Hunted by the Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Last Vial
Hettie seizes at two in the morning with the last dose gone, so Marin breaks into the Draycott cold store, and the alpha who has hunted her for six years catches her on the dam road.
Hettie's hand hit the floor first, then her whole body followed.
I had been sitting on the edge of her bed with a cold washcloth, and I dropped it.
It was two in the morning, and my five-year-old daughter was seizing on a rug covered in cartoon foxes.
"Joss!" I yelled. "Joss, get in here!"
I turned her onto her side and put my palm under her head.
Her eyes rolled open, and they were gold.
Not brown with a little light in them. Gold.
Joss came through the door in his scrub pants, already counting seconds on his watch.
"How long?" he said.
"Forty seconds. It's the same as last month."
"It's not the same," he said quietly. "Last month she had the medicine in her."
I looked at the small glass bottle on the nightstand.
It was empty, with a crest on the label that I had never let Hettie see.
A tree with a wolf's head hidden in the branches.
The seizure ended at ninety seconds.
Hettie lay limp and sweating, and her gold eyes slid shut.
I checked her pulse with two fingers and my hands did not shake.
I was a fourth-year medical student, and my hands never shook when it mattered.
It was only my insides that came apart.
"She needs a dose tonight," Joss said. "Marin, her fever's climbing. Next one will be worse."
"I know."
"The guy who sold you the last ones said there wouldn't be any more."
"I know."
"So where are you going to get it?"
I stood up and took my keys off the hook.
"The Draycotts keep a cold store off Highway 61," I said. "I've known where it is for four years."
Joss stared at me.
"You said you'd never go near them."
"I said I'd never take her near them."
I kissed Hettie's hot forehead and pulled the quilt up to her chin.
"If she wakes, tell her I went to get her juice."
He nodded, and then he grabbed my sleeve.
"Marin. If you get caught, they'll kill you."
"Then I won't get caught."
The cold store was a squat brick building behind a veterinary supply company that did not exist on any map.
I knew that because I had spent two months of my life learning to read pack labels.
The lock on the back door was a cheap deadbolt.
I had practiced on one just like it in Joss's garage.
It opened on the fourth try, and cold air rolled out against my face.
Rows of steel shelves held glass vials in foam trays, each one stamped with the crest.
I found the blackthorn lot at the back and counted twelve vials.
I took six, because I am a thief who likes to be fair to her victims.
Then I took the other six, because Hettie was five and I was not that fair.
I had them zipped inside my coat when the lights came on.
They were not the overhead lights.
They were headlights, three pairs, shining through the loading window and across the floor.
A wolf howled outside, long and low, and my stomach turned over.
I ran for the back door.
It was blocked by a man in a gray hoodie who had not been there ten seconds ago.
His eyes flashed yellow.
I threw the pallet jack at him, which was the only thing within reach, and went through the side window instead.
Broken glass cut my forearm through my sleeve.
I did not stop.
My old Corolla was parked half a mile away on a logging road, and I ran for it across wet gravel with my lungs burning.
Behind me, something big was running faster.
I heard paws on the road, not one set but several, spreading out to cut me off.
I reached the car and my key fob would not work, because my fingers were slick with blood.
A wolf the size of a pony stepped out of the trees.
It was black, with a white scar on one shoulder, and its eyes were pure gold.
Then the wolf shook itself, and the shaking turned into a man.
He stood up out of the fur in a gray henley and dark trousers.
Dark hair, wet from the rain, and a jaw that had gotten harder in the years since I had touched it.
I knew his face.
I had known it for six years, in every dream I woke up from.
"Corwin," I whispered.
He didn't say anything for a long moment.
His gold eyes went to the blood on my sleeve, then to the zipped coat, then back up to my face.
"Six years," he said.
His voice was low and rough, like he had been shouting at a wall.
"I put a price on your name in three states, and you were forty minutes from my front door."
My phone buzzed in my back pocket.
He heard it before I did, and his head turned.
"Don't," I said.
He crossed the space between us in one step, took the phone out of my pocket and read the screen.
Joss's text sat on top, but the contact photo underneath was a little girl in a yellow raincoat.
Below it was the name:
Hettie.
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