Page 15 of Unexpected Alpha's Claim

“They cantry,” She argued, her eyes glowing a lighter shade of red. “The question is, though, will you let them?”

“Give me some credit here, will you?” I groaned, anger rising at the challenge in her words. “Of course,I’d fight for her.”

“Wrong answer,” Helena scoffed with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Until you find the right one, I’m not telling you about the danger you’re all in. Hold hands with me again, pups. It’s time I took you back to where I found you.”

“Helena…”

“This conversation is over,” she interjected. “Do as I say.”

Wonderful…

That woman had to love speaking in riddles. It was the only explanation I could think of for her behavior. One minute, she was revealing her past with my grandfather. She had no issue with narrating her sad story to him. Then in the next instant, she appeared to want me to find an answer to a riddle and my failure triggered her anger. Second chance? Not with her. She was determined to make me wrack my brain to come up with the correct answer, even if that meant hiding the danger my brothers and I were in…

I growled as I took her hand, not knowing the right answer, nor thinking it was a good idea to try and take her on and beat it out of her.

10

MONICA

Move in early. Give me two weeks before I start work. Time to get acclimated, and get to know the locals. See what life is like on the mountain.

While in New York, those thoughts made perfect sense. And moving in sooner would help me in more ways than one. I wouldn't have thought that I would take everything I owned to my new home one day and be ready to go to work the next morning.

Alas, I hadn’t accounted for an “X” factor. The one factor that in my experience always tends to unravel somebody’s life, meeting someone new. I wasn’t looking, wasn’t prepared, and was sure as hell not ready for the “X” that came into my life. I mean if that had gone well, I would have been loving my new home. Raul was certainly a handsome, caring man. The kind of man I could even see myself having started a relationship with.

But man? Was that accurate? To an extent, yes. On the outside, he was a man. He appeared to be an excellent specimen of a male human being. Nobody could suspect the truth under that skin. Nobody could envision something so incredibly, unrealistically,out of the ordinary. And that out of the ordinary was the problem. His other, what, nature? Side? Part? Whatever you’d call it, that’s the part that spoiled a potential relationship with him. Even if I got myself past it, he had been crystal-clear. Dating him was the equivalent of a death sentence.

Talk about doomed from the start.

Nearing the end of my second week here in Shandaken, I came to a decision. I would leave that serene place for a day or two. There was nothing for me here except being alone. In the city, I could see my friends and try to figure a way out of this mess. Despite Raul’s warnings, I couldn’t forget him. It had been three days since our kisses in the wilderness and the memory of them wouldn’t stop replaying in my mind. No matter the hour, I’d catch myself drifting back and returning to that fateful moment when he revealed his true nature to me. And every single time I would feel the same warmth around my body. The same passion on my lips, which had left me aching for his touch.

I arrived back in the city in the late afternoon, I was making my way towards the old apartment building on 116thStreet. Erica could afford something much better than the second-story apartment. She was doing well for herself as a singer atMurray’s Vintage Vibes.Her popularity was growing fast, and she was drawing significant crowds. Despite that though, she wouldn’t consider leaving her current place. Mostly I think being just two hundred yards from work offered a certain amount of convenience that she couldn’t find anywhere else.

She buzzed me in, and I walked up the stairs like someone had dumped a hundred-pound bag of cement onto my shoulders. Indecision, mixed with disappointment had been toying with my heart. And I had no doubts that soon enough one more feelingwas going to come over me. Discomfort. Erica wasn’t good at hiding her true feelings. I doubted that she’d ever tried. I knew what I was in for with her. Loads of sarcasm, along with a little bit of ridicule. Still, with Stacy working late, she was my last option. And despite her flaws, she was good at giving advice, which was just what I needed.

“Welcome back, hun!” She answered her door with a smile. “Whoa…” Her smile vanished as fast as it had come. “Who died?”

“Nobody,” I responded, walking in. “Yet. How are you, Erica? I never asked you about that big date you ditched me and Stacy for.”

“Ah, it’s just, well, because it blew,” she stated, pushing the door shut. “The guy was a perfect case of ‘beauty has no brains.’ We went out to dinner. He wouldn’t say much, and whenever he did, it was usually about his wardrobe. Our bill was sixty-two dollars. It took him about thirty seconds to calculate the change from a hundred-dollar bill.”

I chuckled, reaching her couch and flopping heavily down onto it. “Some people need more.”

“They should stay away from me,” Erica added. “Okay, you are upset, girl. What’s the matter? Did something happen in that quiet little town of yours?”

“Sit down, Erica,” I urged, the idea of explaining things to her killing any notion of amusement. “You’re going to want to hear this.”

My friend obliged me, and I began my somewhat long narrative. I felt her confusion, more than once. No surprises there. She was a smart woman, and my story was nothing like she hadever heard before. It wasn’t every day she heard about enormous wolves, shapeshifters, and their rules. Her most precious reaction came at the news of the assault on Jack. Erica had never liked him, finding him too cocky and arrogant. To her, he was a very far cry from ideal. He was barely an average guy who got lucky when he happened to marry someone way out of his league. At the end of my narrative, she tore her gaze away. Instead of the expected sarcasm and disbelief, she went over to her balcony door, pulled it open, and went outside.

“That’s it?” I wondered, crossing her living room. “You don’t have anything to say about what I just told you?”

“I have alotto say about it,” she disagreed as I joined her outside. “To be honest, I was going to ask if you’d had any of that herbal tea you made from the ones we collected with Stacy. Who knows? Maybe there was some hallucinate in those. But, seeing as you’re so upset, I decided to keep it to myself.”

“I ran out of herbs yesterday morning,” I informed her, a touch of annoyance in my tone. “It’s all real, Erica. I saw it with my own two eyes. He transformed right in front of me.”

“Into a wolf…” She said nodding to accent each word while her eyes went wider and wider until I swear her eyebrows were about to merge into her hairline. “And you want me to believe that?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed, my own eyes widening. Frustration was building like one of those ancient furnaces that would blow if the steam release locked up. “Look, if you don’t believe me, fine. But then I might as well leave. And that’s too bad because I need your advice about him. I guess I should talk to Stacy instead.”

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