Fated to the Alpha

5

Alice

Magic did not hold a candle to the kiss. It was beyond anything that my wildest fantasies could conjure. Then again, it was my first kiss ever, so there might have been an exaggerative element to my feelings.

But Brandon’s dexterity with his lips, with the way his tongue swiveled in my mouth, made me feel jealous, thinking that he must have had some practice with girls before me.

I had never felt s****l desire such as this before. It was as if someone had melted my insides and molten lava was flowing from my mouth to my legs. I could barely breathe but breathing seemed trivial in the face of us professing our profound emotions through this passionate, deep, warm, wet kiss.

I was arched against a wall of the cove, with Brandon’s body resting ever so gently on mine. I wanted more of him. I wanted to touch him all over. The rest of my body was feeling pretty jealous of my lips right about now. I wanted him to kiss my neck, suck my breasts, wrap his arms around me, push himself against me.

It was pure carnal bliss.

Right up until chaos chose to gatecrash the party. The same chaos that I had been running from. The reason why we had moved from Chicago to this town. The catalyst behind my madness. The chaos that would not let me sleep at night and haunted me the moment I opened my eyes at the start of each day.

I wasn’t in the cove with Brandon anymore. The kiss was a distant memory in the wake of this terrible waking nightmare. There I stood, vivid as ever, in the bright night of the full moon, next to a derelict shack that might have been a cozy cottage in another age. Right in front of me, a pace away, stood Brandon, looking at me with horror transfixed on his face. His mouth was leaking viscous blood. He was shivering as he stood helplessly, holding his arms against his chest. It was then that I noticed how his torso, his legs, and his arms were all riddled with big bullet holes and gashes, all of them spouting mucky crimson.

“Help me!” Brandon gasped as he collapsed to his knees. As he fell, I saw the shadows behind me. Low men in black uniforms, holding firearms smoking from the barrel.

“Alice…” Brandon whispered as more gunshots rang through the otherwise silent night, lighting up the forest with angry red bursts, piercing through Brandon’s falling body.

He crashed onto the forest floor, unmoving, lifeless.

Before I could so much as scream or move a finger, the lasers from the guns held by the dark men landed on my body, lighting it up like a Christmas tree. Time slowed down to a halt as their fingers pulled the triggers. I could see with clarity that only impending death can grant. It was almost as if I was witnessing everything from an astral perspective, noticing how each bullet left each barrel with a loud roar and a bright explosion. I watched as the flurry of bullets flew my way.

“Alice!”

I screamed, closing my eyes, bringing my hands up to my face. Even in death, I did not want those bullets to graze my face.

“Alice!”

I fell backward, my head colliding with something sharp, jagged, and painful.

“Alice!”

I opened my eyes to find Brandon bent over my body, holding me by my shoulders. His face looked as pale as death. The dreadful vision had ended. I was back in the land of reality. For now.

“Alice, oh God, are you okay?” Brandon panted as he tried to lift me up off the floor. I felt like a ton of bricks, unable to move from the cold cove floor.

“Leave me alone!” I yelled. It was a reflex reaction. In my defense, I just had one of my visions. I wasn’t myself. I was still reeling from it. These visions had been the bane of my existence ever since I could remember. They would come, warning me of some danger or the other, and when they would end, I would feel hollow, as if my life force had been drawn out as a toll for the vision I had. These visions were always of the future. I would see the most horrible things and then be driven insane by the secret knowledge that these events would come to pass.

At first, these visions were rather juvenile. When my pet rabbit died, I knew where to find his ripped-up pieces. A rather transient fox had decided to dine on his gamy body at night while everyone slept. I, on the other hand, had a vision about Mr. Whiskers dying terribly, and was awake the entire night, knowing that as I clung to the sheets, a fox was out there, burrowing into Mr. Whisker’s cage, chewing him alive.

But as I grew up, these visions became graver. A week before grandma died in a house fire, I had an hourlong vision in which I saw her cooking eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast, completely forgetting as a result of her creeping dementia that she had left the gas on. I saw as the flames leaped out of the kitchen and reached into the living room where grandma was on the verge of enjoying her post-breakfast cigarette. As she clicked the lighter, the entire house caught fire, burning grandma alive.

When my neighbor back in Chicago went missing, I did not confide in the police that I had seen a vision where he was walking drunk on the highway, trying to hail a ride by sticking out his thumb. I did not share the knowledge with his weeping widow that I had seen him get mauled by a speeding sss truck. He was dead before he fell into lake Michigan, where his corpse lies rotting to this day.

And the cherry on top of this sundae made from horrors and dread was what happened back in Chicago.

“Alice, can you please tell me what’s wrong?” Brandon asked, his voice breaking with worry. I felt pity for him. I even envied him that he had not seen what I had seen. There was no way I was going to tell him what had just happened. Right now, the situation had not gone completely t**s up as it had done back in the South Side. I was not going to repeat history.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it’s…it’s nothing that you did. I have to go,” I cried. I hadn’t even noticed that I had been weeping unconsciously this entire time. My eyes stung and the back of my throat felt clogged up.

“Can I at least drive you home?”

“No! Just… Just stay away!” I yelled as I ran out of the cove. I was doing him a favor. I was being merciful. He did not know it just yet. The vision had me in it with him. I wouldn’t give that future a chance to come to pass. If I won’t be there, neither will he, and so no one will die. If protecting him from those men meant that I was not going to be with him, then so be it.

“I’m sorry, but can you freaking explain what just happened? Did I hurt you?” Brandon asked.

“I can’t do this. I can’t. Please don’t contact me again,” I said. The waterfall served as a barrier between us, me on one side of it, him standing behind it, looking at me with a forlorn expression.

I ran away from the cove, not caring for the twigs and branches that leaped out at me from the sides, stinging my arms and tearing my legs as I ran. I’d had enough of this pre-cog bullshit. I wasn’t going to have any more of it.

The night wove shadows in my path as I ran back to my home, my mind a wreck, my faculties unable to function. I couldn’t help but repeat that vision over and over again in my head. It was almost as bad as the one I had in Chicago.

I relented against the haunting night, ignoring the creeping shadows, pretending that the protruding branches from the forest were not stinging me as I crashed through the forest path toward my home. What must he think of me? He didn’t know my life. He didn’t understand what I had been through. He must be thinking that I’m completely batshit. Maybe there will come a time, long after all of this has passed, when I will meet him, old and fraying, and tell him why I rejected him, why I ran away. Maybe he will thank me then. Or maybe he will hate me all the more.