The Alpha Who Signed the Wrong Contract

The van hit my rear bumper at sixty miles an hour, and my head hit back against the seat. I had left Kane Industries four minutes earlier. It was 12:40 a.m., the streets were empty, and the signed documents were on the passenger seat. I had been awake for twenty hours and was thinking about nothing except my bed. The van hit me again. The steering wheel jerked in my hands, and I fought to keep the car straight. "Okay," I said out loud. "Okay." I am not a brave person. I am a prepared one. I had taken a self-defense course three years ago, and I kept pepper spray in the door pocket. My foster mother used to say a girl with a plan never gets caught, and it was the only useful thing she ever told me. I grabbed the spray with my right hand. The van moved ahead and cut across both lanes. Its brake lights came on, and I had about two seconds to decide. I did not brake. I turned the wheel hard left and hit the gas. My front corner clipped the van's rear door. Metal made a horrible noise, the airbag exploded into my chest. My car turned once and stopped by the side of the road. My ears rang, and the smell of burnt powder filled the car. Through the cracked windscreen, I saw the van's side door slide open. Four men climbed out. All of them wore black masks and gloves, and one carried a length of pipe. They did not look confused or hurt. They walked toward me like they had done this before. I shoved the airbag away and grabbed the briefcase. My door was jammed, so I kicked it twice, and it opened on the third try. I got out with one shoe still on. "Give us the case," the nearest man said. His voice was calm. "Take it," I said. I held it out with both hands. I am not going to die for a document. He took it and tossed it to the man behind him without looking at it. Then he reached for my arm. That was when I understood. He hadn't asked me to hand over the case. He had only wanted me to stop moving. I sprayed him in the eyes. He screamed and moved back, and I pulled off my remaining heel and threw it at the second man. The metal tip caught him above the eyebrow. Blood ran down his mask, and he grabbed his face and dropped. Two left. The one with the pipe hit my shoulder, and pain shot down my whole arm. I went down on one knee on the road. My hand scraped along the road, and I felt gravel dig into my palm. I had been shoved, dragged, and passed between homes since I was seven years old. I knew that feeling when people believed I was easy to move. I hated it more than the pain. "Get her in the van," the pipe man said. I got up. I did not have a plan anymore, so I ran. After taking about ten steps. I felt a hand catch the back of my jacket and pull me off my feet. I hit the ground on my back, and I couldn’t breathe for a moment. The man stood over me and pressed his knee into my stomach. He pulled a cloth from his pocket, and it smelled like chemicals. I clawed at his mask. I got two fingers under the edge and pulled it sideways. His face was pale and ordinary. His eyes were wrong. They had gone yellow, and they were not reflecting the streetlight. They were producing their own light. "Don't fight," he said. "It'll be easier." Something hit him from the side. It happened too fast for me to see. One second he was on top of me, and the next he was ten feet away, sliding across the road. Something very large stood where he had been, breathing hard. It was a wolf, but it was too big to be a wolf. Its shoulders came up to my chest, and its fur was black and wet with blood that was not mine. It stood over me with its head low and its teeth showing. The pipe man swung at it. The wolf caught his arm in its jaws, and I heard the bone break. The man screamed. The wolf threw him into the van door, and he did not get up. The last man ran. The wolf caught him before he reached the sidewalk. I lay still. I did not scream. I tried to, but nothing came out. I counted my breaths instead, the way I used to do in the dark at group homes. In for four, out for four. When I looked up again, the wolf was walking back to me. It stopped a few feet away, and its body began to change. Its shoulders lowered, its spine bent, and the fur shortened and disappeared. I heard bones shift under skin, a dry and wet sound that I will remember for the rest of my life. A man knelt on the road in front of me. He was naked and bleeding from a long cut across his ribs. It was Dominic Kane. Two hours ago, he had signed a forty-million-dollar contract across a conference table from me and not once raised his voice. "Are you hurt?" he asked. His voice was rough and steady. I stared at him. "You are a wolf." "Sera. Are you hurt?" "My shoulder." I sat up slowly. "You are a wolf." He picked up the briefcase from where the last man had dropped it and looked at it for a moment. Then he put it on the ground beside me, like it was worth nothing. "They weren't after the documents," he said. "They were after you."