Alpha's Hunt

by Aimee Easterling

  “Be my guest.” Keys spun through the air toward me. I fumbled the phone in order to catch the key ring. Ended up staring back at Grace’s accusing eyes when our cousin’s phone landed cockeyed on the ground.

  Based on the racks of fabric on the shelves behind her, my sister had made it back to her apartment. Too bad home hadn’t improved her temperament any.

  “This is time sensitive.” Her eyes widened meaningfully.

  “Just a second,” I promised. Was it just my imagination, or was my twin’s face even more pinched than Justice’s had been? This wasn’t going to be an easy, fun conversation.

  Every pebble in the area pushed into my lacerated feet as I picked my way to the station wagon. It was a relief to slide into the driver’s seat and turn the keys far enough in the ignition so the radio sprang to life.

  Once again, the song being broadcast was melancholy, full of lyrics about lost love and missed chances. My hand rose to flick the switch and remove the distraction then hesitated as I remembered the need for privacy. Instead, I snapped Justice’s phone into the holder on the dashboard and accepted the inevitable.

  “Okay, Grace, I’m listening.”

  The answer could have come from my sister, but its timbre was deeper, the tone wickeder. “Took you long enough.”

  THAT WASN’T GRACE. I sat up straighter. Leaned forward as the camera panned around wildly before coming to rest on Luke’s great aunt.

  The same scars and wrinkles I remembered lined her face. But her eyes were wild with exhilaration. Oh, and did I mention the knife pressed up against her great grand niece’s neck?

  Aunt May waited a moment, making sure I took it all in. The way Carly’s hand hovered an inch from the knife blade. The tremble of the girl’s lip as she tried and failed to maintain stoicism in the face of a mortal threat from her own ancestor.

  She. I blinked. Victor hadn’t been talking about Ruth after all.

  “I see we understand each other.” The old woman smiled as puzzle pieces fitted themselves together in my memory. “So I can skip the explanations, hm? Won’t have to answer frantic questions about why and who and how?”

  I wanted to assure her that, yes, I got it. Wanted to move on to the negotiations—there were bound to be negotiations or Aunt May wouldn’t have ordered Grace to place the call.

  But the camera shook slightly, as if my sister was having trouble holding her own emotions in check. Or was preparing an offensive?

  When facing down anyone else, assistance would have been appreciated. But Aunt May, I suspected, wouldn’t hesitate to hack off one of Carly’s fingers to prove her seriousness. Not if what I was starting to guess about the past was true.

  Unfortunately, Grace didn’t have the benefit of days with the Acosta pack to inform her actions. So I drew Aunt May out rather than nodding understanding. “That was you who led Easton over the cliff.”

  Aunt May’s smile grew wider, showcasing wolf-sharp eye teeth. “And set the bear trap. And ripped out my nephew’s belly. Luke’s father was too strong for me, sadly, or I would have finished the job then. But you wanted to know about Easton?” She shrugged. “The boy didn’t listen when I told him the time wasn’t right for tokens. He’d become a liability.”

  I could see how she might think so...if she lived in a twisted world where gaining power was everything. “How’d you do it?”

  She shrugged. “A simple hip bump to knock you off the side of the arch, then a frantic request down our pack bond for my grandson to run faster. You didn’t think you and Luke were the only ones who could communicate that way, did you? A grandmother has a special connection with her grandchildren.”

  A special connection...and no qualms about killing them if they outlived their usefulness. “I get it,” I told her now that the steadiness of the image suggested Grace also got it. “What do you want in exchange for Carly?”

  “An even trade.” Aunt May shrugged. “Come to New York and we’ll swap. You for her.”

  Belatedly, my hand snuck over to the window controller. Ruth should hear this.

  “Eh, eh, eh. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The knife at Carly’s throat burrowed in deeper although it didn’t draw blood...not quite. “You didn’t realize I had eyes on you? Victor’s man wasn’t fast enough to steal the final token before you gathered backup, unfortunately. But that’s just as well. A game is more pleasant when the loser spends time in check before I take out the king.”

  Take out the king...meaning Aunt May intended to use me to depose Luke. This came back to the Alpha’s Hunt. All-out warfare between pack mates that would end with dead bodies and a new alpha in charge.

  And I couldn’t prevent it. Because I wasn’t Ruth. I refused to sacrifice Carly. Instead, I dropped my hand back to my lap. “When? Where?”

  While I spoke, I racked my brain to come up with an alternative, no easy task with Aunt May cackling in the background. The trouble was, she had me boxed in quite admirably. With Carly under the knife and eyes on me here at Wolf Camp, I couldn’t risk alerting the possible helpers only a few feet away from me. Which left me with no allies at all.

  No, that was wrong. My bond to Luke could fix this. I reached out again, pushing as hard as I could in search of the connection between us. I found...

  ...A big, fat nothing. Initial, tenuous contact popped like a soap bubble the instant our minds touched.

  “I expect you here by tomorrow afternoon,” Aunt May continued. There were tears in Carly’s eyes now, but I ignored the girl’s pain while focusing on her great great aunt. “Shall we say two-ish? I need my beauty sleep, and you and Victor need time to get to New York.”

  I flinched at the mention of her surviving grandson. If Victor was making the same journey, that meant I’d been right about....

  “Yes, dear. This is the Alpha’s Hunt. Victor will claim you, he’ll mate you, the pack will come together under his leadership with me pulling the strings. Now, turn the key in the ignition. And don’t contact anyone else until you get here. If you do, sweet little Carly will pay the price.”

  Chapter 31

  I turned the key in the ignition and drove, ignoring Ruth’s fists pounding on the hood and Justice’s shouted questions. Once their toes were out of the way, I floored it. Didn’t stop until I was too distant for anyone to catch up to me. Even then, I only paused long enough to root around in the trunk in search of another set of clothing.

  There wasn’t much to choose from. An old sock that had been used as a rag while checking the oil. A windbreaker that must have belonged to someone male because it fell most of the way to my knees.

  “Good enough,” I decided, leaving the sock behind while pulling on the windbreaker. Then I punched the address of Grace’s apartment into a mapping app and got back behind the wheel.

  Over the next twelve hours, half the pack tried to call me. Well, that’s not quite true. There were lots of missed calls though. Texts also, some of which made me wince when I caught snippets out of the corner of my eye.

  I wasn’t tempted to answer, though. Not until Luke joined the fray.

  “Honor, where are you? We can fix this together.”

  I clenched my hands around the steering wheel to prevent them from skittering sideways and answering without my permission. Chances were good that Victor wasn’t the only one in the pack doing Aunt May’s bidding. If she had someone watching over Luke’s shoulder for illicit contact, I wasn’t willing to be responsible for Carly’s death.

  Instead, I sped just fast enough so cops wouldn’t pull me over, taking care to ensure I was the second fastest car on the road at all times. My stomach growled...then it stopped growling. After a while, the nerves in my feet stopped yelling at me every time I pressed harder on the gas pedal. I was too exhausted to feel the pain.

  I was in a daze by the time I hit the Lincoln Tunnel. Honking horns jolted enough adrenaline into me so I managed the crazy merges. I parked the car willy-nilly, knowing it would be towed and not caring. Someone wolf
-whistled as I ran down the sidewalk in my state of half-dress.

  “Wolf whistle. That’s ironic.”

  I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until a woman in a Big Apple t-shirt eased her way to the other edge of the sidewalk. I was scaring the tourists. Delightful. Good thing I’d achieved my destination at last.

  I stabbed my finger at the call button. “Grace,” I croaked. The door unlocked and I stumbled through it, half expecting Aunt May to be lying in wait inside.

  Instead, it was my sister who clattered down the stairs toward me. “They’re gone!” Michael called as he followed. “I tried to smell where they went! But I lost them at the end of the block!”

  I blinked. “What time is it?”

  “You’re not late.” Grace half carried me up the stairs. “Aunt May left right after you spoke.”

  “We would have found a way to save Carly if she’d stayed!”

  Michael’s exclamation-point-filled explanation was as good as any. Or maybe I was just too tired to second-guess when Grace added. “Aunt May said she’d call this afternoon. You can sleep on my bed until then. I’ll wake you up in time.”

  There was a soft mattress behind me. I collapsed onto it, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.

  “Close your eyes,” Grace suggested.

  I acquiesced.

  I DREAMED ABOUT LUKE’S pack. They poured en masse out of the bed of a pickup and converged on the people I’d left behind at Wolf Camp. “Where is she?” Luke demanded.

  “Here!” I answered. But the word wasn’t even audible to myself. I waved my hand in front of my face. Saw nothing. I wasn’t inside Luke the way I had been previously. Instead, I was as immaterial as a ghost.

  Ruth, on the other hand, both heard Luke and answered. “If I knew where Honor was, would I still be hanging around Wolf Camp?”

  Luke ran a hand through his hair, curls catching on his fingers. “Honor wouldn’t just leave.”

  “It’s a tough pill to swallow, being bait for the Hunt,” Ruth countered. “Not to say I told you so, but—I told you so. Better to let her go, choose someone stronger. An alpha has to put the needs of the pack first.”

  Whatever Luke intended to reply, I didn’t hear it. Because I wasn’t there beside them. They weren’t even there, not really. This was only a dream.

  Half asleep, I heard a rustle of movement from the other side of Grace’s apartment. “Should we wake her up?” That was Michael. “She’ll want time to choose weapons!”

  “Honor needs more sleep.” That was Grace. “It’s only been an hour.”

  “Maybe we should break into Justice’s apartment to get her clothes!”

  I almost smiled at Michael’s attempt to help. Could hear an actual smile in my sister’s voice as she answered. “She can use mine.”

  The fact I’d heard my sister and Luke’s brother meant I wasn’t dreaming. And yet, with my eyes closed, I still saw Luke’s brilliant blue eyes boring into mine.

  “I’m in Grace’s apartment,” I tried to tell him. “Aunt May is holding Carly hostage and Victor is in on it. I’m going to swap myself for her shortly. A rescue would be nice.”

  His expression didn’t flicker. Instead, his face faded into darkness. My tensed muscles relaxed as the throbbing in my toes receded.

  There was nothing I could do except sleep.

  Then my twin’s hand was shaking my shoulder. “It’s time, Honor.”

  For one second, I curled closer into her pillow, flaring my nostrils. Waiting for cinnamon to enfold me.

  After all, Luke’s scent had marked every other long-distance sharing. A promise that the dreams included kernels of reality. A tangible reminder of what Luke and I shared.

  The cinnamon had been present when Carly and Michael bickered in my dreams a week ago. That had been a real memory of Luke’s, as I realized when I met his niece in person.

  This dream had to be similar. Or at least I desperately hoped so.

  I sniffed harder. Intent, searching.

  All I smelled was Grace’s conditioner saturating the pillow.

  MY MOUTH TASTED LIKE sewage. Well, not literally, although I had a sinking suspicion I might know what sewage tasted like by the end of the day.

  Because where would Aunt May hide in New York City? Probably somewhere dark and dank and full of rot.

  “Here.” Grace pressed a mug of tea into my hand. Not just any mug—the one Bastion brought me every morning when we lived next door to each other and were supposed to be only distant neighbors. “Drink it.”

  I sank into a chair at her tiny kitchen table, taking in the array of weaponry spread out across the polished-wood surface. There were knives and guns and swords of all shapes and sizes. I skimmed my finger across the sharp edge of one of the latter, smiled when blood welled up in its wake.

  “Where did all this come from?”

  Grace glowed with pride, although her response was chastened by the circumstances. “You can find anything in New York City. I wanted you to have choices.”

  I winced at her final word. After all, Aunt May’s call—which we were still waiting for—would take all other choices away from me. Well, all choices except how literally to abide by Aunt May’s likely requirement that I come alone.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d jumped ahead to that eventuality. Grace and Michael stood in front of me like recruits hoping to be selected for a prestigious assignment. Why hadn’t I noticed how solid my sister was last summer? And Michael—he was growing into the big boots his brothers had left for him. Still—

  “I can’t take you with me. If Aunt May sees anyone except me, she’ll start cutting off pieces of Carly.”

  Michael flinched. Grace didn’t. She just speared me with eyes identical to my own and waited, knowing I wasn’t done yet.

  “But you can follow behind. Put Michael on a leash and use his nose to trace me.”

  The kid stared down at his toes, his mouth sagging. “I wasn’t able to find Aunt May yesterday....”

  “But she didn’t want to be found. Grace, I need your smelliest perfume.”

  Chapter 32

  “It’s not smelly. It’s fragrant,” my sister explained as she squirted two healthy dollops onto the underside of my borrowed boots.

  “Wow, that’s....” However Michael intended to finish his sentence, we’d never know because he dissolved into a sneezing fit.

  In contrast, I found myself leaning in closer. My twin was right. The perfume smelled nice. Musky and sweet and subtly floral.

  I reached for my pelt...or, rather, for the spot around my neck where my pelt usually hung.

  My hand came up empty. Right. That’s why the perfume didn’t choke me up the way it did Michael.

  “Can I open a window?” the kid begged. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Grace’s growl was almost wolf-like as she flung up the sash. “There, better?”

  Apparently not. Michael ended up with his entire head hanging out the window while Grace and I waited for the phone to ring.

  It didn’t. Not at two-ish. Not at three-ish. By four, I gave in and ate some of the food my twin put in front of me, although I couldn’t have told you what it tasted like.

  My lack of attention was probably a good thing given the fact that Justice was the only one in our family capable of boiling pasta without burning the water. Even that thought wasn’t enough to make me smile.

  By five, I stopped distracting myself with inconsequentialities and concluded I’d been played. “She’s not calling.”

  All of the reasons Aunt May might want to cut me off from the pack swirled through my head. I fingered the sword at my hip, readjusted my left boot so the knife in its hidden pocket didn’t rub against my ankle, reconsidered—and, for the fourth time, decided against—adding a gun to my arsenal.

  Somehow, it didn’t feel right to break the rules of Luke’s pack.

  “The alpha would want to know where we are.” Michael’s voice was meek, his eyes trained on the scu
ffed linoleum. Like Carly, he wasn’t used to disagreeing with someone who outranked him. I’d already made my stance on this particular issue clear as a Fifth Avenue display window.

  “Luke would want Carly to be safe, no matter what it takes to make that happen,” I countered. “Once I’m beside her, you can contact anyone and everyone. Until then, we need to play it by the book.”

  I turned to Grace, expecting her to back me up on the issue. But my twin had an entirely different matter in mind. “About the scheidung....”

  I swallowed. I really didn’t think I could do this now. Not fueled by three hours of sleep, one cup of tea, and whatever food I’d forked into my mouth without looking.

  It would have been a lie, though, to say subpar fuel was the only reason for the abrupt queasiness of my stomach.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Grace snapped, sounding so much like our dead mother I almost managed a smile. “I’m apologizing. I was afraid of all this....” Her hand wave took in Michael, the guns on the table, the world of the skinless. “It’s not my world. I tried to be part of it. Then I tried to push you out of it, hoping you’d choose me over everything. But I see now that was a fantasy.”

  “Grace...” I wanted to hug her, but there was an invisible wall between us built out of a decade of diverging life choices.

  “Honor,” she answered. Her smile was real now, if sad. “I’m rescinding the scheidung for the sake of Bastion and Justice. But you and I are different people. I accept that now. It’s like that song, the one you sang relentlessly when we were eleven.”

  I shook my head furiously. I remembered that summer, my obsession with the Mamas and the Papas. I just didn’t want to hear Grace say the words.

  I couldn’t get my mouth open to stop her, though. And our twin sense didn’t relay my distress.

  Or maybe Grace just didn’t care to hear it. Instead, she paraphrased for me.