Shifter Alpha Claim 1-6 Omnibus (6 page)

Talyn

“Say something, Talyn.”

I feel like a fish chucked out on a sand spit. Gasping and squirming.

I open my mouth to reply and the doorbell rings.

Arden and I jump at the same time. I give a nervous laugh, and he bounces to his feet. “Let me get that.”

I stand as well. “Don't play protector. You're a lab geek, not a super-hero.”

Arden gives me a crooked smile. “Let a guy pretend, Talyn.”

Someone on the other side of the solid wood door pounds with a fist. A women's voice yells, “Final Enforcement.”

Oh good
. “I'm expecting them,” I explain to Arden as I rush to the door.

I swing it open and blink.

A tiny woman stands in front of me, picking her nail with an illegal switch blade.

I swallow hard. “Identification, please.”

She turns to face me, and flicks her flashing badge with a finger.
Narah Adrienne, age twenty-four, One citation—Exonerated, 2022, vampire hybrid, Level 10 proficient.

I feel my eyes widen, and back up a step. The whole vampire thing still gives me pause.

Adrienne moves in, giving a small shiver as she crosses my threshold. “Seen enough?” Her voice is as tart as a lemon.

I nod, remember who the hell I am, and straighten my spine.

“I'm Enforcer Adrienne, assigned to case number,” she recites in a bored voice, “1001.”

“Nice to meet you,” I manage. “I'm Doctor Talyn Phisher.”

“I know,” she says, sharp eyes taking in my home. She spots Arden, narrowing her golden-green gaze on him.

Arden had backed up when he read Adrienne's badge. Her body is a deadly weapon. Not her weapons.

Her.

“Who are
you
?” she shoots at him, her voice like a club.

“Arden,” he replies quietly. “Who are you to the client,” she rephrases, walking around me and going straight for him.

He retreats.

A ghost of a smile rides her lips.

“He's my friend. He was here for a visit. Can we get down to the brass tacks, Enforcer Adrienne?”

She spins. It's so fast a movement I can't track it. More like a blur. “Brass tacks, huh?”

I'm unnerved and determined not to show it. I nod. “I think there's something stalking me.”

Adrienne flips long corn rows of platinum hair over her shoulder. Her inked body is lithe, sensuously muscled. Not from artificial time in the gym, like what I do just so I'm not a complete flab monster—but from her daily job.

“Something?” she asks, but not like she's really listening. Her catlike eyes flash to mine like twin suns washed by emerald. “Tell me.”

I blink. Seems like I've been doing a lot of that lately.

I recount everything. The blue eyes appearing. The creep from the gym, the stranger who I believe to be the mysterious blue-eyed man appearing—and beating the hell out of Jamie Duncan. When I finish with the way Cochran dealt with everything, Adrienne gives a low chuckle.

I frown. Cochran wasn't even vaguely amusing.

Her finger runs along my sofa table. I notice she's strategically placed herself between my front entrance, and the French glass doors leading to my small patch of back yard. She wants both exits in sight.

“What's your confidentiality policy?” Arden asks suddenly.

She cocks a pale eyebrow. “Are you speaking for Dr. Phisher?”

“Talyn,” I say.

She gives a tight chin dip in acknowledgment.

“No, but I
was
wondering.” I look at Arden and we exchange a look of understanding.

“I don't tell anyone anything.” Narah Adrienne doesn't over-explain things. She's a fact-stater. It makes me curious as to her background.

I'll pulse Google her later. 

She cocks her head, eyeing me. Her eyes glitter like peridot jewels. I can't see fangs, though I'm ashamed to admit I have an almost freak show-act curiosity about vampires. Reality pulsevision just isn't enough.

Arden holds up the baggie with the canine.

Narah tracks it with eyes like a predator. She snatches it before he can take his next breath. We simultaneously gasp.

Adrienne ignores our reaction.

“Where's the original piece that this came off from?” Her eyes light on me with new interest.

Maybe I'm not some quack after all.

I walk to the junk drawer and slide it open.

I step back, sucking in air.

The tooth.
It's gone.

Enforcer Adrienne must see my panic and she's by my side in a blur of pale flesh before I can form a question. “What is it?”

I feel clumsy—thick. “I had it right here—in my junk drawer.”

Narah asks, “How big was it?”

I widen my index fingers to about five inches apart.

Narah's low whistle threads through the kitchen like a creepy string plucked. “Looks like you've got yourself a Lycan problem.”

Arden gives me another look.

Her gaze moves between us, noting the glance. “What's with all the surreptitious looks, guys?”

“We wondered,” Arden says.

Adrienne's lips tilt. “You wondered, huh?”

“What with the world all vamping out,” he says then gives her a guilty look.

“It's okay, Arden—there's a lot of miscommunication.” She seems resigned to that fact.

Arden smiles slightly. “I don't know. You're as lethal as I thought a vampire would be.”

She grins. Fangs appear like sharp little pearly curved claws.

We back away.

“Chill out. I can't smile without some fang.”

I'm as tense as I've ever been in my life.

Arden recovers first. “So you're saying there are Lycans.”

“Yeah.”

I'm pretty sure the world at large doesn't need to know that yet.

We look at each other again, he shrugs. “So what can you do?” I ask, frustrated.

“Depends on what our boy wants.” She lifts a shoulder, black tank perfectly matching black combat pants. Weapons stud her belt, hanging off her like deadly jewelry. Except for her gage plugs in her earlobes, she doesn't wear any. No—I take that back—a slim metal band of Tungsten encircles her left ring finger. 

“That's it,” I fling my hands out. “I don't know
what
he wants.”

Her pupils dilate, capturing my gaze. A weird sensation like static electricity flows over me and is gone. “Quack like a duck.”

“What?” I reflexively laugh.

Adrienne frowns.

Arden cooperatively quacks behind me.

I whip my head in his direction. I'm a little alarmed at how realistic he sounds.

His face is slack, eyes glazed.

I turn back to Adrienne and she says, “Okay—so here's the news: you're a hybrid.”

“A what?” I ask in a choked voice.

“Part-human, part-Lycan.”

I shake my head. It was a mistake to call in Final Enforcement.

She nods. “It's okay. A doctor will find abnormalities during a rudimentary physical. They're really looking for that now.” She chuckles again as though sharing a personal joke with herself.

I'm not laughing. I sit on my bar stool by the kitchen peninsula. Hard.

She continues. “That's why you've got a Changer sniffing around.”

“A Changer?” I ask through numb lips.

“Yup. You're Lycan enough to be changed and he's probably the boy assigned to do it.”

“Blue-eyes?” I ask, though I don't feel like I really need the confirmation.

“How bad did he tear up the asshole—Duncan?”

I don't even pause, “Badly. And fast.”

She nods thoughtfully. “Okay, so he won't hurt you.” She throws up her palms.

A quack sounds.

Adrienne's face screws into annoyance. She looks at Arden. “Stop quacking.”

Arden wakes up.

“That didn't work on me,” I note.

Adrienne looks at me, and I notice for the first time she's sort of pretty beneath all the piercings, tats and gage plugs.

She shakes her head. “A little test of mine. Lycans are resistant to vampire thrall.”

God
. “Well that's something, I guess.”

We glance at Arden. He looks insulted. We ignore him.

Adrienne puts hands to hips. “So you're calling me in to—what?”

“He's
stalking
me—this Lycan man,” I explain to her slowly.

“Don't condescend to me, Dr. Phisher.” Her voice is instantly cold.

“I apologize, that wasn't my intention.”

“Might be natural,” she says coolly, her pale eyebrows rising slowly.

We stare at each other.

Finally she says something that gets my full attention, “He is a protector—not a stalker.”

“I don't want—if I am—Lycan, to be changed or whatever he's planning. He has no right.”

Adrienne's head dumps to her breastbone, and she speaks to the floor. “This isn't about rights.” Her face rises, eyes locking with mine. “You will die without him.”

“Die?”

She gives a sharp nod.

“What's his role?” I ask. I have to ask.

“It's different for Lycans, I guess. For vamp female hybrids, a male Turner brings you over through blood exchange.”

Gross.

She reads my expression and laughs.

“So he's going to fang her?” Arden asks with a nervous chuckle.

“Nope,” she says, “he's going to fuck her.”

Merck

I scent the female vampire hybrid the instant she slides out of her vintage Mustang.

I don't attack for a couple of reasons. One: she's female. Two: she's Final Enforcement. The word on the supernatural street is she has two males. Vampires—one a former Hunter.

My female would never be in a job as dangerous as this one.

I hang back, watching their conversation from my vantage point in a huge ash tree. My talons bite deeply furrowed bark, readying my stance in case the truly bizarre happens.

And Narah Adrienne decides to go berserker on my change.

When Talyn collapses, Adrienne reaches for her, and I jump from my perch.

I loathe what I'll have to do but I can't have anything happen to Talyn.

I rush the back door, shouldering through the glass in a ball of speed. It shatters into tiny pieces.

Non-tempered glass shreds me into ribbons.

A human male shrieks, pinwheeling backwards.

Hair sprouts from my skin as I go wolfen. I shake hard, the glass clinks to the ground as my skin repairs the shallow cuts that cover my exposed flesh.

Narah Adrienne looks up from an unconscious Talyn.

“Get the fuck away from my change, vamp.”

She rises smoothly, a wisp of a female and hisses, standing protectively over Talyn's body. “Do your worst, wolf.”

My eyes flick to the naked silver hardware in her hands.

I charge anyway.

I'm almost on her when two vampires plow through the glass carnage.

Narah's gaze shifts to their presence, and that's all the distraction I need. I backhand her, her head whipping to the left.

Her foot also connects with my chin but she's going down.

The two vamps close in.

They're her mates
, I realize through scent alone. Their claim is all over her, knitted between them in a trio signature of claiming.

And pretty soon, my life will be next thing they claim.

THE END

SHIFTER

An Alpha Claim Brief-Bites® Novelette