by Black, Tasha
She threw another rock into the froth and then she heard the yip of a familiar rat terrier just as the alpha’s scent reached her nose.
She turned in disbelief to see the park caretaker, Harrison Briggs, accompanied by his little dog.
Instantly, she recognized him as the older wolf she’d met the other night in the woods. It seemed impossible that she hadn’t realized he was a wolf the first time they’d met.
“No shit,” she breathed.
It wasn’t that hard for someone to hide in plain sight if they didn’t meet your expectations. As a waitress who blended into the background herself from time to time, she should have been more attuned to that.
“You were expecting someone else?” he asked, a brow arched.
She managed to take inventory of his face before her submission forced her to look down. He was younger than she had first thought. His beard covered a strong jaw, his eyes a piercing blue under his hat. And without his oversized winter coat, his thickly muscled frame was more evident.
More importantly though, he was carrying himself differently. Now that he wasn’t trying to hide, she could feel alpha confidence pouring off him.
He turned and started off down the beach and she followed automatically, feeling a little mad at herself for falling into step so easily.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“Because it’s my duty to keep my pack safe,” he replied immediately. “In these dark times, that means staying hidden.”
Oh yeah, Javier had told her about that. It was one of the main reasons he left - he was tired of laying low in a dwindling pack. He wanted a future.
“Dark times?” she asked casually, wondering how much he knew.
He stopped in his tracks and turned to her.
“I know why you’re here,” he said.
“Then why haven’t you stepped up to help?”
“That’s not the way we do things,” he said, walking on. “My pack has been here a long time. We’re small. Getting smaller every time some young hothead forgets his duty and goes off to seek glory.”
She winced at the obvious shot at Javier. Clearly there was some history between the two wolves.
It didn’t concern her, not today.
“So you were just going to hide your head in the sand and hope the moroi didn’t kill everyone?” she demanded hotly, hoping for an honest reaction, or at least to shame him into action.
“This is my pack,” he growled, his eyes flashing yellow. “It’s not your place to question my decision.”
A war was happening in Cressida’s mind. Her wolf was backing down, just as something else inside her demanded a challenge.
Cressida took a deep breath and averted her eyes respectfully.
Her friends were in danger. She needed his help. She wasn’t going to get it by starting a fight.
She walked on a few paces with him, thinking about how to broach her request. They were nearing the park and the boardwalk, but there was still no one else in sight.
“Can you at least tell me where the portal is, so we can make sure it’s safe?” she asked as politely as she knew how.
Harrison’s eyes went far away for a second.
“You and your friends can’t protect it,” he said softly. “It’s better if you just leave. Go back to your own pack. Spend some time with your loved ones. While you still can.”
Jesus.
Just then, the little dog started barking wildly under the boardwalk. It’s normally high-pitched yip sounded like a scream.
Harrison began to run and Cressida followed suit.
A putrid stench reached her just as they stepped into the shadows under the boardwalk.
The little dog stood frozen in place, whining and gazing at a cluster of rocks near one of the wooden pilings.
“Easy, Nic,” Harrison said to the dog.
It kept keening.
Cressida and Harrison climbed over to the rocks.
The smell was overwhelming. Cressida nearly retched and covered her mouth with her sleeve to block it out.
She remembered smelling something bad under the boardwalk when she was walking with Linc. They’d been passing by this area when she’d noticed it.
“Fuck,” Harrison breathed.
She took another step and then saw for herself.
Something pale poked out from under one of the stones.
A hand.
Without ceremony, Briggs began removing the rocks. Cressida had to give him some credit for keeping his cool when most people would have lost their shit and called the police.
She helped him, though she had to stop once or twice and breathe to keep herself from puking.
At last the whole body was revealed.
Briggs bent and turned it over.
“Oh, god,” Cressida whispered.
The face was… torn, unrecognizable.
“The crabs have been at it,” Briggs said.
Cressida bent down to look at the leg. The body was badly bloated, but the pattern of ink circling the calf was unmistakable.
That was Javier’s tattoo.
Her heart began to pound. Her stomach dropped and her legs were filled with wet concrete.
Javier.
Her mind tried to cut through the cloud of despair threatening to overwhelm her.
It can’t be him, this can’t be right. I saw him this morning.
At first she thought it was only the pain of denial, but it was true. She had seen him this morning.
And this was not a fresh corpse.
Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the body again.
There was a tattoo on only one leg. The other leg was bare. Javier had tattoos on both.
She heard Javier’s voice in her head.
Linc and I were good friends. We even got tattoos together.
She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now it hit her like a boulder landing on a cartoon coyote.
Linc didn’t have any tattoos.
At least, not the Linc she knew.
Which could only mean that the Linc she knew was not the real Linc at all, he was…
The moroi.
And she had…
She pushed the thought aside. There was no time.
Javier was on a boat with him.
“Javier,” she whispered in horror.
She dashed out from under the pier, running toward the water. But it was hopeless. She couldn’t see anything from down there.
“You okay, kid?” Briggs called to her from under the boardwalk.
She didn’t bother to answer, but sprinted up the sandy knoll for higher ground. When she reached the top of the boardwalk she ran for the park.
The wail of a siren approached, the sound deafening to her sensitive ears.
They hadn’t even called yet. How could the police be on the way so fast?
There was no time to piece it together.
Cressida scanned the layout of the park. She knew just where to go, but needed to get there fast.
She hopped a fence and took off like a jackrabbit, praying that she wasn’t too late.
Chapter 11
Ainsley dreamed she was flying.
She was a butterfly, flitting from bloom to bloom, drinking in the heady nectar without a care in the world.
Everything was sunshine and flowers, and her heart soared on gossamer wings.
From the edge of the meadow, someone called to her. But she didn’t want to leave yet, didn’t want the dream to end.
The call grew louder, more insistent. She knew she was supposed to go to it.
But she flew on, ignoring the voice.
There, at the center of the field, a bright orange flower basked in the warm summer sun. She could almost taste the nectar. She flew toward it, the breeze tossing her light body this way and that.
When she had almost reached her quarry, she stopped, frozen in mid-air, as if she had struck an invisible wall.
No. Not a wall.
&n
bsp; A web.
Her tiny heart fluttered as she struggled to break free, her delicate wings tearing with the effort.
Again, the voice called.
A coldness flooded her, and she could no longer move. She looked down at herself. She had reverted to her human form, but she was still held fast. The world began to spin as her body was encased in threads of silk as strong as steel cables. Slowly, they worked up her legs, over her torso.
Still she felt the pull of the call. Why hadn’t she gone? Why hadn’t she done her duty?
The threads covered her mouth and nose, cutting off her breath.
She awoke, bolt-upright in her bed, clawing at her face and sucking in a huge gasp of sweet air.
The dream began to fade immediately, except for the call. It only grew more urgent.
Now that she was awake, she recognized it for what it was.
Someone in her pack was in trouble.
She scrambled from her bed and headed out the back door, without bothering to put on anything more than the flimsy nightgown she wore.
The call pulled her like a magnet into the darkness of the woods.
Before she had traveled far, she heard a quiet sobbing sound. She lifted her nose to the air, picking up the scent of her pack mate right away.
Brian Stevens.
He was one of her Tarker’s Hollow wolves. His boyfriend, Owen, was the nurse that had helped them sneak Sadie Epstein-Walker out of Springton Hospital back in the fall. Brian was a manager at the local Co-op, and volunteered at the children’s theater program. Nice guy, if a bit dramatic at times.
Ainsley took off in his direction, and located him easily. She didn’t need her wolf senses to tell her he wasn’t being dramatic this time.
He stood against a tree just off the walking path that led from the college. He didn’t move at her approach.
As she grew closer, she realized that he seemed to be tied to the tree somehow. He was a pretty big guy, not to mention a wolf. Who could do something like that to him?
And why hadn’t he shifted?
“Brian,” she called as she covered the last few steps. “Are you okay? What happened?”
He looked up, his tear-streaked face filled with horror.
“It took Owen.”
Chapter 12
Cressida had just reached the base of the Ferris wheel when she heard someone calling her name. She glanced over her shoulder to see Grace running after her.
There was no time to explain what was happening.
Instead, Cressida wrapped her hands around the rusted metal of the Ferris wheel’s frame and pulled herself up to the top of the first gondola.
If she could just make it to the top, she might be able to see far enough across the surf to make out where the boat was that held Javier and the moroi.
She wasn’t exactly sure what she would do once she spotted them. She was leaning toward screaming, waving, and hoping.
“It’s Javier,” Grace yelled to her from the ground. “I think he’s in trouble.”
“I know,” Cressida shouted as she pulled herself up onto another basket. “I’m trying to find him.”
The air was cooler without any protection from the wind. Cressida kept climbing, her hands growing numb as they clung to the frigid metal.
Cressida climbed on. She might not have much of a plan, but she needed to see him, needed to know it wasn’t already too late.
The next gondola creaked and swung as she pulled herself onto its roof. She scrambled to the one above it, trying not to think about the fact that she’d been up here with Linc once before, giving her body to a demon, when her heart belonged to…
Don’t think about it. Her mind advised, and Cressida pushed away the overwhelming thought and climbed on.
At last she reached the top. Frantically, she scanned the shoreline.
When she spotted the boat at last, her hopes sank.
It was too far away - a boat the size of a toy from her perspective, with two tiny figures on top.
“Javier,” she screamed into the wind, letting go of the beam she’d been holding to wave her arms frantically back and forth over her head.
A gust of wind threatened to knock her loose, and she grabbed back onto the ride again.
It didn’t matter. There was no way he’d be able to hear her. Cressida had always had fantastic vision, and she could barely make out the figures on the boat.
If the distance didn’t, the sound of the surf and wind would surely cut off any of her warnings.
She looked around, at a loss. There had to be something she could do.
The wind whistled through the metal beams. There was nothing else but the scent of the sea and the cries of the gulls.
She looked back to the boat.
The tiny Linc she’d first seen in the distance was not as tiny as before. He was growing, darkening. Revealing his true nature.
Cressida thought of the night she’d fought the moroi back in Tarker’s hollow. It had taken out a Federation alpha, then subdued Ainsley fucking Connor. It had taken all of her power and Grace’s magic combined, just to drive it away.
Javier didn’t have a chance by himself.
She watched in horror as he put his hands up in a futile gesture of protection, looking around for an escape.
But there was no place for him to go. Javier was a wolf on the ocean.
The moroi advanced. Javier backed up again, but he was quickly running out of boat.
She couldn’t watch.
But she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Cressida’s heart pounded. She had to do something to save her mate.
My mate?
Fuck.
But he was her mate - it was crystal clear. The irony of noticing what must have been true from the beginning was not lost on her as she watched him face his death.
No.
No. No, she could not let him die without trying something, anything, no matter how desperate.
Cressida reached a hand into her pocket, and let go of the Ferris wheel with the other.
She steeled herself.
But there was no time to think, no time to prepare.
Stretching her arms out to the sides, Cressida whispered Javier’s name.
And then she leaped into the wind.
Somewhere behind her, Grace screamed her name.
Cressida’s skin began to tingle as the rocky ground rushed up to meet her.
***
Keep reading for a sample of the next installment: Heir to the Alpha: Episode 5.
Or grab the next book right now:
http://www.tashablack.com/heir-to-the-alpha.html
Heir to the Alpha Episode 5 (Sample)
Chapter 1
The wind rushed past Cressida, whipping her hair and burning her eyes, as she plummeted from the top of the Ferris wheel toward the ground below.
Her skin began to tingle, as the familiar sensation of shifting bubbled up inside her. The giddiness of the shift and the adrenaline of the suicidal fall was an intoxicating combination and instead of being scared shitless, she found herself experiencing a strange ecstasy.
And something was different.
Something was very different about this shift.
Her expanding body wasn’t shredding her clothes. She was mystified to feel the fabric falling away, as if her clothing had grown instead of herself.
And her vision was off. Normally the shift tunneled the world into the wolf’s view, colors muting as her sense of smell increased.
But right now, her vision was widening. It felt like she could see everything at once. Not just in front of her but everything in her periphery and for miles.
She gazed down at Javier and made out a single bead of sweat gleaming on his brow as he moved, seemingly in slow motion.
And the colors. They were like nothing she had ever seen. The whole world was lit up like a Christmas tree, with colors Cressida couldn’t even name. Like the psychedelic effects in the anti-drug movies they
watched in middle school health class.
Whatever was happening, it would all be over soon. The ground zoomed up to meet her.
When she had nearly reached it, she spread her arms and was shocked to feel a gust of wind lift her up.
Not by her arms.
By her wings.
Her whole body was as light as air and the giddy effervescence was back, stronger than before.
She focused on her periphery and realized that the iridescent purplish-black she saw there was her own silky feathers.
Suddenly, the shelf of air that had held her was gone.
Without thinking, she flapped her wings again and the delirious soaring happened anew, her body lifting effortlessly, finding a current of air, and riding it onward.
How had she done this?
Her thoughts went to the crow totem she’d been carrying in her pocket. And she thought about what Tokala had said about her ability to shape shift.
Part of her had brushed it off as a bunch of hippie crap.
But here she was, flying.
Cressida had become the crow.
She spread her glorious feathers once more, caught an updraft, and let the air carry her effortlessly over the ocean.
It was every childhood dream come true.
The sensation was so overwhelming, that she nearly lost herself in it.
Javier’s scream brought her focus back.
Her clever eyes took in every detail.
Her dark-haired mate was on his back in a corner of the boat, his muscles rigid with the tension of keeping the beast at bay.
The shadowy thing loomed over him, convulsing with pleasure as it began to drain the life force from him.
Cressida dove.
Her speed was incredible - even the fastest wolf would envy it. She reached the boat in the blink of a slow human eye.
As she neared the deck, she sorrowfully let go of her newfound form, hoping it was something she could try on again one day, not just a one-shot deal born of desperation.
She transformed back into a human in mid-air, swallowing down the awful feeling that she was turning from a paper airplane into a trash bag of wet cement, and braced herself for the collision with the moroi.
