Captive Mate of the Female Alpha

Chapter 1: Captured  Every time his feet came down on the trail felt as if he were spring-boarding into the air. The Appalachian Trail was one of the best places to run in the world; Kit hoped he got the opportunity to run the whole damn thing before he was done.  Not today, of course.  Kit was only hoping to hit five miles today.  Most of his family thought he'd lost his minds to move from Seattle to rural Georgia. Kit couldn't explain why he wasn't happy on the West Coast. He'd been born in California and had hiked everywhere he could through his home state without ever finding the peace many naturalists wrote about in their memoirs.  A whim had taken him to the website to explore the interactive map of the Appalachian Trail---but it hadn't felt like a whim when he started to plan his move to the foot of the trail.  Every day he'd planned had felt as if he were getting one step closer to where he'd always wanted to be.  By the time Kit packed his Jeep with the last of his belongings and hugged his friends goodbye, Seattle was only a vague suggestion in his rear-view mirror.   Kit breathed deep as he pushed his legs to go faster, hit the trail a little harder, carry him a little faster. He had the trail to himself -not surprising due to the time of year- and Kit wanted to see how fast he could finish his planned route. There was no real rush since school didn't start back up for another few weeks, but it was July in Georgia. No one wanted to run in the hottest part of the day during a Southern Summer.  Kit screamed loudly as he went from racing forward to racing face-first into the trail. Something had caught his foot, stunning him as he hit the ground before he could react. What had he tripped on? The trail was swept regularly by volunteers as well as Park Service employees.  "Holy guacamole," he muttered, rolling over onto his back to look up at the sky filtered through the canopy of the trees, "What did I hit?" "Did you actually just say 'holy guacamole'? How old are you? Five?"  Kit looked to the side to see a well-built man leaning against a tree with a bored expression. He was handsome -not in any particular kind of way, just obviously good-looking the way some people were obviously overweight or obviously freckled- and he was  winding up a roll of wire? Was that wire? "Did you use a tripwire on me?" "Yeah," the guy shrugged, "I don't like running." "You don't like walking. You're literally a disgrace to wolves everywhere. I can't believe I have to call you 'brother.' Thank the moon you're getting mated off soon."  Handsome Guy rolled his eyes at Sarcastic Guy and Kit felt a shiver of fear race over his skin far faster than he'd been running the trail. These guys had planned this. They had chosen to abduct someone off the trail. Had they planned to take him specifically or would any runner have met their needs?  "What's your name?" A third man seemed to materialize from nowhere behind Kit and Kit scrambled on his back, crab-walking as fast as he could until he hit a tree. He looked at the tree before looking back at the group of men who had surrounded him. Why would they have wanted to take him? Kit couldn't come up with any reason to target him as an individual. They didn't even know his name. They had probably planned to take a woman. He was a victim of opportunity. All he had to do was convince them he didn't know anything about them, want to know anything about them, and only wanted to go home with no problems for anyone. "I think there's been a mistake. I was running the trail. I may have gotten turned around. I'm not from here. New to the area. If I was say---trespassing? I'm really sorry. How about I turn around to run back the way I came and we all forget about this?" New Guy snorted, "I wish. If you think any of us want to be here, you're crazy. This is public land. You'd know if you were in our territory. The border guards aren't lenient with trespassers. He asked you a question: what's your name?" Kit couldn't shake the feeling if he told them his name, the whole experience would become too real. "It doesn't matter. You don't know me. I don't know you. We can leave each other right where we started. No harm, no foul." "You're bleeding from at least four places. I think they're not worth mentioning, but the alpha will be pissed. As far as our alpha is concerned? You get any kind of injury? You're harmed and we're in trouble." They were on drugs. PCP? LSD? Meth? What kind of drugs made people talk about insane things like how many places a guy was bleeding from or having an 'alpha'? Wasn't that some kind of s*x thing?  Kit wished he taught high school so he'd have felt more pressure to read that Forty Colors of Kink thing.  His experience with kink was limited to late-night television.  New Guy grabbed Kit by the arm, pulling him onto his feet with an iron grip. Kit knew the sound he made was less than manly, but the guy had a crazy hold on him! He was going to be bruised to Hell and back on his bicep. The guy shook him as if he were a rag doll; Kit raised his free arm to hold his palm up plaintively. "I give! I give! What do you want from me?" The other two men had crowded closer and he was starting to breathe too fast. Why were they so close? Was this the part where they started to beat him? Cut him? They were going to kill him, right? Handsome Guy reached into the back pocket of Kit's shorts to retrieve his wallet, flipping it open to see his driver's license, reading aloud, "Christopher Adam Tallent. Seriously? Your initials are 'CAT'? Was that intentional?" "Kit," Kit corrected, "No one calls me anything else. I'm just Kit. The initials were on purpose. My mother has a weird sense of humor. Her initials spell 'BAT' so she thought it was funny. Okay, so you know my name. What's yours? Let's---let's get to know each other!" Kit was trying to use his best peppy-teacher voice on the guys. If they saw him as a person, they'd have a harder time killing him. He'd watched enough police procedural shows to know about that. Criminals always wanted to commit violence against strangers unless they were real sociopaths. These guys seemed too normal to be sociopaths. Except weren't sociopaths the ones everyone said were so nice and quiet after they were caught? "We'll get right on that. First? You're taking a nap. When you wake up, if you're the one our alpha wants? You'll get all the introductions you want. If you aren't? You'll find yourself back on the trail free to run back home." None of their plans sounded too bad to Kit. He was about to tell them he would cooperate when there was a hard blow to the back of his head and everything went dark.