N. Walters - Alexandra's Legacy

Alex was out there on her own.

Joshua slowly retreated back down the ladder. Sweat rolled down his temple. Was Alex all right or had they found her? As quickly as he could, he made his way back down behind the buildings. Their vehicle was being watched. At this point he couldn’t be sure if it was by just hunters or if there were also members from the various werewolf packs as well.

Obviously some of those bastards had been smart enough to trick the hunters into helping them try to eliminate him. Not that it mattered. There was no way he could risk Alex’s safety by making a run for the car. It was also likely that they’d disabled it somehow anyway.

Silently sliding along the edge of a building, he peered around the corner. The doorway where he’d left her was empty. His heart stopped, time slowed down. The predator in him slowly came to the fore, rippling beneath his skin, demanding to be let out. His scalp tingled, his muscles tightened. He exerted his iron control, not allowing himself to shift into wolf form, but he utilized every other aspect of the beast. If they’d taken her, he’d kill them all—hunters and wolves alike.

Meandering down the side of the road so as not to attract attention, he headed toward the restaurant, but didn’t enter. Instead, he stood to one side of the window, peering inside. It wasn’t that big and he could see every table and booth.

Alex wasn’t there, but another wolf was. He recognized the bastard as one of the men who’d jumped them in the apartment this morning. He sniffed the air, but was unable to catch a whiff of Alex’s scent. There were too many smells coming from the open door of the restaurant, confusing his senses and masking individual scents.

His eyes narrowed as he turned away, scanning the street. Where was she? He went back to the doorway where he’d stashed Alex and sniffed. There! The sweet aroma of female filled his nostrils. He took a step in one direction and stopped and sniffed. Nothing. Stepping back to the doorway, he stepped in another direction. Nothing. He did that several more times before he caught the faintest smell of Alex. Keeping all his senses on alert, he started out in that direction.

The trail led him toward an abandoned building that was boarded up. He circled it slowly, pausing now and again to listen and to sniff. He caught a whiff of Alex heading off behind the buildings and started after her. He hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps when he paused. His instincts were screaming at him to stop.

Turning on one heel, he crept back to the building, circling it again until he found what he was searching for. One of the windows had several boards torn away from it. It would be a tight squeeze, but he could make it.

He crouched beside the window and waited for several minutes. There was no sound from inside. Putting one long leg through the opening, he gripped the rough edges of the window frame and angled his head and upper body through the gap.

Alex. Her scent washed over him, overlaid with fear, just as he heard the whoosh of something coming toward his head. He rolled forward, hauling his other leg in behind him as he went. Coming up on his feet, he spun around and growled, ready to protect Alex from whoever had her.

She stood not five feet from him, as pale as a ghost with a long piece of two-by-four clutched in her hands. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you.” Her fingers were visibly trembling, but she held on tightly to her makeshift weapon. “I didn’t want to use the gun. I was afraid it would attract attention. And what if it was just a vagrant or something. I’m not a murderer.” She was talking nonstop now, obviously shaken. “Couldn’t you have called out or something?” Her voice was getting sharper now, anger bringing the color back to her face. Joshua watched her, fascinated with how quickly her mood changed.

“Would have served you right if I’d bashed your thick skull in.”

He let her rant until she ran out of steam and then he simply opened his arms to her. She glared at him and then her chin wobbled ever so slightly. “I could have killed you.” Before he could respond, she launched herself into his arms. He closed them around her, needing to feel her next to his heart to reassure himself that she was safe.

“I’m all right. Everything is all right,” he crooned as he held her. He kissed the top of her head as he rocked her in his arms, content for the moment to just stand here with her.

She leaned back, and he saw the raw determination etched on her face. Once again he was struck by how strong she was, how capable of dealing with whatever situation was thrown at her. He didn’t know many people, werewolf or human, who would attack him with nothing but a two-by-four. She was something.

“What happened?” As much as he wanted to keep holding her, they needed to be gone from here. But first, he needed to know exactly what she’d seen.

“I saw one of them. One of the guys from the garage this morning.” Her gray eyes narrowed. “He was with another man. I don’t know if he was werewolf or human.”

Joshua nodded. “I saw him in the diner I told you to go to. He was alone.”

“The second I saw him I hurried around to the back of this place and found the same opening you did. I couldn’t see out front. All I could do was wait. I figured if you didn’t come back I could make my way back to the garage and find transport from someone in the neighborhood.”

It made his blood run cold to think of Alex running around the city at night by herself. Werewolves weren’t the only predators out on the streets after sundown.

She scowled at him. “I know what you’re thinking, but it sure as heck isn’t safe to stay here.”

On that score she was correct. “You’re right.” He didn’t have to like it, but she was absolutely right. It would have been her best course of action. In her neighborhood, she knew who she could trust and who she couldn’t. He raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. “We can’t stay here.”

Something in his tone must have alerted her. She straightened slowly, the stick falling from her fingers to land heavily on the floor. Dust flew, but she ignored it. “What happened? What did you see?”

“They’ve brought in hunters to help them.” He was still disgusted that fellow wolves would stoop to such a level as to associate with the hated hunters.

“Hunters?” He’d forgotten for a moment that she really had no idea of what life was really like for werewolves, for her people. She, like most humans, had no idea of the silent war that raged around them between paranormal beings and bounty hunters.

The fighting mostly took place in desolate, abandoned parts of the cities or in more secluded towns and the surrounding woods. The paranormal creatures didn’t want the entire world to know about them. Survival was hard enough without government and the military hunting them. As for the hunters, they were a breed apart, men and women who didn’t fit into society. Their mistrust of authorities and government kept them quiet. That and the fear they’d end up in a psych ward in some institution if they started spouting on about werewolves, vampires and demons.

He wanted to shelter Alex from the truth, but knew that wasn’t possible, nor was it smart. She’d had a nice, comfortable life before today and for a brief second he regretted having had a part in destroying it, even though he knew that there had been nothing else he could have done. There was no way he could have allowed other wolf packs to take her. They might not treat her with the care and respect they would a full-blooded female wolf, but regard her as little more than a brood mare to give them the children their kind so desperately needed.