The Alpha’s Parasite

CHAPTER THREE

His teeth released the pressure.

He didn’t pull away. His mouth stayed pressed against the bruised skin of my collarbone, his breathing ragged, drawing in the scent of my pulse like oxygen.

The concrete wall was freezing against my spine, leaching the remaining warmth from my jacket. My legs were still locked around his waist. My thighs ached with the strain of holding on, but my muscles refused the command to let go.

Somewhere down the alley, a neon sign flickered with a defective, irritating buzz. Click. Click. Click.

I should have pushed him. I had the leverage. My hands were planted flat against the heavy, corded muscles of his shoulders. All I had to do was shove.

Instead, my right thumb twitched. It brushed the rough, sharp line of his jaw.

I hated myself instantly.

Kaelen froze. The minute contact of my thumb against his stubble was enough to send a violent shudder through his massive frame. He slowly lifted his head.

His eyes weren't entirely human. The deep, familiar brown was gone, swallowed completely by a feral, glowing amber that bled into the whites of his eyes. The wolf was right there. Scratching at the glass. Staring at me with an ancient, starving kind of fury.

"Put me down," I said. My voice wasn't shaking. That was the problem with being terrified of Kaelen—my survival instincts always bypassed panic and went straight to a dead, clinical calm.

"No."

He didn't argue. He didn't yell. He just stated it as a biological fact. Gravity exists. Water is wet. He wasn't letting me go.

He stepped back from the wall. I braced myself for the drop to the pavement, my muscles uncoiling to catch my weight.

It never happened.

Kaelen simply shifted his grip, his massive hands sliding from my lower back to grip the backs of my thighs. He adjusted my weight against his chest like I was nothing more than a coat he was carrying, and he started walking.

"Kaelen." I hit his shoulder. Hard. "Put me on the ground. Now."

He ignored me. His boots crunched over the broken glass and loose gravel of the alley. The sheer, terrifying ease with which he carried me made my stomach drop. I was completely trapped in his center of gravity. Every step he took forced my chest against his, forcing me to feel the frantic, heavy thud of his heart.

Shifters didn't have heart rates that fast. Not unless they were dying.

Or mating.

"You're making a scene," I hissed, glancing toward the mouth of the alley where the streetlights bled into the shadows.

"Let them look," he growled. The vibration of his voice rumbled through my own ribcage. "Let anyone try to take you."

He reached the end of the alley. His matte-black Silverado was parked illegally across the curb, the engine still ticking as it cooled. He didn't bother setting me down to open the door. He just hooked his fingers under the handle, yanked it open, and practically threw me into the passenger seat.

The leather was ice-cold through my jeans.

Before I could even scramble upright, he slammed the door shut. The electronic locks engaged with a heavy, definitive clack.

I grabbed the door handle and pulled it. Locked.

I pulled it again. Still locked.

I knew it was locked. I had heard it lock. But I pulled it a third time anyway, just to feel the mechanical resistance against my palm, needing physical proof that I was actually trapped and not just paralyzed by my own adrenaline.

Kaelen didn't walk around the front of the truck. He walked around the back, his silhouette cutting through the red glare of the taillights. There was blood on his knuckles. Dark, wet, and heavy.

My shoulder throbbed where his teeth had pressed in. A phantom heat radiating deep into the muscle. He hadn't broken the skin. That was what terrified me the most. A feral shifter acting on instinct would have bitten down. Kaelen had held back. He was completely out of his mind with possessive rage, and yet he still had enough calculated control to keep from scarring me.

The driver’s side door opened. The cab suddenly felt like a coffin.

He climbed in, bringing the smell of ozone, burnt cedar, and fresh violence with him. He was too big for the space, his broad shoulders crowding the center console.

He jammed the keys into the ignition. The engine roared to life.

I stared at a crumpled dry-cleaning receipt wedged into the air vent. It had a coffee stain on the corner. My entire reality was collapsing, three years of carefully constructed distance shattering into dust, and my brain decided to focus on a piece of thermal paper.

"Where are we going?" I asked, staring straight ahead at the windshield.

He threw the truck into drive. The tires shrieked against the asphalt as he pulled out, throwing me back against the headrest.

"Kaelen. Where are we going?"

"Home."

The word felt like a physical blow.

"I don't have a home," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "You made sure of that."

His hands gripped the steering wheel. The leather creaked under the pressure. His knuckles turned white beneath the smears of blood.

"You're bleeding," I said, deflecting. It was a defense mechanism. Point out his damage to ignore my own.

"Not my blood." He didn't even look at me. He was staring at the road, driving flawlessly despite the terrifying speed. The streetlights strobed across his face in rapid succession, illuminating the sharp, violent lines of his jaw and the hollows of his cheeks.

"Whose blood is it?"

"Does it matter?" he snapped, his voice cracking like a whip in the confined space.

"Yes, it matters! You disappear for three years, you show up covered in blood, you drag me out of a bar, and you bite me in an alley! I think I deserve to know whose blood is currently staining your upholstery."

He hit the brakes.

The truck violently swerved toward the shoulder of the empty road, the anti-lock brakes stuttering as we skidded to a halt in the gravel. The seatbelt locked across my chest, digging into my collarbone—right over the bruise he had just given me.

I gasped at the sharp spike of pain.

Kaelen threw the truck into park. He didn't unbuckle his seatbelt. He just turned his entire upper body toward me, leaning across the center console. The sheer physical mass of him blocked out the streetlights from the driver's side window.

"You want to know whose blood it is?" he asked softly. Too softly. The kind of soft that precedes a slaughter.

I swallowed hard. I couldn't look away from his eyes. The amber was burning bright now, entirely consuming the dark brown.

"It belongs to the man who was watching you from the corner booth," Kaelen whispered, his face inches from mine. "The one who looked at your mouth when you laughed. The one who thought about following you to your car."

A cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck. "I didn't even talk to anyone."

"You didn't have to." He reached out. I flinched, but I didn't pull back. His knuckle, slick with someone else's blood, brushed lightly against my cheekbone. "He looked at you like he could have you. So I broke his jaw."

"You're insane."

"I'm awake," he corrected, his voice dropping to a gravelly purr that made the hairs on my arms stand up. "For the first time in thirty-six months, I am completely awake."

He pulled his hand back, shifting back into his seat. He put the truck in drive and pulled back onto the road before I could even process the confession.

We passed the city limits. The streetlights vanished, replaced by the towering, endless shadows of the pine trees. The paved road turned to packed dirt.

My stomach plummeted.

Pack territory.

"No," I said, my hands pressing flat against the dashboard. "No, Kaelen, turn around."

"I told you. You're never leaving my sight again."

"You can't bring me here. You know the laws. A rejected mate caught on Pack lands is a trespasser. The Alpha will kill me."

Kaelen didn't slow down. The massive, wrought-iron gates of the estate loomed in the headlights. The heavy chains that normally secured them were hanging broken from the stone pillars.

"Kaelen, stop the car!" I yelled, real panic finally bleeding through my calm. "Your brother will kill me on sight!"

He pulled the truck through the broken gates and parked it in the center of the gravel courtyard. The massive stone house was completely dark. Too dark. There were no guards on the porch. No sentries walking the perimeter.

Nothing but a suffocating, heavy silence.

Kaelen killed the engine. The headlights shut off, plunging us into total darkness.

He slowly turned his head to look at me. The amber light in his eyes was the only thing I could see clearly.

"Marcus isn't the Alpha anymore," Kaelen said quietly.

My breath caught in my throat. "What did you do?"

Kaelen leaned across the console again. He reached down and unclicked my seatbelt. The metal clasp hit the plastic console with a sharp clink. He didn't pull away. He stayed there, hovering over me, his chest brushing against mine in the dark.

"I ripped his throat out," Kaelen whispered, his breath hot against my cheek. "Because he was the one who forced me to let you go. And I'm done taking orders."