Page 3 of Wolf Lost

So when it decided something was important, like this, he froze and listened. Quick footfalls were headed toward him. Not heavy enough to be someone big or well armed, but definitely someone in a hurry. Someone breathing hard like they’d been sprinting or gone a long distance. The footsteps slowed minutely as they came up to the door, so it wasn’t a surprise when the door popped open and a figure slipped inside.

The surprise was the man who’d come in. It was May, sure, but a pair of holey jeans and a ribbed white tank weren’t the right clothes for the mountains of Colorado. It was maybe fifty degrees outside. The guy was both sweating with exertion and shivering from the cold.

The scent of the man hit him, and beneath the sweat of his run and the fact that he hadn’t bathed in a day or two, there was something else. Something familiar, but unfamiliar. Something sweet and warm and interesting to his instincts like nothing else had ever been.

Dez hadn’t been a werewolf long enough to know exactly what the scent indicated, but he knew two things for sure: first, the other man was also a wolf, and second, underneath the stink of adrenaline and fear, he smelled like perfection.

He had to curb the urge to stick his nose in the air and breathe it in. Asher hadn’t said so, but it felt like it would be rude—sort of like staring at someone attractive.

When the man turned around, Dez realized he was that too. Or maybe attractive was too tepid a word. He was perhaps in his midtwenties and had longish honey-colored hair that was bleached pale at the tips by the sun, chocolate brown eyes, and a wide, expressive mouth. His lips twitched up briefly as though his instinct was to smile, before he remembered that he was terrified and running.

He looked around the room, drinking everything in as he took a few hesitant steps. Finally, his eyes locked on Dez, but only for a fraction of a second.

Once he registered Dez’s presence he turned his face away, baring the entire side of his neck and staring at the floor. His heart rate picked up, and Dez worried he was going to collapse.

Asher had covered this in his lessons right away. As an alpha, other wolves were naturally inclined to defer to Dez. Depending on how they had been raised, it might be a ceremonial tip of the chin, or it might be abject terror. Apparently being an alpha was like being a rich guy: some people were impressed, and some people weren’t.

Dez was starting to get used to the way people reacted to money, so he supposed the alpha thing couldn’t be too hard.

He hadn’t so much as gotten a chance to open his mouth when the door jerked open again. The guy looked at Dez, then at the door, and made a silent decision, taking a few big, jerky steps that led him within a yard of Dez. Close enough to get a better scent. Close enough to reach out and touch him, if Dez were so inclined.

The men who trooped in were a distraction from that train of thought, thankfully. They were also wolves, but they made his hackles raise in a way the other man hadn’t. They didn’t smell warm or intriguing; they smelled like interlopers in his territory.

An involuntary growl rose in his throat, and before he had time to be surprised at himself, both of the new men froze. They glanced nervously between the younger man and Dez for a moment before doing the same dramatic neck-baring.

“Alpha, we didn’t mean to intrude,” one of them stammered out.

The other man looked just as nervous, but also annoyed. “We’re only here to retrieve our alpha’s omega, and we’ll remove ourselves from your territory.”

Dez scowled at them. Retrieve? Like the guy was an object they’d misplaced or left behind? Asher was trying his best to teach Dez and Gavin about werewolf society, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about people being treated like property. Frankly, Dez didn’t give a flying fuck if it was an accepted part of werewolf tradition, it wasn’t going to be an accepted part of his life. Not ever.

“You’ll remove yourselves now,” he told them as imperiously as he could manage. He couldn’t allow a hint of uncertainty into his tone. He knew that from military life more than Asher’s “werewolf lessons.” If you were the guy in charge, you had to act like it, or people would doubt you. It wasn’t Dez’s forte, but he could handle a couple of yahoos who’d come into his territory and demanded he hand over a living, breathing human being. Werewolf. Whatever.

“Our alpha—”

“Doesn’t own people,” Dez informed him, narrowing his eyes and letting his lip curl back from his teeth. There was that strange sense of movement along his gums that told him his fangs were showing. He couldn’t control them yet, but frankly, if he could have, he’d have done it anyway. “And if he does think he owns anyone, he can come here and tell me that himself. I sure as hell don’t answer to lackeys.”

The same one opened his mouth again, but his partner grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled. “Right. We’ll go,” he agreed.

Dez nodded imperiously in his best Gavin impersonation, and tilted his chin up, nose in the air as though he were looking down at them, even seated as he was. “Yes. Go.Now.”

The men slipped out the front more quietly than they had come, the ruder of the two muttering something about his alpha having something to say about the situation.

Dez had bad news for him. If he thought he or his alpha were going to kidnap someone, they sure as hell weren’t going to do it in Kismet, much less in Dez’s motherfucking coffee shop.

3

Dead or Alive

The alpha’s voice was deep and gravelly, like he’d been chewing on rocks. It fit so well with his angry eyes, like glittering chips of obsidian, and the way he sneered at the beta thugs. They slunk out with their metaphorical tails between their legs.

Sawyer might have gotten a half chub at that. The alpha had scared them off without so much as standing up, let alone doing anything. He’d just growled, bared his teeth, and told them to go. Sawyer would give anything to have that alpha aura of command. No alpha he’d ever met before had.

Also, the alpha had said “doesn’t own people” in the tone of voice most people reserved for saying things like “you smell like three-week-dead fish—get away from me.”

Looking on omegas as property was archaic. Sawyer’s pack had always acted like he was a delicate flower who needed protecting, but no one had ever suggested he didn’t own himself or couldn’t make his own life decisions.

At least, not until Mark had killed his father, and it had become a matter of political convenience to tie the new alpha to the son of the former one.

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