Page 60 of His Prodigal Alpha

He’s going to die.

Chapter Fifteen – Damon

There weren’t enough words to describe the tangle of emotions coursing through me as I scratched and fought the strange shifters.

They had my baby.

Above all else, the terror and anger kept my adrenaline pumping in my veins. I was going to claw and maim and destroy every single one of these assholes.

Underneath that, though, was a heaping serving of parental guilt. I’d gone out for a run —gone out to enjoy myself— and my helpless newborn had been abducted while I ran and frolicked. What kind of selfish father was I?

The yowl of a fellow mountain lion caught my attention, and if I’d been in human form, my breath would have caught in my throat.

Rex.

He was beautiful. Much larger than me, with sleek tan-colored fur and strong, muscular limbs. He radiated alpha power, much like Beck did in wolf form. But instead offighting viciously, as I was certain he had been if the bloodied stains around his muzzle and claws suggested, he was frozen in place, his dark eyes wide with a very human expression of horror.

The epicbangthat followed his yowl made my ears ring and I flinched against the sound, then understood exactly what had caught Rex’s attention so terribly.

Eric’s reflexes were sharper than I would have imagined a creature of his size’s would be. He hunched in on himself and dropped to the ground, letting out a grunt as the giant-ass bullet —was it a rocket?— caught his folded wing on its way over him. In the distance, it crashed to the ground in the open field with an explosive effect.

Rex yowled again and sprang forward off his strong hind legs, tackling one of the humans with the bazookas.

At least, I thought they were bazookas. Rocket launchers, maybe? I’d never really been much of an expert when it came to weapons. Anyway, technicalities didn’t matter. What did matter were the guns now being aimed in Rex’s direction.

With Eric down, and the other two bazookas being readied for action, I acted on instinct. Using feline wiles, I raced between the fighting clumps of wolves and bears, weaving past snapping jaws and lashing claws. I found the gap Rex had taken advantage of and launched into the fray, biting and screeching and trying to take out the threat to my mate.

Even if we hadn’t bonded, that’s what Rex was to me. He was my mate, and he was in danger. I needed him whole…and then we needed to rescue our cub.

I could only imagine what Rex was feeling. If I felt guilty for not being there, he must have been tearing himself apart inside. The first thing I resolved to do once we were humanagain was to assure him that it wasn’t his fault. The second would be to demand our pack rethink its security. We’d gotten complacent, even knowing that Morstein was out to get us, and this was the price we were paying.

In defending Rex, my ears picked up the sound of Cam’s cries and something inside me snapped.

I’d heard stories of human parents accomplishing extraordinary feats when their kids were in danger. Lifting cars, fighting off far stronger attackers, walking through flames; that kind of thing. The odd mixture of adrenaline and calm which overtook my body and mind had to be similar to what they had felt. It was as though I saw everything in slow motion and in even sharper focus than before, and I knew I was going to get my son back.

Gnashing my teeth against anything and everything in my way, I fought harder and with more purpose than I knew I was capable of. At my side, Rex did the same, and I knew when the tides had changed in our favor, because Ollie and Beck joined us in the fight to corner the humans holding our kids.

I was dimly aware of Brandt’s ginormous dragon muzzle snapping up the guys who had been trying to get their bazookas up and aimed his way. I couldn’t help but think that they deserved the painful, terrifying ending. When I was human, I might be more concerned by my complete lack of empathy, but in my puma form, I was just pleased that the threat was taken care of.

The other gunmen were incapacitated by our pack’s shifters. In the end, all I could focus on were those three shifters in human form. They wore scent blockers, which had a mildly chemical smell up close. But through that, I was able to still scent their fear as we approached, baring our teeth andgrowling.

At my side, Rex shifted back to human, his skin filthy and his hair matted. He was scratched up and visibly bruising already, but he stalked over to the now cowering men, practically radiating his alpha power.

That was new.

Sure, since he had come to Shifters Sanctuary, Rex had scented like an alpha: a vaguely electric scent that tingled in my sinuses and made me instinctively want to submit to him. But he hadn’t radiated the same dominating vibes as Beck did. Not until now.

“Give me my son,” he demanded of the man cradling our screaming, tiny newborn. The words sent a shudder through me, and I realized with a start that he was channeling the same kind of alpha compulsion that Beck was able to wield.

If I’d thought Rex being naked might lessen the impact of the growled command, I would have been wrong. The guy holding our baby handed him over, though I could see he was trying to fight the instinct to do so. As soon as Cam was cradled against Rex’s chest, relief swept through me.

But it wasn’t over yet. I hadn’t noticed Beck shifting a few paces away, but he crowded in and added his own command in his gravelly, angry voice for his children to be returned, and another wave of that intense power rolled over us.

The two men holding Rory and Duke hesitated, but when Rex and Beck barked, “Now!” in unison, it was as though the men became robots, unable to fight the commands at all.

Fascinating.

I wasn’t as interested in the science-y history stuff like Ollie, Eric, and Brandt were, but even I was curious to see the alpha powers at work. It had to be more than just biology. Therewas something magical here, too.

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