Hunted by the Feral Alpha

by Lillian Sable

  Chase was in the living room at a makeshift computer terminal, his face aglow in the blue light from the screen. He didn’t bother to look up as they passed, but Hunt knew he was very aware of them both. Savage sat on the threadbare couch cleaning a rifle which was always what he did when he was on edge about something.

  Savage opened his mouth to say something, but Hunt cut him off with a glare that clearly said now wasn’t the time. He scowled in response, but then shrugged like it didn’t matter to him one way or another.

  Hunt guided Sophia toward the back of the house and down the stairs to the basement. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded. The basement was actually the most comfortable part of the house because the AC hadn’t been turned on. He’d set up a little workspace for himself and a bed with clean sheets.

  “You should change your clothes,” he said to her as she walked mechanically forward and sat on the edge of the bed without looking at him. “They’re covered in blood.”

  She pulled the stained sweatshirt over her head and tossed it across the room. Then she undid her jeans, pushed them down her legs without rising from the bed and kicked them away.

  “Do you want to shower?”

  It was obvious she wanted to speak, maybe scream at him or cry, but there were too many conflicting emotions swirling through her to settle on just one. He approached her slowly with a wide frown on his face. She still didn’t say a word.

  Hunt knelt on the floor in front of her and looked up into her lowered face. He wanted to comfort her, but he also wanted to force her to reveal to him what she was thinking by any means necessary. The conflicting desires warred within him.

  “If you don’t talk to me…” he started, placing a hand on each of her knees and gently pushing until her legs were forced to spread. He didn’t have an agenda; he was just operating off of instinct. “I’m going to have to do something drastic.”

  The flimsy cotton underwear that she wore was the only thing separating him from paradise.

  He watched the little jump in her throat with too much interest as she swallowed. “Are you going to handcuff me again?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  She grabbed at his hands. He assumed she was going to try to shove him away, but her hands wrapped around his wrists and held on tight, like she held onto a life preserver. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “We’re going to make this okay for you, baby. If you don’t believe anything else, you have to believe that I’m on your side.” He took a deep breath because the truth of it caught in his chest and froze his lungs. “I’ve given up everything to keep you safe.”

  Sophia lurched forward. He didn’t understand it, even once he realized what was happening. The logical part of his brain fled the scene in the very moment that her lips touched his.

  She kissed him like she was drowning underwater and he was her only source of oxygen. He wanted to question her, insist that she tell him what was going through her head, but a bigger part of him wanted to experience her before something else forced them apart.

  He fought to be patient with her.

  But Sophia didn’t seem to want patience. She broke the kiss long enough to pull her shirt over her head and toss it away. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and yanked his head back down toward hers.

  Hunt pulled back so there was just enough room between them to speak. “You don’t have to do this, Sophia.”

  “I need to stop thinking. It’s killing me.” Her eyes were large and so dark that he was drowning in them. “Please, help me.”

  “Okay.” With a growl, he hooked his arms under her legs so he could shove her up farther onto the bed. Having her beneath him, making soft sounds and little gasps, was like coming home after a hundred years of wandering. He crawled up her body until all of his weight was supported by the elbows he had planted on either side of her head. She wanted to forget about everything that had happened. He wanted her to forget about everything but him.

  Hunt recaptured her mouth as she melted beneath him. And he feasted on her, taking everything that she had to offer and only pressing harder when she hesitated or seemed about to pull away. He had never been so consumed by another person in his life and the fire between them threatened to burn them both alive.

  Her hands roved up and down his body. She pulled at his shirt and he broke their kiss just long enough to tear it over his head and toss it aside. And then his mouth returned to hers in the vicious war that had no true victor.

  Eventually, the frantic pace slowed to something more languid as her frenzy subsided. He felt the transformation in her and responded to it in kind, softening their kiss and capturing her wrists in his hands so he could pull her arms over her head.

  He liked the control and he knew she liked to give it to him.

  She was saying something, but it was practically incoherent. When he listened carefully, he could just make out that she was repeating one word over and over again: please, please, please…

  His free hand went to the zipper of his jeans as he freed the hardened flesh that had been pressed uncomfortably against the stiff fabric. He hooked one of her legs up on his shoulder and shoved the tiny strip of her panties aside, then he was inside of her in one long thrust.

  The sounds that Sophia made beneath him were purely animalistic, a mix of stuttered words and groans as he pounded into her. She had gone to another place, a place that he had sent her, and he couldn’t wait to join her there.

  They didn’t speak as their bodies frantically moved together in a chaotic rhythm that was somehow perfectly matched. She whined when he pulled out almost all the way and then let out a screaming whine when he shoved back into her as hard as he thought she could take.

  His mouth moved over every inch of skin that he could reach, pressing kisses down the line of her jaw and biting at the skin of her neck, not quite hard enough to leave a mark. When he let go of her hands to brace himself on the bed, she couldn’t decide where she wanted to touch him most. Her palms skimmed his back and then she dug in with her nails, drawing a low sound from him as she scratched hard enough to break the skin.

  Hunt wanted her to mark him. He wanted to carry a reminder of her touch everywhere he went, and the more painful the better.

  Sophia raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck, squeezing hard enough that it made it difficult for him to breathe.

  “Don’t stop,” she said on a whispered sigh. “I’m so close.”

  Her eyes shone in the light with unshed tears. He wondered if she even knew what, or who, it was that she cried for.

  But then she became frenzied, biting his ear and lapping at the sensitive skin in the bend of his neck like she had to taste every part of him that her mouth could reach. He recognized this for the exorcism it was as she cast her demons off in the only way available to her.

  Her arms squeezed tight around his neck when she came. He was right behind her, hips aggressively thrusting as he drove them both over the edge.

  A calm settled over them as she fell back on the bed, but it was a deceptive. Her eyes were level with his when she finally spoke, voice soft but strong.

  “I have to go see my father.”

  “Hell no.”

  She glanced away, obviously hoping that he wouldn’t see the tears gathering in her eyes. “I won’t be able to survive unless I know the truth.”

  “You can talk to him on the phone. I’ll have Savage set you up with a secure line.”

  “It has to be in person. I have to see his face to know if he’s telling me the truth or not.”

  Hunt couldn’t help the sarcastic tone of his voice. “He lied to you for years and you never picked up on it.”

  “I’m not the same girl anymore.”

  The look on her face made it clear that she needed this if she was ever going to feel whole again. And he had to give it to her, even if it got both of them killed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hunt brought the other two with th
em when they went to her father’s townhouse, which probably meant he assumed something would go down.

  Sophia didn’t argue with him about it because she was only focused on confronting her father and forcing him to tell her the truth.

  It was past midnight, but she knew her father was still awake. He’d always been a night owl and would stay up to have a drink and read the Wall Street Journal for hours after she and Magda had already gone to bed.

  Sophia prayed that it would go smoothly. Even with all that had happened, she wouldn’t be able to bear it if Hunt hurt or killed her father, even in self-defense. If one of them forced a confrontation, she honestly didn’t know whose side she would choose.

  Which was a very scary realization.

  Never in a million years would she have thought that she’d fall in love with the man who had done such awful things to her, but that was precisely what had happened. That is, if you could hate and love someone at the very same time.

  Hunt had come back for her. That thought kept moving around and around in her brain, like water circling the drain but never going down. He hadn’t abandoned her. And their relationship, if one could even call it that, was the truest thing that she’d ever experienced in her life.

  Twisted, but true.

  Savage and Chase scaled the side of the townhouse with rope, entering through her bedroom window because they knew it would be empty. That must have been how they got to her before, though she’d never asked how they got out again after drugging her. Maybe Hunt had slung her over his shoulder and carried her down. In which case, she was glad that she’d been unconscious because she probably would have thrown up on him otherwise. Heights had never been her thing.

  At the same time that others crept inside, Hunt knelt over the electrical box on the side of the house and disabled the security system. He did it so quickly that she marveled at the ease with which he was able to defeat the expensive system.

  A few minutes passed and then Chase silently appeared at the front door that he’d unlocked from the inside to let them in.

  “The old man is upstairs, the second room on the right,” he murmured as they silently slipped past him.

  Savage stopped by the stairs. Even in the low light, she could tell that his face was angry. She wasn’t sure if he had any other expressions. She wondered if he was going to try to kill her father. He always seemed barely in control of himself and now he was only a few feet away from the man that he seemed to hate most in the world.

  Maybe that was why he hated her so much. She was just an extension of her father.

  She knew it was a huge that Hunt was letting his happen. Huge enough that her mind wasn’t capable of completely comprehending it, but her heart beat faster at the thought of him doing something for her.

  But maybe that was just the Stockholm syndrome talking. Wasn’t part of being brainwashed the fact that you didn’t know you’d been brainwashed?

  They let her go first and the wood creaked beneath her feet as she climbed the stairs. She listened closely for any noise from the second floor, but the whole house remained eerily silent.

  When she pushed open the door to his study, her father was sitting in his favorite armchair with his back to the far window. A bedside table lamp only cast him in enough of a glow to create an ominous contrast of light and shadow.

  And a double-barreled shotgun rested on his lap, pointed directly at where she was standing in the doorway.

  “Dad?” She made the word a question, despite the quaver in my voice.

  “Get out of the way, Sophie. I’ll take care of this once and for all.”

  Hunt vibrated with a strange energy behind her, as if the sight of her father had caused a fundamental change in him. And when she turned to encourage him to relax, what she saw wasn’t anything close to the man she recognized.

  He bared suddenly sharp teeth that glistened with saliva. The glow that she thought she’d imagined before raged underneath his skin and burned just on the other side of his flesh, flesh that was now patterned and thick like the armored skin of a rhinoceros. Black eyes had narrowed with murderous intent on her father, as if he no longer even saw her standing between them.

  When he spoke, his voice was guttural and deep like the roar of a lion. “This is what your father made me. A beast. Get out of my way before you get hurt.”

  If she moved out of the way, her father would open fire on the monster Hunt had become.

  And for reasons that she didn’t understand, Sophia wasn’t afraid. Regardless of what had been done to him, there was still a man underneath it all. This had been inside of him the entire time and he had kept it hidden, maintained control of his dark urges, solely to protect her.

  Her hand reached up to cup his cheek and his skin was hot enough to burn her. She ignored the pain and spoke in a voice soft enough to soothe a rampaging beast. “Hunt, come back to me.”

  And it surprised them both when the rage in his eyes slowly faded, irises receding to a more natural brown. The beast responded to her as it always had, sating itself with her touch. And after a moment, Hunt had calmed enough to face the senator with some semblance of control.

  Reynolds watched it all without the slightest hint of surprise, only confirming the truth of everything Hunt had ever said about him.

  She glanced down the hall to the closed door of the master bedroom. “Where is Magda?”

  “I sent her to go visit her mother in California. She doesn’t need to know about any of this.”

  Sophia took a small step forward, not completely convinced that her own father wasn’t about to shoot her. “Dad, you need to put down the gun.”

  He waved the muzzle of the shotgun in the air, his expression more crazed than she’d ever seen it. “Did they manage to turn you against me?”

  “I’m not against you. I just want to know the truth.” Her voice stayed calm and soft, like she was talking a nervous jumper off the ledge of a building. “After everything I’ve been through, I think I deserve that much.”

  “And those men behind you have their weapons down,” her father snarled. “Let me see who you let sneak into my house.”

  To her surprise, Hunt stepped out from behind her and set his gun on the floor. Her father tracked Hunt’s movements with the shotgun but his finger wasn’t on the trigger.

  “Do you remember me, Senator Reynolds?” Hunt’s voice was low and hard. Even without the weapon, danger practically radiated off of him.

  “Should I?” her father asked, and she couldn’t read any deceit in his voice.

  “I’m one of the soldiers that you let be tortured at Project Alpha. I bet you remember that.”

  Her father sighed as the expression on his face turned resigned. But the barrel of the gun didn’t waver from where it pointed directly at Hunt’s chest. “I’ve been waiting for the day that mess would finally catch up with me.”

  “So it’s true,” she whispered. Her fragile hold on reality threatened to break completely. She struggled to stay lucid as darkness encroached on the edges of her vision. “You really are a monster.”

  “I don’t know what they told you, but I guarantee it wasn’t the whole story.” Her father’s voice had turned almost pleading. “There is so much that you just don’t understand.”

  Hunt responded before she could. “I understand that you got the bulk of your campaign contributions from people who traffic Americans and conduct illegal experiments. I understand that you let an entire squad of good men go down to keep your secrets.”

  Her father almost looked stricken. “I got involved with some bad people. I didn’t know how bad until it was too late.”

  “And that’s an excuse?” Hunt demanded, his voice hard.

  “You have no idea how deep all of this goes,” her father insisted. “I was never supposed to keep any evidence tying us back to Mali. You have no idea who will be coming after me now.”

  “Are these the same people who sent those mercenaries after us?” Her father’s nod
just seemed to confuse Sophia more. “They got the information that they wanted. Why would they keep coming after us?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Her father stood but he angled the weapon toward the floor. “I only stayed here this long in case you came back. We have to get out of here. I promise I will tell you as much as I can, but it isn’t safe here.”

  He wasn’t planning on shooting them. Hunt wasn’t the person that he was afraid of. The realization dawned on her just before all hell broke loose.

  Without warning, the sound of multiple gunshots exploded through the night air. Sophia was shoved to the ground by Hunt before she could put together that they were being shot at. Glass exploded from the window on the far side of the room as it shattered from the bullet’s impact. She heard a gurgling sound, just barely loud enough for her to make it out over the crash of gunfire.

  Her father was lying several feet away. He was on his side and facing away. His form was so still that she could almost convince herself he was sleeping if not for the pool of blood growing slowly larger beneath his body.

  “Daddy!”

  Sophia crawled toward him and rolled her father onto his back. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and his eyes were unfocused as he stared up at the ceiling.

  “You have to run,” he gasped, voice wet with blood and thick from trapped air. “Run before they come back.”

  “I’m not leaving you here.” But she could already tell by the ashen color of his skin and the amount of blood soaking through her jeans that his wounds were fatal.

  Her father closed his eyes and took a rattling breath. The sound was like wind rustling through bare trees and it wasn’t a noise that any human should ever make.

  “I’m so sorry—”

  And then Sophia watched her father take his last breath.

  Cold shock settled over her like a wet blanket. She struggled to stay in the moment instead of passing out. It was more disbelief than sadness pervading her mind as the reality of it descended over her. She was frozen in place and it felt like hours went by as the world around her receded into darkness, but only a few seconds had passed.