Pulled to the Alpha

2

“Blake,” he says in a no-f*****g-around voice as he walks up to me. He’s big for a wolf shifter, but I got a polar bear hiding inside me and that means I got at least fifty pounds on the guy.

“What is it?” I ask.

Ethan and Westin flank my sides as he rubs his chin. “I caught his scent. In town.”

Shit. I don’t even have to ask him who.

In that brawl, we killed the blue dragon shifter Reginald, but one got away. The third and last brother, Sperling Kirk, has a red dragon that’s as big as a firetruck. And he’s pissed that we buried his two brothers in the mountains.

It’s been months since we’ve seen him, but there’s been no doubt in my mind that he’d be back.

“You sure?”

He raises his eyebrow at me, insulted that I’m questioning his sense of smell. Wolf shifters always get sensitive about that kind of thing.

“I’m never wrong with my nose,” he finally says.

“Okay,” I say as Carter joins us. “Let’s all watch our backs and keep our eyes open.”

Audrey walks into the room, wiping her eyes and yawning as she rubs her pregnant belly. Carter hurries over to her and starts speaking softly to his girl, telling her he loves her and that he’ll take her home soon.

I shake my head and exhale long and hard.

This is the problem with mates.

They’re distracting.

There’s a dangerous red dragon flying around with vengeance on his mind and I can’t afford for them to be focused on anything but that.

I just can’t let him catch us off guard.

Because none of us will survive that.

Lily

“Goddamn winter,” I mutter as I try to force my rental car onto the pile of hard snow beside the sidewalk. This town is already full of snow and it’s still coming down. It’s annoying as hell even if it is really pretty as it falls against the night sky.

I live in Miami and can’t imagine living in a small town like this. Blackcloud Point, Montana. Well, maybe I could…

I spot a young couple walking down the sidewalk pulling a little kid in a sled. The little girl is all bundled up in a snowsuit to the point where she can’t move her limbs. Her arms are out to the sides, making her look like a human star and her hood is standing straight up with a big adorable pom pom flapping around. The happy look on the couple’s faces as they hold hands sends a jab aching through my heart.

My mother’s words come floating back into my head…

You work too much. You should work on getting a man and getting me some grandkids instead.

I’m thirty-three years old and lately, I’ve been getting those stabbing pains a lot more whenever I see people in love.

I’ve always been so focused on my career in the FBI, but in the past year or two, I don’t know… sometimes I think that I’ve focused on the wrong things in my life.

Would I be happier if I was married with a little bundled up ball of joy like that of my own? Maybe. Probably…

But this is good too!

I shake those unhelpful thoughts out of my head and get my mind back in the game.

“Come on, Lily,” I whisper to myself as I turn off the car. “You’ve got three killers to catch.”

I turn back to the file on the passenger seat of the car and see my writing on the cover.

The Kirk Brothers.

I’ve been chasing these bastards for years. I finally built a case and got warrants for their arrests, but now I can’t find them anywhere.

Montana is the twenty-ninth state I’ve been to while looking for these guys. At this point, I’ll chase them to the moon to catch their scaly asses.

I take a deep breath and sit back in my seat as I pull out my phone. My hands are trembling as I play the video. It’s from last spring, nine months ago, but it’s the last known location of any of the Kirks.

It’s a grainy black and white security video that the mechanic down the street gave me. It’s nighttime and the whole town is quiet. Nothing moves until a rocket slams into the glass roof of the fire station and disappears inside.

My heart is pounding as I watch. The footage only gets a little bit of the station in the distance. Most of it is cut off, except for the roof. I can see the occasional flash that I know is a stream of fire shooting out of the dragon’s mouth.

A few tense minutes later, Sperling’s red dragon hobbles out of the roof, looking beaten and bruised. He flaps his large wings and flies off.

And nobody has seen him since.

I turn the phone off and stare at my reflection in the dark screen. How long am I going to chase these guys? It’s been ten years. I’m tired.

“Until the end,” I whisper to myself. Life isn’t always fun. Some people have to sacrifice everything to get the monsters off the streets and keep society safe for that cute little bundled up kid who just passed.

The Kirk brothers - Aylwin, Reginald, and Sperling are the worst kind of monsters. They’ve committed murder, extortion, robbery, kidnapping, terrorism, treason, arson, among others. Their misconduct isn’t even regulated to the United States. They don’t respect borders, flying through countries at will, and have bribed government officials from other countries and have been making things messy in global politics for the US since before I was born.

Sometimes I just wish I didn’t have to be the one to sacrifice everything.