Page 30 of Auctioned to the Alpha

“Kicked me in the nuts, and stole Mattias’ rig.”

The laughter from Knox’s end was so loud, Dmitri had to hold his phone away from his ear for a moment. “All right, all right. Drink it in, dick. You got lucky this time.”

Knox finally regained his composure. “Nah, I just know agents. They’re all the same. Gung ho as shit. Do I need to chase her down?”

“Negative,” Dmitri said, allowing himself a tiny smile despite his balls feeling like they’d been run over by a truck. “Just leave the crew and head back to the lodge. I suspect we’ll… find our quarry soon enough.”

CHAPTER14

Knox

On the first full moon of Knox’s fifteenth year, there’d been the hunt.

He’d never been on one before, and he had been afraid. But his father Reikard and his uncle Tommy had both made him come with them anyway. The wolves of the region never really messed with grizzlies, such animals quite capable of killing a wolf. Or several wolves. The bears typically exercised their own discretion too, when it came to interactions with the wolves. But once in a while, one of themstrayed, and it was Reikard’s pack’s job to ensure the bear understood what happened when the rules—informal though they might have been—weren’t observed.

So it was as they’d dashed through the nightscape, the moonlight bathing them in dappled flashes, the darkness, the forest, and the spirits of all of his people that had come before him flowing through him as he transformed from man to beast. The change never failed to be agony, and at the same time sparking something within him very much like euphoria, for it was in that pain that Knox became who he truly was.

That night they’d found their rogue bear, the pack already surrounding it, the beast’s stench—a deep, musky earthiness overlaid with the scent of fetid rot—a notorious calling card of the ursid. Its chilling guttural roar echoing though the dark forest, the deadly animal had been cornered by twenty wolves in the gently sloped clearing lit only by the ghostly glow of the moonlight. It was as if the trees themselves were watching the titanic struggle, holding their collective breath while the victor and the vanquished were determined once and for all.

That was the first time Knox had tasted both fear and the real lust for the hunt, for thekill.

What he’d smelled that night as the wolves finally fell upon the bear, the massive creature killing several of them before it too met its end, was exactly what Knox scented on the air as soon as they’d reached Warner Road.

Blood.

At first Knox had shrugged it off, ignored it. After all in the forest it wasn’t the first time he’d smelled blood or a carcass, the remnants of a fight between some animals the night before. This time though, he knew it was different, thatthisblood was special.

That the blood on the air was one of them.

Vince, a tall, gaunt man with a dark shock of black hair and a curly beard that whipped gently in the breeze, pointed his machete, the glint of the sun on something metallic visible about a half mile away down. Warner Road cut straight through densely packed stands of lodgepole and black pine, the trees crowding the shoulder on either side, fallen branches strewn here and there upon the packed, rutted dirt, the route forlorn, lonely, a road to nowhere.

“Truck, I’d guess,” Vince drawled, putting a chaw in between his lip and gum, the faded, stained denim jeans and long-sleeved green work shirt hanging loosely upon his slender build, the man resembling a boy who’d tried on his big brother’s clothes only to find his frame was wholly inadequate to the task.

The other two members of the crew, Dale and Nelson, were a mile or so back from Knox and Vince, clearing a downed pine, the sounds of their chainsaws just audible on the air.

Knox keyed the mic on his radio. “Change of plan. Doesn’t look like we’re chasing down escaped fillies today. Need you boys back with us. Might be… something up here.”

The reply was weak, but intelligible through the static. “Gotcha. On our way.”

“Stay behind me,” Knox muttered, waving Vince back as they began walking slowly toward the vehicle. It was definitely a pick-up, and one he was afraid he had indeed seen before.

And very recently.

What kinda shit have you gotten yourself into, stupid boy?

“Know who’s that is?”

“I might.” Knox shook his head, scowling. “And that’s what I don’t like. Shouldn’t be asoulout here today.”

The sickening scent got ever stronger as they drew closer, Knox’s stomach dropping as he began to realize what they’d come upon.

Then he saw it.

Oh no.

“Christ, is that… blood?” Vince whispered, wiping a hand across his mouth.

Knox brought the radio up to his mouth. “Dale, Nelson, get your asses up herenow.”

---