Downpour (Alpha Love - A Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 1) (18 page)

Sofie takes deep, shaky breaths, trying to concentrate on not fainting like a girl in a 1950s movie. Gus has brought her to the couch and sets her down; she’s grateful for that and doesn’t think that she would have been able to stand up anyway.

“What...What?” Sofie says the word over and over again, shaking her head in confusion. What she had just seen was impossible, but there was no getting away from the fact that she had seen it.

Gus and Hector look between them, and Gus sighs deeply nodding at whatever Hector’s look has told him. The redheaded man disappears, and it’s not long before he’s back with a bottle of whisky and a glass. He pours a drink that’s more than a double and holds the glass out to Sofie. Despite the fact that she’s not a whisky drinker, she takes the glass, looking up at the man gratefully and lets the warmth of the alcohol take some of her shaking away.

Ashton appears in the room, padding inside in his typical, silent way. At least now it makes sense, if that’s what you can call it, that he manages to move like a shadow, like a hunter, like a predator. He looks at the other men, who nod in understanding and it’s like they vanish, moving just as quietly as Ashton.

“Are you alright?” Ashton moves closer to her, looking over her like he’s checking for any signs of injury.

“I’m not hurt if that’s what you mean. But I don’t think I’d say that I’m alright.” Sofie takes another sip of the honey-colored liquid and takes a deep breath. “What did I just see?”

“Why don’t we start with what you think you saw and go from there?” Ashton strokes her hair. It would be so easy for her fall into the rhythm of his touch and forget how much she needs real answers.

“What I saw isn’t possible. What I saw is a man turn into a wolf. Scratch that, two men turn into wolves. But that’s not possible.” Sofie steals a look over at Ashton who is looking down at his hands, battling with himself. “Is it?”

“This isn’t how I wanted to tell you, but I guess it’s as good a way as any.” Ashton pushes himself up from the couch and starts pacing up and down, stopping abruptly in front of the bookshelf. He takes the old leather-bound book that Sofie had read, the fairy tale and holds it out to her. “You read
The Origin
. There’s a lot about us that you already know.”

Sofie looks between Ashton and the book in confusion. “What I read was a children’s story. How does that help me to understand whatever it is that you’re trying to tell me, or trying not to tell me.”

“When I told you that I would tell you everything, tell you my story, I wasn’t lying. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it’s not easy. No one outside of the pack knows about us, knows about what we are. I’ve never had to do this before. You’d be the first human.” Ashton continues pacing, like he has energy that he needs to expend.

“Pack?” Sofie puts the whisky glass down, not wanting to cloud her brain with alcohol when what she really needs is to be thinking clearly.

Ashton looks over at her, with kindness in his blue eyes, like he knows how hard it is to take all of this in. “That’s what we are; we’re a pack. We’re a family, and we’re all the same.” He pauses, trying to gauge if Sofie is catching on to what it is that he’s explaining.

“And when you say that you’re all the same you mean that you’re all...?” Sofie can’t bring herself to say the word, every scientific bone in her body is laughing at her, like she couldn’t possibly be as big of an idiot as Ashton is taking her for.

“We’re all Lycans, Sofie. Or werewolves, in the common tongue.” Ashton has stopped moving around. He’s stock still, watching her reaction.

“There’s no such thing as werewolves.” Sofie says the words, but there’s no conviction in her voice.

“So how else do you explain what you saw tonight, what you saw in the woods the other night? The big black wolf?” Ashton rakes his fingers through his blonde hair in frustration. He’s angry at himself for letting her find out this way, without him having time to really plan how to tell her.

“You told me it was Gus, that I’d imagined the wolf.” Sofie rubs her temples, trying to make sense of everything that she’s hearing.

“It was Gus. That wasn’t a lie.” Ashton says the words slowly, giving her time to process what it is that he’s saying.

“Gus is a werewolf?” It’s the first time she’s said the word out loud and although she wishes it sounded more ridiculous to her ears, it’s starting to seem not so impossible anymore.

Ashton nods slowly. Sofie buries her head in her hands, trying to contain all the thoughts that her brain is spewing out at her. She feels Ashton take the seat next to her, just close enough for his heat to reach her but far enough away to give her the space she needs.

“This is all a little crazy.” She speaks through the hands covering her face. She half-expects Ashton and his friends to jump out at her when she opens her eyes, laughing at how they’d managed to play a trick on her and get her believing in werewolves. But that isn’t what happens. She feels lost, like she’s the one standing without a chair when the music stops.

“I know that it’s a lot to take on board. But I feel a little...relieved I guess. I don’t want to hide anything from you, no more secrets.” Ashton gently removes her hands still covering her face and looks into her eyes for some clue as to how she’s taking all of this.

She notices that his right hand, where he’d punched the rock earlier that night, it was as if nothing had happened. “Your hand, it’s not even scratched.” She turns it over, looking closely to check she hasn’t missed anything.

“One of the benefits of being like me. We heal pretty quickly.” He looks at her from under his mop of blonde hair, amusement dancing in his eyes. “We can pass it on to other people, too. Didn’t you wonder how the scrapes on your hands and knees just disappeared like they were never there?”

Sofie nods, as if that all makes sense, although she has no idea why. “Who was the kid in the shelter? And why was he all chained up like he was being kept against his will?” Now that the floodgates have opened and she knows part of the story, she needs to know it all.

“He’s new, tonight was the first time that he turned.” Ashton explains patiently, taking a sip of her whisky before continuing. “He knew that it was coming, knew what was going to happen and we did to him what we do to all our brothers and sisters when they go through the first few changes, until they can control it.”

“He can’t control it? Not like you?” Sofie frowns, trying to understand.

“Young weres are under the power of the full moon. They morph for the first time under the moon; it’s what makes us who we are. It takes time for them to learn to control it. Once they do, they can shift whenever they want, full moon or not.” Ashton spreads his hands as if to say ‘that’s everything.’

“So how does it work? You get bitten by a wolf and become a werewolf?” Sofie’s scientific brain goes into gear, needing to get to grips with it all.

Ashton chuckles lightly, shaking his head. “No, that would be the horror movie version. Most weres are born; it’s genetic and just part of who we are. Just like your dark eyes and beautiful face have nothing to do with you, they were passed down. Well, it’s the same with us.”

“So werewol-, weres can’t be made? You said most were born. What about the others?” She turns towards him, feeling the excitement of a new discovery flow through her.

“The first, Lupo, he was bitten. That was how we came to be. He had to make sure that the species survived, so he found like-minded people, people that wanted to help protect man from himself and nature from man and he turned them. That’s how the first few generations came about, they had families, spread out and soon there was no need to turn anyone anymore.” Ashton shrugs, but there’s something in the way that he won’t look at her that tells Sofie that’s not the whole story.

“But you can turn people? If you bite them, you can make a human a werewolf?” Sofie insists, trying to figure out the science behind it.

“It’s not quite that simple, but yes. It’s something that only Alphas can do. It’s part of what makes us different.” Ashton steeples his fingers and leans his elbows on his knees.

“You’re an Alpha? Like the leader of the pack?” Sofie turns towards him, hungry for more information.

“That’s how it works. An Alpha is born to every generation, sometimes it’s passed from father to son. Sometimes it’s completely random. My family has always been Alphas.” Ashton looks at her, clearly catching the hunger in her eyes. “What else do you want to know?”

“Everything. I want to know everything.” Sofie tries to keep her excitement and awe in check. Adrenaline rushes through her, and she has to hold her hands in her lap to stop herself from bouncing around the room. “This is the craziest thing that I’ve ever heard. But I can’t only know part of it, I need to know everything. I’m a scientist, that’s just how I roll,” she explains, shrugging.

“Well, ‘everything’ is going to take some time. It’s more than a 2 a.m. conversation,” Ashton warns with a rueful smile. “How about you ask me your burning questions, and we take it from there?”

“Alright.” Sofie thinks to herself for a few moments, trying to decide which of the million questions she has are the ones that she most wants answers to. “How many of you are there?”

“In this pack, 18. In the whole U.S. probably close to a thousand. In the world? Impossible to say.” Ashton looks at her, waiting patiently for her next question.

“Why are you trying to stop the drilling? Because you don’t want people to find out about you?” Sofie thinks back to the rock samples that he’d switched on her.

“No, because this is our home and once Shale is done with it, it won’t be anymore.” Ashton gets up again, moving around the room as if the very thought of it makes him want to hit something, preferably hard. “Our people, our family have lived at the foot of these mountains for centuries, since before the world was covered in ice. I will not allow our home to be lost to the greed of man. I won’t let it happen.” The conviction in his voice leaves Sofie in no doubt of his intentions, but that doesn’t make the reality of the situation any different.

Sofie walks over to him, to the man who has made her feel more alive than she has ever felt before, the man who she felt like she’s known her whole life when she first saw him, and she knows that all she wants to do is to help him. But now, helping him means telling him the truth. “Ash,” she slides her arms around his waist, and he responds instantly, holding her close to him and looking down at her. “There is nothing that you can do to stop this.” She tries to convey how serious she is, and this isn’t just a throwaway line. “There’s so much oil in this place that there is no way that Luke and Shale Corporation are just going to turn around and walk away from it. But you guys have time, time to move on and find somewhere else, somewhere else to call home.”

“That is not an option.” Ashton’s voice is grim, and his hold on her relaxes. “This is where we belong. We have protected this town, this place—the woods, the canyon, the mountain, the earth, the sky—for centuries. The first made a promise to maintain the balance between man and Mother Nature, to stop him from destroying her. If we let Shale come here and start drilling holes in the ground, then that’s exactly what they’ll be doing.”

Sofie thinks about the mysterious mineral that she found in the ground, the substance that’s unlike anything she’s ever seen. That must play a part in this somehow, it’s too much of a coincidence for it not to. “The rocks, that’s why your people settled here, that’s why you can’t leave.”

Ashton looks at her, frowning, as if this was part of a much bigger story, something that he doesn’t want to get into right now. “Everything in this woods, in this canyon, it has…properties…properties that we have been guarding for centuries. We cannot leave.”

Sofie doesn’t push, despite how much she wants more details and wants to know exactly what he’s talking about.
But isn’t that what got me into this mess in the first place?
She looks down at her feet, unable to meet his eyes. She thinks about the part that she’s played in all this. If she hadn’t sent the sample to Jennie, someone that she thought she could trust, then Luke wouldn’t have any idea of how rich in oil and gas Spring Canyon was. She let her scientific curiosity get the better of her, and now everything that was going to come next was down to her.