True Alpha

Blue Harvest

We got out of the car and Deacon put his arm around my waist, pulling me into him possessively as a guy ran up to us. Tall, his hair was golden brown, longer at the top and shaved down the sides. He wore a muscle shirt and athletic shorts.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at school, Deac?” He asked.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at school, Sam?” Deacon questioned him back. “I at least have the grades to skip a few weeks. I’m also graduating in December. You, on the other hand, are failing and it’s only the first day.”

Sam chuckled and ran his hand through his hair, “Got me there, man. You know I am more street smart than books. You can learn more about life from life than in school.”

“Yes, well, you also need to graduate, Sam. I can’t have my Beta looking like the dumbass that he is.” Deacon laughed. I looked up at him.

“Who’s this?” Sam asked, pointing at me. His eyes ran up and down my body.

Deacon pulled me closer to him and growled, “Mine.”

Sam put his hands up, “I was only asking, dude.”

I giggled. I had never had anyone care so much about me. I had never really had anyone care about me. Apart from the basics of living, no one cared. I stayed in my room alone until it was time to have blood drawn, or a meal was being served. No one cared about someone else touching me or looking at me.

“I’m Liah.” I said.

Sam smiled, “I’m Sam. Deacon’s Beta.”

“Not if you don’t start taking your ass to school, you’re not.” Kyra said. She skipped off.

“Are you ready to meet my parents?” Deacon asked.

I stiffened.

“I promise you; no one is going to touch you.” He growled, burying his face in my neck.

He pulled me into the house, and I looked around. The entrance was grey with gold accents across the wall. The tiled floor was pale white with black marble lines. There was a huge chandelier.

“Deacon, what are you doing here?” I heard a female voice coming down the stairs.

“Where’s Dad?” He said. I could feel him getting angrier at the voice. I put my hand on his arm and he relaxed a little.

“In his office.” She stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked at us. Her brows furrowed and she gasped. “Who are you?”

“Mom, this is Liah.” Deacon said, “My mate.”

“You- you’re- Deacon.” She stuttered.

Deacon grunted, “Yeah, we need to talk. Now.” He took my hand and gently pulled me towards the stairs. I looked at all the paintings and out the windows, never really having seen this much nature before.

He stopped at a door and knocked before walking in.

“Dad, we need to talk.” He said, stiffly, “This is Liah.”

His dad looked up and widened. “How did you survive?” He looked at me.

“So did you know about it? All the experiments Dylan was doing?” Deacon growled. “Do you have any idea what they did to her? Her wolf came out early, for 5 years, Dad.”

“I thought he shut it down.” His mom whispered. “She told me she shut it down.”

“She?!” Deacon yelled.

“Aurora.” His dad said. “Sit down. We have a lot to talk about.”

Deacon pulled a chair out for me and quickly decided to sit down and pull me into his lap. He wrapped his arms around me. I wasn’t sure if it was to make me feel safe or if I was keeping him from killing his parents. Either way, it felt good.

His mom sat on the couch behind us while his dad poured him a glass of whiskey, downing it in one gulp. He poured himself another and sighed.

“15 years ago, your aunt Aurora had a pup. He was extremely sick and soon after birth, he died. Naturally, she was heartbroken. A mother is very protective of her pups, but there was nothing she could do about it. Without his wolf, he couldn’t fight off infections. She was lost. For months she lay in her bed and wouldn’t come out. Finally, Dylan told us that she couldn’t have any more children. As a descendant of an Alpha, she felt utterly useless. After a year, she came out and said she was going to adopt a pup of her own. We accepted it. She spent years looking for the perfect one. After 5 years, we told her that she needed to focus on giving a child a loving home. The perfect child is the one you love with your whole heart.” Her dad sighed. “That’s when she told us about the lab. Dylan was a research scientist. He was studying werewolf DNA to make us stronger, heal faster, run faster, but more importantly, to get our wolves earlier.”

I gasped. “I got my wolf at 10.” I whispered.

I felt Deacon stiffen, he immediately shoved his face into my hair, inhaling deeply, keeping himself calm.

“Aurora called telling us that she had something to show us. When we got there, we saw you, and 4 others. In incubators. I asked what they were doing with their children. They told me that they were going to solve the wolf problem. That no child would ever die from not having a wolf ever again. When they told me their plan, I told them to shut it down. I watched them pull the plug on all of you. I told them if they ever did anything like this again, I would kill them myself.” Deacon’s mom whispered. “We thought they had terminated the project.”

“A few months later, Aurora told me that she had found the perfect child, the one who would survive it all. I thought maybe she had adopted a pup of one of the Alphas that had been killed. At the time there were a lot of rough attacks and we thought nothing of it. Until Dylan told me that he didn’t have a child, but he had a new experiment. I went to the lab, and I saw you.” Deacon’s dad said. “We got into it. I told him no more experiments. I banished him and told him if I ever heard of anything like this in my territory again, I would kill him. I didn’t care that he was my sister’s mate. I found Aurora and warned her. She told me that she wanted to keep you alive and raise you as one of us. A wolf. A pack member.” His voice caught.

“She killed herself just weeks later. We assumed that the loss of yet another child was too much for her. Like Alpha’s, we generally have as many pups as we can. She never got to raise one. As for Dylan, we kept tabs on him. He stopped all the experiments, or so we thought. We never thought he would have survived the things he was doing to the other wolves. Had we known, we would have taken you. We would have given you to a family.” His mom started crying.

I finally felt the tears rolling down my face. They didn’t know. They tried to stop them. They tried to protect me. Someone wanted me. Aurora wanted me. She wanted to raise me. She wanted to love me. Dylan was a monster. He always hurt me. He was the one who kept poking and prodding me. He is the one who cut me open time and time again. He was the one who defied his Alpha. He was the one who hurt Athena. She whimpered at the memories.

“Liah, I promise you, if I had known what he was doing, I would have stopped him.” His mom said, sadly. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. How did you not go mad? A 10-year-old with a wolf? That’s not normal.”

“I honestly don’t know. I remember when Aurora was around. She wasn’t kind, but she wasn’t mean either. She seemed.. scared. She wasn’t the one who hurt me. I trusted her because she was the only one who had ever touched me. It was not until she came at me with a needle did my wolf come out. After that, I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in my room. I had bandages on my entire body. When I was able to move, they stopped cutting me. Relying on blood draws. They gave me books. I read everything I could. After I read everything I could, one of the TVs brought in a TV and I was allowed to watch that for 4 hours a day. Eventually, I started to reread the books. The only person I had to talk to was Athena. She has been my best friend since I got her.” I laughed at her howling in my head.

Deacon had been silent, slowly stroking my arm, or smelling my hair. We all looked at him as he spoke, “What are we going to do about him, Dad? He wants to take her back. If he is crazy enough to do this, he is crazy enough to start a war.”

“I don’t know, Son. I can’t just start a war over a mate.” Deacon’s dad ran his hands over his face and into his hair.

“He is not getting her back,” Deacon growled.

“Honey, we aren’t saying that. We are saying we can’t put our pack in danger.”

“I’m the next in line to be Alpha. Which means Liah will be Luna. We will go to war over our Luna.” I could feel Deacon getting angrier. I

“Deacon, do not start a war that I will have to end. You are not Alpha yet.” His dad warned him. I could hear his Alpha voice, but it didn’t affect me the way it seemed to affect Deacon.

Deacon grunted and pulled me into his chest, “What are we going to do?”

They all sat quietly. After a few moments, Deacon and his father started to talk about what would happen if Dylan came after him. His mom voiced her opinion every once in a while, but I stayed silent.

I looked out the big window, finally staring at the view. The trees were blowing softly in the wind. I felt Athena scratching at the back of my head, whining. She wanted to go running. She never got to run in a field like that. I only got to let her out after I knew that Dylan was gone for the day. I would let Athena romp around the room before curling up and going to sleep, forcing myself to wake up at 6 a.m. to shift back.

“Can I go run?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

“Yes.” Deacon looked at me, his blue-green eyes shining back at me.

We ran downstairs to the tree line and Deacon started to pull his shirt off. I turned around and began taking off my own clothes. I shifted before I could finish taking off my pants. Athena panted and jumped around, loving the feeling of the grass on her paws. She let out a playful growl and started running in circles. She yipped at Deacon for taking too long to show his wolf.

He chuckled and shifted, shredding his pants as well. His wolf was massive. Jet black, with green eyes. He growled at me playfully and nodded towards the field. I felt my paws beating against the grass pulling me forward. Deacon had his tongue out. We ran for what felt like hours before being joined by another wolf. I sniffed the air and barked at the familiar smell. Kyra was beautiful. Her russet brown fur was swaying in the wind. She pushed ahead of me and jumped on Deacon’s back, rolling him over. They started fighting and I stopped and watched them. I chuckled as Kyra kept beating Deacon. He growled at me and I barked back. I curled into the soft grass and let Athena feel everything. She was finally free. She felt exhausted, but she didn’t want to miss anything.

I will kill him if he ever puts me back in that cage.

I know. I would let you.

I never said I was giving you a choice. If he tries to put me back in that cage, I will kill him. If you try to stop me, I will kill us both.

I pushed myself further back into my own mind and let Athena have full control. For the first time in my life, I let her go without being in fear for our lives.