Alpha Mate: BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance (7 page)

Charlotte crashed through the broken door, her silver
daggers in her hands. The light of the waxing moon flickered into
the old, dusty warehouse, throwing crooked shadows across the walls.
The blond woman was on her knees, her dress torn from her shoulders.
Mascara streaked down her face, and her red lipstick was smeared
across her cheeks. Charlotte saw scratches on her arms and neck, but
she didn't seem to have been bitten. Yet.

A werewolf could bite to kill, or turn, its victim. An
ancient, powerful werewolf would be able to turn its victims into
werewolves with its bite. The turning was agonizing, prolonged, and
the victims usually turned into rogues, unless they possessed an iron
will and discipline to control their beast.

A shadow moved and Charlotte saw the rogue walk
languidly towards the woman. His red eyes followed Charlotte as she
circled him slowly. She swallowed as his teeth bared in a feral
grin. She had to be very careful, or the woman would be dead.

Growling, the rogue twined the woman's blond hair
through his claws and jerked her head back, exposing the slender
column of her throat. He raised his other hand to rake a claw down
the side of the woman's face and slowly down her throat. The woman
let out small, panicked sounds, like a wounded animal as he flexed
his barely human fingers and closed them around her throat.

The rogue's tailored suit was crumpled and torn in
places but still largely intact and his body was still human, but his
head was a blur between man and wolf. Charlotte stared into a
pinched human face and saw an overlapping image of a large wolf head
flickering in and out of focus. The rogue was losing control of his
beast, barely able to maintain his human form.

“
Let her go, wolf,” Charlotte grated out.

The rogue cocked his head with a smirk. “Or
what?” His voice was gravelly, the accompanying animal growl
almost drowning out his words.

The silver blades twirled expertly through Charlotte's
fingers, a blur of pure silver in the dark warehouse. She stopped
the dizzying, mesmerizing spinning of the blades by catching the hilt
of the daggers firmly in her palms. She had considered answering the
rogue wolf, but her answer would have been a lie. If she had told
him '
Let her go or you die
,” that would have implied
that if he did let the woman go, he would live. But that wasn't
true, was it? He was not leaving the warehouse tonight.

“
There is no '
or
',” she muttered
absently. It was simply
'You die'
.

The rogue narrowed his red eyes at her. “What?”

She shrugged.

And with that small movement, she quickly and quietly
eased one arm back and threw the dagger.

The rogue's eyes widened and he let out a rough curse as
the silver spun through the air. He released his victim partially to
jerk to the side. The knife missed his heart and lodged squarely in
his shoulder with a hiss. Smoke and blood issued from the wound as
the skin and flesh around the silver blade began to burn.

The rogue's
face
began to contort as he gritted his teeth against the pain. His face
and body were contorting and jerking, as his wolf came to the fore.
The burn of the silver and his own maddening rage was shredding his
tenuous hold over his beast. He wouldn't be able to control his
shift, his wolf, and in a matter of seconds, the wolf would take over
completely.

Charlotte watched his agonized, angry shift from man to
wolf, trying to aim her remaining dagger at his heart. But with the
violent spasms and rapid shifting of his shape, she couldn't quite
make out his exact form. She could see both the man and the wolf at
the same time, their shapes blurring and overlapping as bones snapped
and muscles bulged and twisted. Skin gave way to fur, and the rogue
fell to the ground, then arched his back sharply, his hackles raised.

The woman was thrashing wildly in his grip, her mouth
wide open in a silent scream. The fingers around her neck had become
long, curved claws and were gouging into her tender flesh.

The dagger was still embedded in the wolf's shoulder,
and around the silver, there was no fur, just a patch of sizzling,
blackened skin. The rogue let out a howl, his black fur bristling,
his fangs sharp and dripping. The rogue wolf was huge, with glowing
red eyes crazed with blood lust and pain. He released the woman to
try to claw out the dagger in his shoulder.

Charlotte hissed at the woman, who was frozen to the
spot, gaping and whimpering. “Move! Run! Get away!”
But the woman didn't and couldn't move at all. She was either too
scared or too stupid to scramble away to safety, to at least try to
save her own life.

Charlotte flicked her eyes back to the wolf, her dagger
poised in her right hand. The rogue wolf was thrashing about too
violently for her to get a good aim. She had to bury the blade in
his heart. And she couldn't afford to miss.

With one vicious swipe, the rogue gouged the blade out
of his shoulder. The blood soaked dagger clattered to the ground and
skidded a few feet to Charlotte's left. Her eyes snapped from the
spurting wound in the wolf's shoulder to the dagger glinting darkly,
just out of her reach. Silently, she began to inch towards the
dagger, slowly lowering herself to a crouch.

The wolf's glowing eyes locked on her, and even before
she could tense to attack or defend, he had flown across the room.
In a blur of fur and fangs, he slammed into her, knocking the dagger
out of her hand and pinning her down with his claws.

She struggled hard, kicking and twisting and spitting.
The wolf seemed to smile down at her, a low growl rumbling from his
throat. As she writhed furiously, she saw those wolf eyes lower from
her face to her chest, his ears twitching as he listened to the
hypnotic pounding of her heart. She knew he could scent her fear,
her human sweat and blood, and he wanted the human heart beating in
her chest.

No!

She kicked out in a frenzy, her fingers scrabbling under
his claws to try to reach her dagger. She could almost reach it.
Just an inch more...

Just as she managed to flick the edge of her blade with
her nail to send the dagger spinning towards her splayed fingers, the
rogue caught her movement at the corner of his eye. His claws
slashed across her chest, ripping her leather coat and t-shirt. As
Charlotte bit down a scream, his jaws closed over her forearm, the
arm that was reaching for that blessed dagger.

When his serrated teeth sunk into her flesh, the scream
that she had tried so hard to contain finally exploded from her. She
had not wanted him to have the satisfaction of hearing her scream.
But...this—this pain burnt worse than the fires of hell. It
was like a million knives twisting into her arm, stabbing and
spreading through her flesh. The pain spread from her arm to every
muscle in her body like wildfire, raging and scorching and
destroying. Every nerve exploded, and she almost snapped her spine
in half at the violence of her screaming convulsions. Every cell in
her body was in revolt, rebelling against her attempts to calm them
down, and manage her own unmanageable pain.

As she arched her back in agony, her chest heaving and
rising with her own tormented breaths, through her hazy vision, she
saw the wolf slashing down towards her chest. He was preparing to
rip her heart out, and devour it.

“
No!”

She screamed as she felt his claws start to sink into
her flesh. Despite the unrelenting, wrenching pain that was wrecking
her entire body, she held on to what was left of her strength and her
senses to try to twist away. No wolf would have her heart. She
would kill him!

But to do that, she had to not die.

As her scream reverberated through the shadows and
swirled around her in a vortex, it seemed that her own humiliating
scream would be the last sound she heard. The pain kept escalating,
until to her immense shame, only one thought throbbed in her
shattered mind. Perhaps death would be a release.

No, death was not a release. It was an escape. And
only cowards
tried to
escape.

Charlotte caught the hilt of her dagger in her hand, and
she flicked the blade up, aiming it straight towards the wolf's
heart.

Die, wolf!

The claws lifted from her chest suddenly as a shadow
flew before her blurry eyes, knocking the rogue wolf away from her.
There was a thunderous bellow, and she lifted her head to see a tall,
powerfully built man wrestling with the black wolf in the middle of
the dirty warehouse. In her confused mind, he looked too much like
the man who had been following her, stalking her while she stalked
the rogue.

My sexy stranger
,
she thought deliriously.

Clutching her bleeding arm to her stomach, Charlotte
struggled up and limped to her fallen daggers, keeping her eyes on
the fighting pair. “Run,” Charlotte wheezed to the
woman, who was blubbering and muttering incoherently in a corner,
hugging her knees. The woman simply stared up at Charlotte with
wild, uncomprehending eyes. “Go home, now. Go!” With
her good arm, Charlotte hauled the woman to her feet and shoved her
towards the broken door. “Keeping running, and don't stop!
Go!”

With a squeak, the woman obeyed, running madly out of
the warehouse with tears gushing from her eyes. Charlotte turned
back, and gasped.

There were two wolves grappling on the floor.

Where was her sexy stranger?

She took a step forward, and gasped.

Was that...
him
? That fierce wolf with the brown
fur and golden eyes?

The two wolves were a blur of black and brown, fur and
blood. Claws and teeth glinted and tore into muscle and tendon.

Staring at the two wolves which were locked in a fight
to the death, Charlotte took a painful, staggering breath and raised
her daggers.

As she narrowed her eyes at the large brown wolf, she
felt an odd pang in her heart. Why, oh why, did her sexy stranger
have to be a werewolf?

Now she would have to kill him.

Swallowing hard, she crept forward. Her Final test had
just gotten that much harder.

Now she had not one, but two, werewolves to kill.

Oh joy.

As Lucas extricated himself from the maddening throng of
humans and paranormals, he saw Charlotte turn the corner at the end
of the street and vanish from his view. He locked onto her scent and
growled, the hunter fully engaged. In no time at all, he had located
the old warehouse squatting at the far end of the deserted street.
He was just circling the perimeter when he heard her scream.

Charlotte's scream was filled with anger and anguish.
It wasn't a cry for help. It was more like a war cry, inciting him
to battle.

His mind and body
responded to his mate's scream with a violence and fervor that was
unparalleled. Wrath and blood lust surged through his beast, as he
tore
through the weak, metal
fence and flew straight towards the entrance to the warehouse.
His
wolf eyes
could see shadows
moving inside,
and he
could scent his mate...and her blood.

She was bleeding!

That rogue had hurt his mate!

With a bellow, he slammed straight into the black wolf
that was snarling over his mate, digging his dirty claws into her
chest. How dare he touch her!

A current of pure energy and electricity streaked
through his body, igniting his shift from man to wolf. Between one
powerful heartbeat and the next, he had shifted completely into wolf.

Lucas rolled on the floor with his jaws snapping
ferociously at the rogue. His teeth snagged on matted black fur, but
the rogue was thrashing and twisting so violently he couldn't clamp
down on the bastard's neck. The rogue clawed at Lucas, aiming for
his heart and his eyes, but Lucas was faster and stronger.

Lucas shook away his rage-filled vision, which was
drenching the whole scene red and clouding his judgment. He had
never lost his senses and his control over his wolf, but things were
a little different when it came to his mate. The thought that this
rogue had hurt her made his beast rise to the fore, every animal
instinct and human emotion swirling and swelling within him. Fury
and pain made him strike out recklessly and ruthlessly. The instinct
to possess and protect his mate blinded him to the fact that she was
silently advancing towards them with her daggers raised in her fists.

Lucas drew back for an instant, his eyes darting to
Charlotte. He shouldn't be fighting blindly like a crazed animal.
Doing so would only endanger his mate. He saw that the blond human
woman had scrambled out the door and made it to safety even as she
blubbered and shrieked hysterically.

Lucas held the rogue wolf down and saw the hunger and
madness churning in those glowing red eyes. Even as he struggled,
the rogue's red eyes kept flicking over Lucas's shoulder and a
ravenous growl told Lucas that the rogue wanted to claw out the
furiously beating heart of that delicious human Enforcer and devour
it. Rogues usually started by catching strays and eating their
beating hearts. Devouring a live heart gave rogues a fix of added
strength and power, and gave them a high. It was like being hooked
on drugs. More was never enough. From killing small animals, the
rogues soon hunted humans and paranormals in order to rip their
hearts out of their chests while they were still alive and screaming,
and eat the quivering, convulsing hearts.