Alpha Underground Trilogy

by Aimee Easterling

  There were cakes and sandwiches and crudités. Bowls of candy and hot and cold drinks. My stomach growled as I wondered why, exactly, I’d thought it was a good idea to sit all afternoon in a diner while ordering only a couple slices of toast.

  Oh yeah. Because my stomach had informed me someone was carving my insides out with a bread knife.

  Hunter and I had been parted before, but never so abruptly and with such apparent finality. My mate’s absence now felt like a bad case of the stomach flu and I wished I could vomit and get him out of my system.

  Which was about the same reaction I got as I contemplated approaching this woman who had ditched me as a child. Angry, hopeful, terrified. Yep, that about covered it.

  Party? my wolf inquired, her attempt to decipher the scene before our eyes thankfully pulling me out of my naval gazing. But as other cars began curving up the driveway, one disgorged the couple I’d seen leaving Celia’s shop earlier and a metaphorical light bulb went off above my head.

  No, I told my wolf. This wasn’t a party. This was an open house meant to rake in beaucoup cash when the residence sold.

  Less than twenty-four hours after her husband’s funeral, Celia had gone to a lot of effort setting the stage with food and flowers to ensure one of her customers would buy the dream she was selling.

  I guess Harbor’s death didn’t hurt you that much after all.

  The realization was yet another confirmation that Celia lived in a world I didn’t want any part of. Instead, I yearned to steer back onto the highway and drive out of my mother’s life for good. Unfounded anticipation aside, rejection was the most likely scenario if I showed up at Celia’s shindig in holey jeans, begging to be allowed back into her life.

  But where exactly would I go and what exactly would I do if I left? Over the course of a few short weeks, I’d been tossed out of my home pack, had lost the four shifters who’d voluntarily chosen exile alongside me, and as of this morning had been kicked to the curb by my lover as well.

  Why not let Celia put the finishing touches on my banishment by wrinkling up her perfect nose at my unwelcome presence along with everyone else? So instead of driving further out of town, I turned up the gravel lane and parked beside the other shiny, new cars. At least Hunter’s gifted rental car fit right in, even if I didn’t...and would never...make the cut.

  Then I took a deep breath, patted my sheathed throwing knives for encouragement and headed toward the front porch. This wouldn’t be so bad. After all, how dangerous could twenty or thirty humans be?

  Chapter 7

  PRETTY DARN DANGEROUS, at least if I hoped to maintain my secrets and my sanity. Because I’d barely made it as far as the refreshment station when the first human bore down on me.

  “You’re so young to be looking for a house!” the curly-haired matron exclaimed.

  I glanced quickly over both shoulders. Nope, no one else was there—the woman had to be talking to me.

  “Um, well, my ma...my husband is older,” I muttered, tugging at the short sleeves that did nothing to hide full-arm tattoos that the woman was now avidly staring at.

  Staring at, but not judging in the same way the waitress and principal had. “Those are so pretty!” the older woman exclaimed, grabbing my forearm and turning it over so she could trace the ink on the other side.

  The unnamed one-body looked so prim and proper with her permed hair and carefully applied makeup. But I sensed a solid dose of greed in her stance as she pressed her nose against my skin in an attempt to get a better idea of the image being portrayed thereon. Perhaps the senior citizens in this town would soon be enjoying a sudden spate of body ornamentation in the form of custom tattoos. Despite myself, my tight stance loosened and I felt the first honest smile of the day light up my face.

  Okay, so the woman’s behavior definitely didn’t match human sensibilities. My companion had yet to introduce herself and she seemed so fully engrossed in my ink that it was more than obvious she saw me as a mere canvas for my body art. A one-body would probably have been annoyed and jerked her arm out of the uninvited grasp.

  But I’d been packless—save Hunter—for a month now. And my mate’s absence was still roiling through my gut and stabbing at my temples. So innocent touch felt good.

  Still, I didn’t want to talk about myself in the event my companion ever completed her examination and returned to her original train of thought. Instead, I nudged the unexpected conversation in another direction. “How come you’re looking for a new house?” I asked.

  Luckily for my sanity, most people love to talk about themselves and this woman was no exception. Dropping my arm, she looked up at me with eyes that crinkled into a smile even more honest than my own. “Oh, I’m not here to buy,” my companion replied gaily. “I just come for the food and the company. These open houses are the most fun Arborville has offered in ages.”

  As if the words reminded her of why she was really there, the older woman abruptly turned away. Then she proceeded to pile more edible selections onto a sagging paper plate than I thought could possibly fit into her bird-like frame.

  Yep, I’d been soundly perused and now just as soundly dismissed.

  Well, I’d been dismissed by that particular senior citizen, but not necessarily by every inhabitant of this house-for-sale. Look left, my wolf whispered in my ear, and I turned to find yet another human hovering just outside my personal space.

  To my surprise, this second one-body wasn’t actually a stranger at all. Instead, I recognized him as the dog walker who’d passed through the cemetery as I left Hunter’s vehicle the day before. He’d waved then and he seemed just as cordial now, opening his mouth as soon as he caught my attention and pulling me into yet another uninvited conversation.

  “I’m Chuck,” the dog walker began. “I run the Arborville welcome wagon, and we’d love to...”

  But I didn’t hear the rest of Chuck’s sentence. Because at that very moment, Celia stepped into the room and my throat tightened with an emotion I couldn’t readily identify. My vision tunneled down and all sounds receded.

  I have to leave before she can leave me.

  I didn’t manage to obey my instinct, though, because my wolf was just as adamantly opposed to the notion as I was firmly in its favor. Instead, I turned jerkily left and right as my inner beast fought my human brain’s nearly unbearable urge to flee the premises.

  Before either half of my personality could win the struggle, the trigger to my fight-or-flight instincts glanced down at her phone and her scent abruptly altered. At first, Celia had smelled like any other accomplished businesswoman—efficient, alert, and slightly smug. But whatever flashed across the small screen cupped in one hand must have been royally bad news because the human’s smile faded, her aroma spiked with fear, and her face abruptly paled.

  Taking one step backwards away from the crowd, Celia slipped through the doorway she’d so recently emerged from. The one-body wasn’t quite out of sight, though, and I could tell by her posture and aroma how hard she was working on regaining her composure.

  Unbidden, my initial urge to flee was abruptly replaced by an urge to help. It was the curse of a werewolf—if we accepted someone as a pack mate, however tenuously, we protected them with our lives.

  Well, most of us did anyway.

  Of course, I was half human and could have chosen to turn off my protective instincts the same way I squashed my inner wolf when Hunter uncorked his root-beer dominance. But I didn’t want to lose the best part of myself. So I forced my feet away from the exit and instead took a step toward where my mother hid in the shadows.

  As I pushed between chatting one-bodies, I was glad to see that lack of werewolf sensibilities had prevented the room’s other inhabitants from noticing either Celia’s presence or her anxiety. But before I could wriggle more than halfway through the crowd, the real-estate agent strode more fully into view. This time, she raised her voice loudly enough so even the elderly woman gorging at the buffet could hear.

&n
bsp; “I’m sure this is just some sort of childish joke,” my mother said, fear entirely absent from her demeanor—although not from her scent—as she squared padded shoulders and looked directly into her audience’s eyes. The crowd stilled, chastened by their hostess’s unsmiling face.

  “But there’s been a bomb threat,” Celia continued, striking just the right note of command to keep terror from erupting while also ensuring she would be instantly obeyed. Good trick for a one-body.

  “Please walk directly out the back door and away from the house as quickly as possible. The police are on their way.”

  OF COURSE, I HEADED directly toward the front door rather than the back. After all, if Celia was trying to push her customers in the other direction, that meant the bomb—if there was one—must lie outside the hallway I’d so recently walked down.

  Although what exactly I planned to do once I found the offending object was a matter I hadn’t entirely figured out. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d ever enrolled in explosives training.

  Wolf? I called and was heartened when the animal rose up to join me behind our human eyes. Do you think you’d be able to smell a bomb?

  Computers, electricity, smoke?

  My lupine half wasn’t entirely cogent at the best of times, and she tended to lose her human words the more upset she became. The notion of our mother perishing before we had a chance to even speak with her again meant that complete sentences were vastly beyond the animal’s grasp at the moment.

  Still, the beast’s answer was enough for me. I was adept at interpreting wolf speak and knew that the current offering equated to a relatively solid “maybe.”

  “Okay,” I whispered beneath my breath as I stepped out onto the porch. As if in response, a breeze lifted the damp hair off my sweaty nape and a flash of motion caught my eye.

  Down at the bottom of the driveway, a large delivery truck was pulling out onto the highway. Behind it, a black vehicle that had been parked in the same spot where I’d so recently hesitated rolled onto the blacktop in pursuit.

  A black vehicle that looked very much like the SUV that had hugged my tail during my afternoon drive to Arborville. Only this time the windows were rolled down. Was that Robert behind the wheel of the Escalade?

  Now wasn’t the time to figure out who had left the bomb, though. Now was the time to dismantle it. Because there was a cardboard box sitting innocently upon the stoop of the house-for-sale. The container was taped shut and seemed to have come straight from an online retailer.

  But looks could be deceiving.

  Here’s hoping the box doesn’t blow up while I’m sniffing at it, I thought, a cartoon-like image entering my mind unbidden. While the vision might have been amusing at any other time, I didn’t particularly want to be blown to shreds like comic-strip-Fen was behind my eyes. So my heart thundered in my chest as I crouched down to press my face gently against the container’s seams.

  Nothing from my nostrils and nothing from my wolf. Which begged the question—was the absence of input due to the use of subpar human senses or to the animal’s lack of familiarity with bombs?

  There were two sure ways to find out. Safest would be to shift and sniff again. But there were a few dozen scared one-bodies milling about on the other side of the house. Any one of them could come around the corner and catch me in the act.

  Plus, the explosives—if there were any—might be strong enough to reach Celia even as she managed the crowd in the back yard. Neither my wolf nor I was willing to risk piddling around and causing our mother to be harmed even though we disagreed on what we wanted to say to her in the future.

  When it came right down to it, there simply wasn’t sufficient time to gather evidence the safe way. So I chose the fast way instead.

  Pulling the knife out of my right boot sheathe, I drew the sharp blade through the tape sealing the box closed. It cut smoothly at first...then caught on something tough.

  My hand jerked back and I held my breath waiting for a sound, a scent, anything telling me to fling the box aside and run in the opposite direction at top speed. But the box continued to mimic the inert object it had initially appeared. So I took another deep breath and moved on to plan B.

  This time, I slowly, gently felt beneath the loosened flap with my fingertips. My own ragged breathing should have been loud in my ears. But instead all sounds seemed distant as I focused every iota of attention I possessed into urging more sensitivity into the pads of my fingers.

  Was that a wire that might be triggered by sudden movement or just a thread leftover from the packing tape? I rubbed one calloused thumb across the ridge, wishing for the first time that I wasn’t a werewolf. Because my hands and feet were calloused from spending long hours running four-legged across the earth, so they weren’t as able as I would have liked to pick up on clues within the closed box.

  Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure. Holding the offending article out at arm’s length—as if that would make any difference when the thing exploded—I ripped open a single flap.

  Which is how I came to be staring down at a Darth Vader bobblehead doll when the police roared up the driveway, sirens blaring. So much for keeping a low profile.

  Chapter 8

  “HANDS IN THE AIR!”

  “Face on the ground!”

  I didn’t think this pair of small-town cops had much experience with dicey situations because I was pretty sure their barked instructions were mutually exclusive. Still, I did my best to obey, not wanting to give either man an excuse to use the guns they were waving about with such disturbingly wild abandon.

  Within seconds, my arms were wrenched behind my back and handcuffs pinched my skin as the restraints ratcheted shut. I winced as the mostly healed gunshot wound on my left arm ached at the mistreatment.

  Still, I waited until I was fully neutralized before speaking. No need to provoke the one-bodies.

  “I wasn’t hurting anybody,” I began, lifting myself up onto my knees so I could look directly into the men’s faces. “I was trying to disable the bomb. Well, it didn’t turn out to be a bomb but...”

  Unfortunately, neither was interested in what I had to say. The older cop’s eyes scanned a yard that I could have told him was entirely devoid of human life while the younger cop pushed me back down to the ground with one booted foot between my shoulder blades. Now my arms and wrists weren’t the only parts of my body aching like crazy.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” the latter began before I tuned out his recitation of my Miranda rights. Rustling in the background suggested his partner was repeating my own leery perusal of the package, so I waited as patiently as I could until the older cop grunted out: “Harmless.”

  “Like I said,” I repeated, speaking into the floorboards. “It’s not a bomb and I have nothing to do with it.”

  “Nothing to do with it?” I flew from earth to sky in a matter of moments as the younger officer picked me up by the scruff of my neck and set me on my feet. “So you just decided to ride to the rescue like a knight in shining armor?”

  Well, when he put it like that, my actions did sound pretty suspicious. Not to mention stupid.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but the older cop was already shaking a piece of paper in front of my nose. “Why did you send this?” he demanded.

  By human standards, the officer was well inside my personal-space bubble, the heat from his breath brushing across my cheeks as he glared into my eyes. Of course, shifters were more keen on close confines...with people we liked. I had to force myself not to curl my lips into a lupine snarl and order the one-body to back off.

  Still, I could understand the policeman’s concern because I knew exactly which words graced that packing slip. I’d pored over the note half a dozen times already in an effort to figure out the purpose of the bomb threat, and that lone sentence was now ominously etched across the insides of my eyeballs.

  You’re not welcome here.

  The gift note had been autogenerated
in some distant warehouse, leaving no telling scents or handwriting to go on. But the box was addressed to my mother and the threat had been called in to her phone.

  The upshot was clear—someone was out to do Celia harm. But why? My mother seemed like the perfect fit for this small human community. Just looking at her, I could tell she mowed her lawn to the requisite height at the requisite times, that she bought food she didn’t want from school bake sales, that she never exceeded the designated speed limit on Main Street.

  Who could possibly want her gone?

  “Well?” the younger cop demanded, shaking me until my teeth rattled as he attempted to regain my attention.

  “I tried to tell you I don’t have anything to do with....”

  “Oh, so it’s just a coincidence that you spent all morning staking out the victim’s place of business?” the older officer interrupted. I flinched, and not because of being manhandled either. Nope, I was disappointed to find that the one-bodies weren’t as inept as I’d thought, having already pegged me as the stranger in town with an unhealthy interest in one of their own.

  “I was just hanging out,” I lied, then moved on to tell at least part of the truth. “I’m in town visiting family and didn’t want to get in anyone’s hair during business hours.”

  The older policeman spread his lips into what looked like a smile...but felt like a wolf playing nice moments before tearing out his opponent’s throat. “Who exactly is your family? We’ll give them a call and they can come pick you up.”

  My nostrils flared as I imagined meeting Celia for the first time while being marched home hand-cuffed like a truant teenager. I didn’t have high hopes for our eventual reunion, but that wasn’t at all the way I’d pictured the event. So even though I knew the evasion would highlight my supposed guilt, I replied with: “I’d rather not say.”

  The law-enforcement officers exchanged telling glances, then the younger cop took over with a not-really-question. “And it’s a coincidence that you’re the one we find when Celia calls in a bomb threat?” The officer still clenched my arms in a painfully tight grip, and now he turned that implied threat into actual violence as he shoved me aggressively into the porch-support post as punctuation to his words.