Alphas Unwrapped: 21 New Steamy Paranormal Tales of Shifters, Vampires, Werewolves, Dragons, Witches, Angels, Demons, Fey, and More

by Michele Bardsley

  He headed toward the Jeep.

  “Hey!” She dug her heels into the cement floor, which hardly slowed him given she was barefoot. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m out of here.”

  “Wrong.”

  He barely spared her a look as he grabbed the door handle, yanking it open. “We don’t have time.”

  “For what?” Jaylene tamped down her temper. “You go your way. I go mine. No harm, no foul.”

  “Doesn’t work that way, darling.” He tipped his chin toward the door they’d just exited. “These guys won’t stop. They’ll track you down—”

  “All the more reason to let me go.” She tugged, in case he didn’t get her message. “Now!!”

  “You have a death wish?”

  He actually sounded serious. Before she could tell him what she thought about high-handed males, even sexy ones, two things happened. The door from the stairwell burst open at the same instant something crashed against the security gate blocking their exit from the garage.

  Two different attackers. Two different directions. But that’s not what had her stomach plummeting.

  These were not men racing toward them. They were animals. Some kind of tusked creature pounded against the metal grate. A boar maybe? Behind her a small, feral dog-like animal exploded from the stairwell. No. Two!

  Not dogs. Hyenas.

  What the—

  CHAPTER 11

  Time stopped, then slammed into fast-forward as the hyenas or…they had to be dogs. No one in D.C. had hyenas as pets. Did they?

  Snarling, slobbering, vicious-looking brutes lunged toward Kane, who pushed her behind him as he shouted something in a language she’d never heard before. The first animal, already in mid-air, slowed but kept arcing forward, while the second angled to attack from a different direction.

  The pounding of tusks against the gate intensified, echoing against the concrete walls, adding to the surreal scene.

  Kane jumped toward the airborne hyena, grabbing it by the scruff of its neck as Jaylene pressed herself against the Jeep.

  Weapon. There had to be a weapon. Somewhere.

  She couldn’t look away long enough to hunt for one. As if blinking might put Kane at more risk. Like true predators, the hyenas were using a divide and attack maneuver—Kane wrestling with the one while the other—oh God, the other crouched lower, silently circling closer, waiting for its chance to pounce. Its focus was on Kane, but Jaylene knew if she moved a muscle, even breathed, it’d go for her in a flash.

  But if she did nothing, Kane would be outmaneuvered.

  The hyena Kane wrestled with yelped. Hurt? Or surprised?

  Didn’t matter. How long could a man last against a beast? Two beasts.

  Street lessons. What could deter an assault?

  Go on the offense. Defense only meant waiting to be hurt.

  Pulling herself up to her full six feet, widening her arms to appear even larger and more intimidating, she tucked her head close to her neck and started shouting as loud as she could at the encroaching beast.

  “Back off a-hole!” She waved her hands. Growled. Acted like the crazy yellow-dressed lady who owned the corner of W. Lexington and S. Loomis streets. That was one mean-assed woman who didn’t take guff from anyone.

  It worked! Well, the animal paused. She’d take that as a win. She jumped forward. Not enough to land in harm’s way anymore than she already was, but enough to pull even with Kane.

  “How you like these odds?” she taunted. Not at him but at the spotted dog-faced threat, pulling on every ounce of attitude she’d learned fending off drunks, punks and, yes, a rapist a time or two who thought being female meant easy pickings. Anger roared through her.

  Shoulder to shoulder now, Kane gave a snarl and tossed the hyena he’d been battling toward the nearest concrete wall. It slammed—hard—before sliding into a matted fur bundle on the oil-slickened floor.

  Dead? Nah, probably just stunned with the way her luck had been going.

  “Get in the damn Jeep,” he roared, turning his back on her to rush at the remaining hyena.

  So much for helping.

  On the other hand, if she was in the vehicle, he could focus only on the animal. All he needed was an opening, enough to get behind the wheel and they could get out of this nightmare.

  She pivoted to jump into the rig when she caught a flash out of the corner of her eye.

  The boar.

  She’d forgotten about it.

  So had Kane as, focusing on the hyena, he’d exposed his side and back to the boar’s charge.

  The next seconds blurred. A roar. Fur hurtling forward. Jaylene twisting, arms extended, thrusting Kane out of the way.

  Then a flash of pain so intense, all else faded.

  CHAPTER 12

  Like freeze frames in an old black and white movie, small snippets seared into Jaylene’s awareness. Kane sprawling forward while grabbing at the hyena. The boar rearing its tusks, one red, plunging past her. Her staggering backwards, smacking hard against the side of the Jeep.

  She didn’t know how Kane did it, but even as he flew forward he snagged his hands in the ruff of the hyena’s neck, holding it tight enough to use it as a battering ram against the boar, forcing it to shift direction and angle away from the rig.

  “In. In. In,” he shouted as he threw himself over the hood and scrambled into the driver’s side. The man had moves she could barely believe.

  Adrenaline roaring through her, she staggered forward, hauling herself with a white knuckled grip on the dashboard as she rocketed into her seat.

  She hit it hard enough to force a hoarse cry. Kane glanced her way as he cranked the Jeep to life. “Hold on!”

  Did she have a choice? Did she care? No, as long as he got them out of here and fast. The pain zigzagging through her was only getting worse.

  A hard thump rocked against the rear bumper as the Jeep bulleted into reverse. Boar? Hyena? Didn’t matter as Kane shifted into first and raced toward the mangled security gate, tires squealing.

  Would the gate open? Or were they stuck?

  Kane punched an automatic opener, growling curses, or prayers, as the metal screeched upwards. Then jammed.

  “Hold tight,” he called as they both ducked reflexively. She squeezed her eyes closed, expecting any second to hear the crunching of metal, pinning them inside the concrete box.

  Luck finally must have decided they’d had enough as with only a searing scrape against the roof, the Jeep shot forward, up a ramp and onto a side street. Thank the Lord, it was empty as the Jeep screamed sideways on two wheels before it righted.

  Down a long, graying tunnel she heard Kane shouting at her. “You hurt?”

  Was he kidding? Did fire ripping through her leg count as hurt or hell-yes-I’m-dying here?

  “Damnit, Jaylene, you hurt?”

  Everything seemed in slow motion. She glanced at him. He looked angry. Very angry. Or afraid, as his gaze darted from her, to the road, to her right leg.

  She followed the direction of his glance, saw her hand splayed across her thigh. Her palm was red. Rich, bright, holiday season red.

  So was her leg.

  “Talk to me,” Kane demanded.

  No words would come. Very little air. Even fewer coherent thoughts.

  All she could do was stare at her leg. Poinsettia -red spreading, uneven ripples of blood seeping everywhere as the sound of her heartbeat louder and louder in her ears. Kerthud. Kerthud. Kerthud. Each thrum matching the surge of expanding red pooling between her fingers.

  The boar. A tusk. Pain.

  The boar must have caught her as it raced past. There didn’t seem to be any pain. Or maybe it so surrounded her, it didn’t reach her. Like Kane’s voice.

  A sideways glance at him showed his mouth moving but no sound reached her. Everything tightened, narrowed, dulled.

  Kane wrenched the Jeep to the curb. One wheel popping up on the sidewalk as he jammed it into park and leapt from his seat.


  Why?

  Sprinkles of light danced before her vision. Holiday lights? No, that didn’t seem right. It was supposed to be day. So why was the light disappearing? Getting murky.

  Her door sprung open. Kane loomed there, his expression stark, his hand cool against the heat of her leg.

  That felt good. Except he started pressing. Hard.

  That hurt. It hurt a lot.

  “Don’t—” she forgot what she wanted to say as he leaned across her, his other hand peeling back her fingers, smearing the red.

  Suddenly she was so tired. Her head was too heavy. Her thoughts heavy. It’d be so easy to just let go. Stop the pain. Stop the pulsing. Just let go.

  “Jaylene, listen to me—”

  She was. Wasn’t she? Except he acted like she wasn’t.

  “Go away,” she murmured, her throat now dry and tight.

  “Sorry, darling. Won’t do.”

  He was so close she couldn’t help but raise the fingers of one hand to his face, stroking the angle of his jaw until the weight of her fingers got too heavy and her hand dropped.

  “So pretty,” she murmured. “Shouldn’t be so pretty.”

  “You have to stay awake.” He sounded angry again. No reason why.

  “Don’t be mad,” she whispered, smiling in spite of the streaks of red she left painted on his jaw. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  He gave a strangled sound.

  Didn’t sound like a yes. But it wasn’t a no either.

  She wanted to lean closer, nuzzle the crook of his neck, that sensitive spot that made him growl. But it took too much energy.

  “I’ve got to stop the bleeding, Jaylene,” he whispered, his voice quieter now but no less intense. “This is going to hurt.”

  What was—

  “Shit.” The word escaped as she bolted upright. He’d banded his hand around the fire in her leg and no matter how much she squirmed, or batted at him, he kept squeezing. Not only tightening the force of his hand but murmuring words that made no sense. Old words. Reminding her of childhood. Of the first songs her mother sang to her. A sense of security washed against her. Security and warmth even as she watched the first flakes of the season float into Kane’s hair.

  She stopped fighting. Stopped feeling the searing pain. Stopped everything as she sank back into her seat.

  The last words she heard were Kane’s. “Don’t die on me, Jaylene. Damnit, don’t die.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Hell, where was she? Or maybe she shouldn’t use that word. Just in case.

  A blinding pain crisscrossed her skull, the mother of all headaches, as every muscle in her body felt like it’d been pummeled.

  Why?

  Oh, yeah. The assignment. Herm Kane. A great night. Man, oh man, what a night. Without opening her eyes, she felt a smile spread across her face.

  So why the—oh, yeah. The morning after. Caught. Attacked. The…no, they couldn’t have been hyenas. And one big, hell-of-a-big boar.

  That had her eyes snapping open.

  Not that she could see a damn thing.

  She was in darkness. A darkness so thick, she knew if she stretched out her hand she’d feel a texture—heavy and weighted. She lay against something firm, soft enough, but not like Kane’s bed kind of soft with its high-priced thousand-count sheets that made her want to slip between them once again. Not that she’d spent that much time between them. Mostly on top, tossed aside, twisted around her as she and Kane rolled and twisted and strained.

  Kane? Where was he?

  She lifted her head. Not far. Not as her head rumbaed and her stomach churned in protest. “Kane?” she uttered, hearing the raspy, dry sound of her own voice. The weak, sucking sawdust mewl.

  “You awake at last?” A voice swept over her. Kane. Here. Somewhere.

  As if she’d asked, a small light flickered on near her, illuminating Kane who’d been lying right next to her. Now he angled himself upward on one arm, glancing down at her, the frown between his brows warning he wanted answers.

  Too bad. So did she, easy as it was to simply want to drink him in, being there, next to her. Even frowning, the man was sexy as all get out.

  “Where are we?” she managed, starting with the easiest question first.

  “You’re safe.”

  Avoiding? Or something else?

  She cleared her throat and tried again. “Where?”

  “A friend’s place. Outside D.C.” At her arched brow, he added. “Maryland.”

  Still didn’t help, but it was enough to lessen the tension in her shoulders.

  Before she could ask more, he moved, reaching to his side and coming back with a glass of water.

  If there’d been enough left in her, she’d have kissed him. Might still if she could manage it.

  His hand slipped under her neck, guiding her upward until she could sip enough to wet her thirst. Best thing she’d ever tasted.

  He eased her back against a pillow.

  All she wanted to do was close her eyes and disappear, but years of street living had taught her that ignoring a problem only compounded it. Ignoring it never, ever, made it go away.

  So why wasn’t her leg hurting more? Not that she minded the reprieve, but in the Jeep...

  “What happened?” she asked, turning her head so she could look up at Kane, back in his looming over her position.

  “You tell me.” He didn’t say it as a question, his expression darkening. “Dyer’s as sleazy as they get. Why him?”

  There was a wealth of censure, of disapproval coating each word.

  Screw him. Almighty king-in-his-own-world Kane. How dare he judge her, living in his ivory tower, manipulating and game playing as much as Dyer did. She didn’t owe him any explanations. Except for—”My leg? What’d you do to my leg?”

  His glance skipped away as if she’d mentioned something he wanted to ignore. “You should be able to walk on it by tomorrow,” came his non-answer.

  Not that she expected anything else.

  “You should rest now. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”

  Rest? She just woke up. And what was going down tomorrow? More questions clambered through her mind, but they didn’t seem to do more than float to the surface, only to evaporate.

  She looked at him again, catching the intensity of his gaze colliding with hers. He’d been watching her. Waiting for something. But what?

  Too hard to think. But even as she gave into the waves of lassitude pulling her under, she found one answer. He’d put something into the water she’d drunk.

  The rat bastard.

  Even if he did lean over and brush a light kiss along her brow. He was still an evasive, rat bastard. A sexy, yum-yum, very, very dangerous bastard.

  CHAPTER 14

  When she opened her eyes next, a clear, blinding white light enveloped the room. The kind of light she remembered from one too many December, January and February days on the street. A snow light.

  Without even looking around, she knew Kane wasn’t there. All through the night she’d felt his presence, guarding her, anchoring her, reassuring her even as somewhere deep in her subconscious, she knew he was the biggest threat of all. And that was saying something given she had no idea where she was, why he knew who she was, what really happened back at the underground garage. Then there was Dyer.

  By now her employer knew she’d failed. He might not know the particulars, but her not showing up with the flash drive she’d been sent to retrieve, meant one of two things: she was dead or she’d screwed him over, which basically was the same thing. No one messed with Dyer and lived to crow about it. It wasn’t good for business. His business.

  So even if she found her way out of wherever she was, she’d have to keep under the radar long enough to cut and run. Where? Someplace far away. She might be able to set up as a freelancer again, but it wouldn’t be easy. Buying a new identity, one that could escape Dyer’s detection, didn’t come cheap.

  And then there was her mother. Dyer knew a
bout her. How he knew was a mystery, but the kingpin was savvy enough to always have something to hold over the heads of his minions. No flash drive, no Jaylene, meant he’d go after her mother. Initially to flush Jaylene out. Later? After he took care of Jaylene, slowly, painfully, thoroughly, he’d kill her mom.

  Glancing down at the white comforter clutched in her hands, she realized she didn’t have a lot of choices. Escape meant death to her mother. Returning to Dyer empty-handed meant death. For herself.

  But it’d keep her mom alive. Alone, yes. But Jaylene could live with that if her mom lived.

  Sitting up at last, she realized the headache of yesterday had abated, as had some of the soreness in her muscles. She was almost afraid to move her leg, but when she did there was little more than a twinge. The good news? She was wearing something other than that bloody, sweaty shirt she’d stolen off of Kane. Bad news? Crap, everything else was bad. Except for her leg. Now to check the damage.

  Tossing back the eiderdown covering, she couldn’t help a gasp at her right thigh. A soft, pinkish and puckered scar zigzagged across her skin. Nothing more.

  That tusk had torn into her like a knife through cake icing, and the jagged tear had been deep, bone deep. So what happened? No way could Kane’s mumbled utterings have done this. But then neither could the best emergency room surgeons. Unless she’d been out of things for longer than just a day and night.

  That had to be the explanation. Only thing that made sense. But no wounds reached that level of scarring in less than a couple of weeks. She’d been in enough knife fights to know first-hand.

  Satisfied there was a logical explanation, she slipped from the bed, surprised and wary to find how easy it was to stand on her wounded leg. She wasn’t going to be running a marathon anytime soon but damn, whatever Kane had done was as close to a miracle cure as she’d even seen.

  Maybe that’s what was on that flash drive. The secret to Kane’s wealth and power. That’s why Dyer wanted it so badly.