Hunted by the Feral Alpha Read online

  “We’ll catch her alone eventually.” Now that they had a plan, a new calm settled over him. Hunt wouldn’t sleep until they had her if that was what it took. “We start tailing her tonight.”

  Savage cracked his knuckles against the table as he eagerly leaned forward. “Oh, I got this.”

  But Hunt didn’t trust the harsh light in the other man’s eyes. The girl could get hurt before she served her purpose. “No, I’ll do it.”

  “Fuck you,” Savage bit out. “This is my plan. Let me sit on her.”

  Hunt backhanded Savage across the face before he really knew what he was doing; just the insolent tone made him see red. “Enough. I don’t need you deciding that it’s time to have a little fun.”

  Which was precisely what Savage did with that government scientist who had been their last good lead back into Project Alpha. He couldn’t be sure what Savage would do if they let him get his hands on the girl with no one else around to rein him in.

  The knife scars on his arms throbbed with the effort it took not to drop everything and hunt the girl down without waiting. He wanted flesh ripping beneath his hands and blood soaking his skin.

  “You need to go for a run?” Savage asked as he picked himself up off the floor. “You seem a little irked.”

  Hunt looked down and saw that the burnished copper color was already glowing underneath his skin. In another few minutes, that skin would harden into a nearly impenetrable armor that was rough and scaled like a lizard’s. Next, his eyes would go black as the iris was eaten up completely by a penetrating darkness. His fingers would curve into something twisted, with sharp claws intended only for tearing into flesh.

  He would become the beast.

  Going for a run was what they called it when the beast forced them out into the night. Only violence, the taste of blood and flesh, or the crack of breaking bone would satisfy the beast enough to force it to recede.

  But Hunt forced himself to calm, shoving his alter back into its metaphysical cage as he maintained the control that had been hard-won and was constantly tested.

  If the girl was lucky she wouldn’t end up the next sacrifice on the altar that he had devoted to the monster inside of him.

  Chapter Two

  “That’ll be $4.79.”

  Sophia pasted a superficial smile on her face—the one that screamed how much she loved customer service, as she handed back change and an overpriced cup of coffee. The customer thanked her but his gaze was already sliding past her and away. Nobody actually paid attention to the person behind the counter. She was a nameless and faceless form who handed out liquid desserts masquerading as beverages, and she kept her contempt for all these laptop-toting assholes to herself.

  The little voice inside of her head that was made up of her worst impulses urged her to throw coffee in the next customer’s face, just to see what would happen. She ignored the desire to commit mayhem just for the fun of it with more effort than should be strictly necessary. If twenty-one years of mandatory Bible study and Sunday School hadn’t cured her of that small trace of evil, then nothing ever would. It just meant that she had to make a conscious choice between fading into near-invisibility and committing felony assault.

  Luckily for her father’s lawyers, she was used to being invisible.

  Except when he walked in. This guy was tall, gorgeous, and brooding in a way that set her every nerve ending on fire. And his eyes didn’t pass over her like she was an inanimate object attached to the cash register. Instead, his gaze settled on her face and stayed there.

  The man’s walk was sedate and deliberate as he approached the counter, as if every muscle in his body remained completely under his control. He’d been coming in every day for the past week or so, but he’d never spoken more than a pleasant word or two to her. All she knew about him was his preference for a double cortado and an everything bagel with no cream cheese.

  “The usual?” she asked when he finally reached the register, trying for a cheeky smile that probably came off like a weird grimace.

  He nodded once without speaking, although a small smile lingered on his full lips. He almost never spoke, just gave her a brief once-over before returning his attention to her face. It almost seemed like he was memorizing her features, lingering a little too long. But he never hit on her or even made small talk.

  When she slid the too-expensive coffee across the countertop, he reached for it at the same time. For a split second, his fingers brushed the back of her hand. The brief touch was like an electric shock.

  She yanked her hand away and looked up at him on impulse. To her surprise, she found him staring back at her with eyes that were more dark and intense than the designer espresso rapidly cooling between them.

  His gaze remained locked on hers for a beat longer than was polite. He was probably wondering why she was such a spaz while Sophia was free-falling into the abyss.

  He finally looked away and the moment was gone. His attention shifted to the little stand full of napkins and condiments. Whatever moment they had shared was officially over. He turned away and didn’t so much as glance back.

  Maybe it was just her moment.

  Sophia tried to shrug it off. But she couldn’t help feeling a little bereft as he moved around the long counter and sat at a table that was just out of sight on the other side of the espresso machine. From experience, she knew that was the last that she’d see of him for the day.

  She couldn’t even shift down to the blender area for a closer look because “Personal Space” Peter was making the frozen drinks for that shift. He would flip his lid if she came within twelve feet of his station, so she might as well have been super-glued to the register.

  Not for the first time, she wondered why she bothered with this stupid job. Her father would lose his mind if he ever found out that she was moonlighting as a wage slave during his campaign season. What if some overeager photog caught a picture of her looking like anything less than a perfectly coiffed Victorian doll, only with slightly less personality?

  Because her father couldn’t just be Dad. He had to be incumbent US Senator John Reynolds of the glorious state of Tennessee. He ran for office for the first time when she was two years old. She should be used to the pressure by now, but his expectations had always been difficult to live up to.

  Her father always campaigned using rhetoric about a traditional way of life and family values. And she was supposed to fit into the mold by playing the part of America’s perfect daughter, all pretty dresses, blank expressions, and not even whiff of controversy.

  Working a part-time job was a small rebellion but not an insignificant one. Her father controlled every aspect of her life, from what college she attended to how much makeup she could wear—spoiler alert, it was none. Minimum wage wasn’t much, but it gave her the smallest taste of freedom.

  And she should be careful with even that small temptation.

  Do I have to remind you why we do this? Her father’s voice sounded almost as real in her head as it would if he were standing right in front of her. The words were a familiar refrain, one more reminder of what might happen if she stopped thinking about the consequences.

  Her mother had been dead for almost ten years, but who she was still hung over everything like a terrible shadow. They never talked about her mother, and Sophia was sure her father tried to think about her even less.

  Sophia used to carry a small picture of her in her schoolbag when she was younger, until her father found it and took it away. Most of the physical memories of her mother had been systematically stripped away. Family portraits, mementos, even her mother’s old clothes, all of it has been hidden away or destroyed. Her father said that the reminder of her mother was too painful, but she’d always suspected it was something more.

  He worried that if she spent too much time thinking about her mother then she’d end up the same way—six feet under and buried with her terrible secrets.

  Most of the time, she tried her best to be precisely what her
father wanted her to be. Sometimes out of duty, other times out of guilt, but most often because she knew how important it was for him to have the perfect family with no hint of skeletons in the closet.

  That was why he sent her to Conscience College, the evangelical Christian enclave in the mountains of West Virginia where you could be expelled for kissing a member of the opposite sex and probably burned at the stake for doing anything more than that.

  Sophia wanted to be more like the automatons that she went to school with. The ones who only wanted to dress in pastel colors and seemed to truly love attending three-hour-long church services several times a week.

  But she wouldn’t ever be like them, and she dreaded the day that her father finally figured that out.

  Because she couldn’t stop the wicked thoughts from creeping through her mind. Fantasies so dark and twisted that she didn’t even want to describe them for fear that words would turn the fantasy into reality.

  The mysterious man with the intense eyes and the expensive coffee habit was the same sort of thing: a fantasy that couldn’t ever become reality.

  She straightened up a stack of coffee cups and surveyed the nearly empty shop. They were in the middle of the afternoon slump, but a few hours more hours remained of her shift. The place was generic, located in a nondescript strip mall that had seen better days. But she couldn’t dare get a job at one of the places closer to campus. Her father had spies among the faculty at Conscience. It would take less than an afternoon for word of her unacceptable behavior to get back to him.

  The only students at Conscience College who worked were the occasional scholarship students from “disadvantaged backgrounds.” The ones only got admitted so they could go back to their communities as warriors for Christ and hopefully infect everyone else. The degree itself was barely worth the paper it was printed on. Most of the majors weren’t even accredited.

  He’d never admit it, but her father didn’t send her to Trinity for an education. The only degree that he wanted her to get was an M.R.S. with a concentration in 2.5 children and a picket fence.

  A few more customers came and went over the next hour, but she couldn’t pick any of their faces out of a lineup if someone paid her. She recognized that she was the one who complained about being invisible, but her thoughts had her distracted.

  And it wasn’t just the sexy, mystery man. She had this sense that something bad was going to happen. Sophia always had a sort of sixth sense about things, one of the few good traits that she’d inherited from her mother.

  It was probably just that today was her last day at Conscience before going home for summer break. Well, not home exactly. Home was a sprawling ranch in Tennessee with a creek running through it and acres of verdant land. Instead, she would be heading to Washington, DC for a series of campaign fundraising events. Her father hadn’t officially made the announcement, but it was common knowledge he was planning a run for the presidency.

  Which would just cement her place at his side as the perfect little robot for the next eight years or so.

  Peter slid a spray bottle and rag across the counter toward Sophia. That was his way of telling her that it was her turn to wipe down the tables. She made a point of scoping for her mystery man as she rounded the corner, but he was nowhere to be seen. He must have slipped out when she wasn’t paying attention.

  Probably for the best. Someone that sexy couldn’t have that much use for a Stepford wife and the kind of life that would make Leave it to Beaver seem X-rated.

  When her shift was finally over, she had less than an hour to get across town and back to campus. She stepped outside into a blast of heat and onto the sidewalk that had waves of steam rising up off of the pavement.

  An unmarked, black panel van was parked across the street from the coffee shop. But the moment that her gaze landed on it, the engine gunned and the van peeled away with a loud eruption of sound.

  Strange, but she decided not to dwell on it. The odd sense of impending doom still hung like a shadow over her thoughts. But as long as the pedo-van was speeding away from her then there was probably nothing to worry about.

  But despite the heat, a cold sweat broke out on her brow. Why couldn’t she shake the sense that something awful was about to happen to her?

  Sophia had only been in DC for an afternoon and her father had already started in on her. There was some charity dinner that was just an excuse to schmooze with potential donors. She’d already made the five-hour trip to the townhouse from school, and she just couldn’t jump right into campaign season without a break.

  Magda, her stepmother, gave her a knowing look over her father’s shoulder as she forced her face into a pained expression that she hoped wasn’t too over-the-top. Her stepmother wasn’t buying her act for a minute, but Magda also wasn’t the one that she needed to convince.

  Senator Reynolds was already dressed for the evening and it was barely late afternoon. His tailored tuxedo had been pressed and his shoes were so shiny that Sophia could see her reflection in them. His cummerbund matched the color of Magda’s manicured nails. They were both so perfectly poised that she was dreading the idea of just washing her hair.

  “This is a very important dinner, sweetheart. Just full of potential donors.” Her father’s Tennessee twang was barely audible. He always talked differently when he left home, like he wanted people to remember he was a good old Southern boy but not so much as to lose respect.

  “Please just let me stay home tonight,” Sophia begged, trying to sound as pathetic as possible. “I promise that I’ll go to the DAR luncheon with Magda tomorrow.”

  Her stepmother was already in her evening finery as well. She wore a floor-length evening gown that was cut high for modesty, but hugged her slim frame. She was an expert at giving off that air of conservative allure that was the epitome of high-class Republicanism. They married when Sophia was thirteen. Magda had been her father’s perfect counterpart ever since.

  Magda checked the slim gold watch on her wrist. ”It’s getting late, darling. We have to go. Just let her stay home. One event won’t make that big of a difference.”

  Her father still looked undecided. He had gotten used to having her do whatever he wanted without complaint, but Sophia also rarely asked for anything.

  “It’s just one night, Dad.”

  “Fine,” he said with a heavy sigh. “But I want you in bed early so you’ll be ready for the luncheon tomorrow. Don’t stay up all night gabbing on the phone with your school friends.”

  School friends? He still treated her like she was a preteen spending all of her time on party lines. She wanted to remind him that texting was a thing but more wisely chose to keep her mouth shut. She was an adult by anyone’s metric, except for her father’s.

  To him, she’d probably still be a kid when she was forty years old and raising children of her own.

  “Of course, Daddy.” Triumph streaked through her as her father bent down to kiss her cheek. He even patted her on the head like a good dog before he left the room. Magda floated out after him on a wave of designer perfume.

  Sophia loved her father, but she figured out a long time ago that what he wanted her to be was fundamentally at odds with who she was. She would never happily be the sedate wife of a social climber who spat out half a dozen kids but still managed to look great in a Chanel suit.

  He sent her to Conscience College even though she’d begged for at least Tennessee State or, God forbid, Cal Tech or MIT. Heathen dens of debauchery and moral disgrace, as he liked to call them. Conscience didn’t even offer a program in computer science. It didn’t matter to him that she understood computers better than people. No daughter of his would go to some liberal Sodom and Gomorrah where girls pierced their entire bodies and slept with a guy for each letter of the alphabet.

  It wasn’t as if anybody went off to a college for an actual education, right?

  Sophia wasn’t even convinced it was her virtue that her father was primarily concerned with, but more the eve
r-present need to avoid any hint of a scandal until he was sworn in as president. Even Chelsea Clinton got to go to Princeton. Apparently Sophia wasn’t that lucky.

  So she had to find other ways of getting an education.

  As soon as her father and stepmother were out of the house, she took a shower, then headed straight to her room and booted up the computer. It was the first one that she’d ever built back in middle school. She’d been updating it ever since with more RAM and bigger hard drives. She’d even replaced the motherboard last year. The beloved old thing was on its last legs and wouldn’t be good for much more than surfing the internet. But at the moment it was her only connection to the outside world.

  Her father would get suspicious if she brought home the server that she kept in her dorm room closet.

  Her little minimum-wage job at the coffee shop was just enough cover the cost of parts and specialty tools.

  Logging on, she pulled up a chat window with a few clicks of the mouse. Some of her group were already online. She wouldn’t be much use to them right now with this crappy machine, but she was a good problem-solver.

  It was a necessary skill for a hacker.

  Her hacking group only did white hat stuff. Legitimate companies used people like her to test out their computer security systems. It required the same techniques as the more malicious stuff, but instead of exploiting the weakness for personal gain they shared what they’d learned with the companies themselves. Usually, she got paid for every vulnerability that they found. It was good for the company because if she could find a weakness then it was only a matter of time before the bad guys found it too.

  Her father didn’t know about any of this. He put up with it when she tinkered with computers as a kid, but he’d made it clear that she wouldn’t be doing any of that for a living. He wanted her to do something respectable and feminine like teach elementary school.