the bullet and do what he knew he needed to.
He'd disgraced himself and his family once, he told himself. He needed to be strong, to push through this and do what he needed to for the health and wellbeing of his sleuth. What he wanted out of life didn't really matter anymore.
He continued looking out into space for a moment and visualized those clear gray eyes. So comforting to him, even at such an insurmountable distance. Then, after a moment, he shook his head, clearing them away. There was no more point in fantasizing about what he knew could never be. It would only make things harder for him.
Thinking he'd adequately calmed himself down, he moved to rise from the place where he stood slumped against the tree, determined to go back inside and watch the wrestling match between his husband-to-be and his hapless opponent. No sooner had he risen, however, than a fresh wave of nausea passed over him, pulling him back toward the earth with an unbearable force of gravity.
“Fuck!” he swore at the night, thinking he was about to throw up again. He wrapped his arm back down around his stomach, and it was here, suddenly, that he noticed something that had eluded him before. Or which, perhaps, he'd simply chosen not to acknowledge.
The flat, heaving muscle of his toned stomach dipped outward. A convex little mound that hadn't previously been there, round and firm, that sent a violent shiver running up along his spine. He placed his flat palm against the rounded surface, feeling his own warm flesh, the panic rising in him. He could almost sense the life developing inside him, radiating against his fingertips.
He smiled suddenly at this for a moment. He hadn’t been expecting it. But, as shaken as he felt by this discovery he felt uplifted, for just a fraction of a second. He fantasized about holding his child, pulling it close to his chest. He imagined the reality that once seemed like it could be. A life empty of the bitterness and resentment he surrounded himself with, as gradually his maturity had sobered him to the harsh realities of his role among the sleuth.
He remembered a time when a life like this, growing inside him, would have seemed so sacred. So pure, and so beautiful. He remembered when he was so tender toward everyone and everything around him, so kind, before years of the world’s cruelty had hardened him into such a lonely cynic.
He let himself wonder, for just a moment, whether this was his chance. Whether this might be the opportunity he needed to finally reclaim that missing part of himself.
Then his jaw tensed, and the nausea slowly turned over in him, transforming into a sensation of floating off the ground; not sick anymore, but rudderless, untethered, floating upward toward the top of the trees, somehow separate and distinct from his physical form.
All was silent for a moment. Then he heard the cheers of the men booming from inside the warehouse. There was a loud roar, a cry of victory, and Alexander knew without a doubt which of the two men it belonged to.
He imagined how Jules would react when he found out what he'd done. When he discovered the truth which Alexander himself had just learned. It was all but an inevitability that he would, and the thought of what he would do to him as punishment made his chest hurt to consider.
He clutched one hand tightly against his growing belly and put the other to his forehead, rivulets of sweat seeping heavily between his fingers.
“Dear God,” he said under his breath. “What the hell have I done?”
5
Chris pressed his hard, black nose to the ground. His nostrils flared, and he picked up on the trail of a scent. Faint, but very much present. He knew his prey had been here, and that it hadn't been long since they'd moved on.
The smell was getting stronger, the further on he followed it. He ran his long pink tongue through a set of sharp yellow teeth, rolling it along his black lips as his stomach growled with desire. It was time to end this chase.
He stepped cautiously along through the undergrowth, stepping as lightly as his massive form would allow as he moved across the forest floor. He knew that every crackling leaf, every snapping twig, could be the one to sabotage his entire effort. It wouldn't take anything at all for the creature to be alerted to his presence. He could already envision the thin, tan body shooting past him, the white fluff of the tail vanishing into the distance, seeming to mock him as it bobbed through the air.
He moved across the ground like a phantom, puffing in the scent. He twisted and turned, moving back and forth, sometimes losing the trail for a few feet, but picking it back up again, never deceived for long. The smell was stronger in some places, like the animal had stopped to explore its surroundings, and these short bursts of scent caused his hunger to swell to unbearable degrees.
He could almost taste the tender meat on his lips, the hot salt of its blood on his tongue, and the slender muscle giving way beneath his teeth.
At last he rose up through a clearing and set eyes on the thing. Right there. Exposed and vulnerable, out in the open. Its head dipped down into a stream, totally oblivious to all that was happening around it. It was too perfect. Entirely too perfect, and absolutely irresistible.
He lowered his body and came very close to leaping out, ambushing the girl where she drank—but then he froze. He noticed something.
Two small fawns, creeping up to their mother on thin, tenuous legs. The doe didn't look up until the babies were right up on it, then it nudged them with its muzzle, encouraging them to drink. They lowered their heads to the stream alongside their mother, and something instantly solidified in Chris' chest.
He let out a deep, hot sigh, and knew right then and there he didn't have it in him to do what he'd set out to do. He couldn't bring himself to kill these beautiful, innocent creatures. He was so damn tired of killing.
He stood for a while, watching the family as they drank. Without meaning to, he shifted his weight, and knew what would happen as soon as the small branch snapped in two beneath his massive paw.
Three heads shot up. Six wide black eyes gleamed at him in alarm and were a blur of movement before he'd even had time to register them.
The deer were gone.
He stood watching after them, then sighed. He rose onto his haunches, and his body shrank. He stood there, a man again, naked and vulnerable in the dappled sunlight of the woods.
He turned without giving it another thought, headed back to the spot where he'd parked his truck at the opposite end of the forest. As he walked, trudging grumpily along on bare feet, he reached up and yanked down branches from bushes and trees. He pulled off whatever berries he could find without ever really stopping and fingered them unhappily into his mouth. The red juice seeped out through his lips and down along his increasingly unkempt beard, making his chin appear stained with blood.
He could have done it before, he knew. In his past life, he could have done what he needed to do to survive without considering the moral consequences. Right about now he would be filling up his belly with the flesh of that doe and possibly her young ones, because he knew it was essential to his livelihood. It was just the way of things in the wild, and he'd always considered himself a part of that process.
He really didn't feel that way anymore, though.
Following the ecstasy and the humiliation of his one-night stand at the hotel with Alexander, Chris continued on the road, making his path across the country as he'd been doing up until then. His original plan before all that had been just to keep on going east until he ended up somewhere he wanted to be, taking on odd jobs and catching the sights along the way. If nowhere on that path seemed like anywhere he felt like settling, he would simply boomerang back around in the other direction, going back from east to west, but by way of the southern states. Sooner or later, he reasoned, he was bound to end up somewhere that held some kind of appeal for him.
Everything had changed on that night with Alexander, however. The problem was, he'd figured out exactly where he wanted to be. He had known it beyond a doubt as he lay with that thin, solid body in his arms, running kisses along the back of Alexander's hot, moist neck.
He had literally held his destiny in his grasp, and he'd let it slip through his fingers just like that. Since then he hadn't really believed he could ever settle down again.
After another couple of weeks on the road, the towns he passed through quickly all beginning to blur together in his mind, and he decided it was time for him to head back into the forest. To merge back with the element that had for so long been his home, in hopes that he might manage to pacify his desperate, bleeding heart. He was far enough away from wolf shifter territory now, after all, there was no real risk to it. One patch of forest seemed like it should be pretty much identical to another, and he thought under the circumstances that a return to normalcy might be the best he could hope for.
But of course, it hadn't worked out that way, as evidenced by his total failure to take down the prey he'd been out hunting all afternoon. The wildness was gone from him. The longing for solitude, the need to conquer the natural element had been tamed by the fleeting love of his omega. He found, now, that he could no longer reclaim the wildness that was his only birthright. He couldn't erase the memory of the happiness he'd almost found, and he couldn't simply substitute it for the illusion of freedom that the forest provided him.
Alpha Liberation Page 6
