The Alpha Dating Game: An Extremely Sensual BBW Shifter Romance (16 page)

They dashed down the corridor into another wing. Here, the family bedrooms were clustered. In his father’s bedroom, there was a door to a secret passage. The family had built it just in case the Alpha needed to make a quick exit.

Just as they rounded a bend to enter the corridor leading to the master bedroom, they stopped short. Caleb faced them with a knowing sneer.

“Going somewhere with the Sacrifice, brother?” he said.

SHOWDOWN

Jessica’s blood froze in her veins.

Caleb was standing before them with a knowing smirk on his handsome face.

“Let us pass, Caleb,” Kyle said.

“I know where you’re going and it isn’t for one of your fuck trysts,” Caleb said. “You’re going to the passage in father’s closet.”

“I’ll be going away for a while,” Kyle agreed. “And I’m not going to be Alpha any longer. You’re welcome to the position, brother. I know you’ve always coveted it and you’ve always resented me for being first.”

“First, brother, in age, but not everything else.” Caleb puffed out his chest. “And as future Alpha, my first task will be to stop you and make sure the Sacrifice fulfils her purpose.”

“Over my dead body,” Kyle growled.

“That can be arranged, and with pleasure.”

Caleb sprang at his brother. Kyle was waiting for this and the two brothers fell to the floor, rolling. Jessica could only watch helplessly. Punches were exchanged. Hard flesh contacted with hard flesh.

Kyle got up to his feet and so did Caleb. Caleb picked up a vase from the floor and threw it at his brother. Kyle ducked. The vase sailed over his head and smashed onto the floor. Kyle retaliated by flying at his brother and throwing a vicious kick which caught Caleb in his solar plexus. Caleb’s back thudded onto the wall.

They were both making spectacular noise. Jessica was glad for the music thump downstairs, but there was always the danger of someone being on this floor and coming to check them out. It was a very large house after all.

“Oooof!”

Caleb doubled over, but quickly recovered. He took a swipe at Kyle, which caught him on the jaw. Both brothers were clearly trained in the fighting arts. More hooks and upper cuts were exchanged. More kicks, aimed high and low. Jessica’s heart wrung each time Kyle was hit, though she suspected he was far tougher than she gave him credit for.

Then something happened. Something she wasn’t prepared in her wildest dreams to witness.

Caleb’s clothes started to rip. Jessica watched, aghast, as his shirt split right in the middle across his back, which was rapidly expanding. Fur sprouted out alarmingly as his limbs and entire frame started to elongate. Jessica had grown up on a staple of supernatural TV shows in addition to the usual fare but she was shocked to see it happening right here before her eyes.

In a couple of blinks, Caleb had metamorphosed into something twice his size and ten times as deadly. Jessica realized it was a large brown bear. The bear was so tall as to completely crush against the ceiling, which had to be at least twelve feet high.

But Kyle was transforming as well. Jessica felt faint. This was
her
Kyle. Kyle whom she held in her arms and made sweet love to. But he was turning into something exactly like his brother. It all took only a matter of seconds, but to Jessica, every one of those seconds was stretched to slow play clarity. She could almost see every hackle sprouting from Kyle’s arms, every one of his canines lengthen. And in the end, he was just as completely unrecognizable to her.

Both bears crouched beneath the ceiling and sprang at each other. Tables, paintings, objects, vases were all knocked off and down. This time, glass splintered, furniture everywhere broke and collapsed. The din dwarfed even that of the music coming from downstairs.

Jessica was afraid. Terribly afraid. She couldn’t even tell the two bears apart as they tussled and clubbed each other. They were both the same color and they both possessed the same ferocious charge. Someone was surely going to come up now. Maybe it might be Jericho, who was bound to be an even bigger and more ferocious bear.

How did she feel about the man she loved being a shapeshifter?

Her heart contracted painfully. Why was she even ruminating over this when the man she loved (loved!) was in danger of being murdered? She was now certain that she had been caught in some terrible shapeshifter web and Kyle was trying to prevent her from being hunted and killed by his family.

She couldn’t let him die because of it!

But which one was he? She couldn’t tell them apart, God help her.

She must do something.

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard footsteps coming up. And whoever it was coming upstairs, he or she was bound to be able to tell the bears apart and come to Caleb’s aid. She couldn’t let them get Kyle.

But what could she do?

Instinct made her bolt to the nearest room. No, she wasn’t trying to run away. She needed
something
. But what could go against an oversized bear? The room she was in was large with several sections. She rifled through a chest of drawers for something sharp . . . like a knife maybe. But who would keep knives in a bedroom?

Then something caught her eye. It was the glint of metal.

A gun!

She realized she was probably in Jericho’s bedroom and this was his gun. She took it out. She didn’t know if it was loaded or not and she had never held a real gun in her entire life, let alone fired one. It felt sleek and smooth in her hand. Without thinking twice, she ran out of the bedroom just in time to see one bear on top of the other. The bear’s fist was raised to deliver a crushing blow to the other bear’s skull.

It would be a death blow.

Jessica raised the gun and aimed it at the bear with the advantage. This was one time when size did matter. The target was so huge that she couldn’t possibly miss.

Please don’t let it be Kyle.

She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun went off.

THE TUNNEL

The bullet whistled in the air and struck the bear. He yowled and turned furiously.

Uh oh, Jessica thought.

A patch of red blood appeared on his side where she had shot him, but he did not seem to be worse for the wear. Instead, he got off the other bear. He was growling and very obviously angry. She backed away. How fast could a bear run? Could she outrun a bear?

She sensed she might not get the chance to find out because the wounded bear howled and started his charge towards her.

This was not Kyle, she knew. She had shot the correct bear and not a moment too soon. But now he was mad. He would tear her from limb to limb. Her hands shook as she pointed the gun again and pulled the trigger.

Click
.

Oh no. The barrel was empty this time.

The bear which was Caleb lunged at her, growling. His massive shadow blackened the walls. She cringed against the wall and closed her eyes, preparing to be devoured. Maybe she could melt into the wall. There was a lot of snarling, which caused her eardrums to thrill harshly, and then a cry . . . cut off abruptly.

A heavy thud.

She still stood there. There was no pain.

She tentatively opened her eyes.

The other werebear stood over the inert body of Caleb.

Even as she watched, disbelieving, both of them transformed back to their human forms. Both were naked. Caleb lay there, bleeding from his side, and completely knocked out. Kyle bent over him and lifted his arm.

“He’ll live,” he said. His hair was tousled and a horrible bruise was starting to appear on his chest. There was a cut beneath his left eye, and blood was trickling out of his right ear.

Her heart went out to him. “You’re hurt,” she cried.

He shook his head. “I’ll live too.” He got to his feet. “Now we really have to go.”

He took her hand and pulled her to the bedroom she had just exited.

“Come.”

He locked the bedroom door behind him. They rushed into a very large walk-in closet. Kyle opened one of the doors. Women’s dresses and gowns adorned the hangers inside, arranged neatly in plastic sheaths.

“My mother’s clothes,” Kyle explained. “My father still kept them in here after she died.”

He swiped them away, revealing the back of the closet. Kneeling, he searched for something at the bottom. He pressed it and the closet door slid away, revealing a dark passage.

“Wait,” Jessica said, “you need clothes.”

Outside, the main bedroom door rattled. There came a resounding thud. Someone was trying to break the door down.

“No time. Come on, Jessica.”

They both scrambled into the hole and the panel shut noiselessly behind them. The passage was very, very dark, but Kyle held her hand tightly and he seemed to know where he was going. Maybe he had enhanced night vision. She could only hold on to his hand and let him lead her in the darkness. She could hear the thud thud thudding of the music through the walls, getting louder.

“Stairs,” he whispered.

Her foot almost stumbled into what appeared to be thin air, but she quickly regained her balance. Kyle guided her down what seemed to be an interminable flight of stairs and she was thankful when she stepped on level ground again. The air was colder here and more humid, and she sensed that they were deeper in the ground. Perhaps basement level.

They went on this path for many minutes more. The music receded and all she could hear was the beating of her own heart. Then finally, Kyle scraped at something. A cover maybe. A clang, and a square of half-light appeared. The dancing foliage of trees was framed against a dark, moonlit sky.

Kyle helped her up and out. He was amazingly strong. All this while, she had been terrified that someone would be following them, especially with the mess they left behind. But no one was around. They were in a wooded area, and the trees were dark shadows shivering in the rather cold wind.

“Let’s go before they catch us,” Kyle said.

“Where are we going?”

He paused. “Beats me if I know.”

Their situation was so overwhelming and ludicrous than she couldn’t help laughing out of sheer tension. He had lost everything. So had she. And he did it all for her. They couldn’t go back to what they were. They had nothing. They were penniless and homeless and free to start again.

“I love you, Jessica,” Kyle said fervently, “and I promise I will never let anything bad happen to you.”

“I love you too, Kyle.”

They embraced, and together, they sped off into the night to forge a new life.

VIRGINITY

They were in a motel room far away from her college and the Atreides and everything they once knew. Kyle had contacts who could help him and they were laying low for a while until he could rustle up enough funds to decide what they should do next.

Kyle gave Jessica the low down on everything. She was dazzled at first, and later sober as she realized what could have almost happened to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said with feeling. “I think I knew from the very first time I met you that I couldn’t go through with it.”

“I understand.” Her heart felt weighted with the burden of what both of them had gone through and narrowly missed. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know if they are looking for us. Certainly my brother will not let what I did to him go unavenged. I’m afraid for you too. We are now fugitives, both of us. If I’d thought you wouldn’t be in danger anymore, I’d ask you to run away as far as possible from me and go back to your life. But you know who we are now and what we do. They won’t let that pass.”

“I know.” Her spirits sank. She was every bit as much as marked as he was. A target to be hunted down and brought back to justice.

The trouble was not knowing. There were so many things they didn’t and couldn’t know. They didn’t know, for example, what would happen if a virgin was not sacrificed to the Beast that night. They didn’t know if the world as they knew it would end, or it was all a meaningless but deadly tradition that should be put to rest once and for all. They didn’t know if Caleb Atreides was more wounded than he initially seemed, and if Jericho Atreides was sending his sniffers after them.

They didn’t know squat, and that was terrifying. So the only thing they could do was flee and pick up clues along the way as to what would happen.

“But meanwhile, there’s something we have to do,” Kyle said.

They were sitting on the bed, fully clothed.

“Get money?” she asked.

“Something more important than that.”

“More important than money?”

“Much, much more important.” He was serious and teasing at the same time.

They faced each other on the bed. He leaned over, lifted up her chin gently with two of his fingers, and kissed her. She responded by hungrily parting her lips and welcoming his tongue. There was so much meaning in that kiss. So much love and loss and regret and hope. His tongue was nuanced as he explored her mouth, danced with her own tongue and circled each corrugated top of her molars.