ALEX #3
A cry of panic escapes me, and I squirm out from under Oswald’s stiff corpse.
The room is dim, but I recognize him anyway.
My stalker.
He came, but too late, I already took a life…
Why didn’t he appear earlier? Or maybe he did? Maybe he saw I handled it…
Making wheezing sounds, I sob because all the emotions and nerves avalanche through my system.
I slide off the bed and crash onto the floor, panting desperately.
Why! Why the fuck didn’t he show up five seconds earlier?! I need to say this!
"Five seconds earlier and I wouldn’t have killed him!" I shout.
The masked man tilts his head in a strange way, almost as if wanting to say: "Are you fucking kidding me?"
Then he steps half a pace to the side, turns slightly, and almost theatrically points behind him.
I lean to look there.
He’s pointing at the door.
Oh, fuck. Wow.
There’s a piece of metal and some fallen plaster on the floor.
Did he break the door down? Right. That could have taken this extra five seconds I needed…
I guess my urge to be super secure backfired, it slowed my rescuer down.
At the same time, I realize that it was a security door, anti-burglar! Damn… and he still managed to break it down?
I suppose I have been living under the illusion of safety. Alphas are fucking gorillas.
But this is not important now, and I press my hands to my temples.
I’m about to go crazy.
The body! I don’t want to look at Oswald’s body.
"I killed him! I have no idea how, but I killed him," I blurt out in despair and resignation.
My dark protector approaches the bed and slowly leans over Oswald. He turns him to the side to glance at his face; there is a short silence. Then he straightens up.
I don’t know why, but the stalker doesn’t seem particularly shocked. At least not in his body language, since I can’t see his face, the dark mask is tilted toward me, and the room is quiet.
Eh, crap. I don’t know what to say. I clench and unclench my fingers, stare at him, and then it dawns on me that he is also an alpha and I am still in heat!
Would he… will he?
But there are more important things right now.
Reluctantly, I force myself to glance at the still shape on the bed.
"Will you help me with this?" I whisper weakly, probably the kind of thing any panicking first-time killer would say after committing a crime…
The man slowly turns his head toward Oswald again, as if thinking it through.
Since the room is dim and the only light comes from the living room, I reach toward the nightstand lamp. I turn it on. Now the whole crime scene is perfectly visible.
Oswald’s pants are down to his knees, his skin so gray he looks like he’s been dead for days.
When the man sees it, he slowly turns back to me, then points at Oswald and then at me.
I’m not sure what he’s asking, but I give the only answer I can think of.
"He didn’t shove it in," I mutter. "He was about to, but then something in me snapped…" I let out a shaky breath. "And I just… took his life energy, or something," I say, realizing how absurd it sounds, how impossible it should be.
Feeling like I’m about to faint from stress and shock, I slide down to the floor beside the bed, resting my forehead against it.
"Something is wrong with me," I whisper.
I wish I knew everything about what happened when I was born, because something inside me, some leftover, subconscious information, tells me something strange took place back then.
The man stays silent.
The room is eerily quiet; the only thing I hear is the deep, steady, soothing beat of his heart.
And closing my eyes, I listen to it, sink into it…
"Your heart," I whisper. "It beats beautifully; it reminds me of someone I once loved," I murmur, lifting a hand to my neck, searching for my little tab pendant.
Then suddenly I ask the question.
"Why did you come here again? How did you know? Are you stalking me for real? All this time?"
The man stays silent, unmoving.
Somehow I don’t expect him to answer. But I think about it for a moment.
And then the thought flashes through me again. I remember what Bay once told me in an almost shy, uncertain way. That he could sense a danger to him and… to me. It was why he ran off from the school then, on Halloween.
That would fit perfectly, wouldn’t it?
My eyes move over the man’s body, analyzing him.
He wears a black tactical quarter-zip shirt made of breathable fabric that clings to his broad chest. Over it, he has a lightweight black softshell jacket, unzipped, the kind used by private security contractors.
His pants are dark ripstop cargos. Black tactical gloves cover his hands, and his boots are matte black, military-grade tactical boots.
And, of course, he wears his signature mask over a balaclava.
So the question I once asked is back:
Could he be… Bay?
Something doesn’t fit though.
He seems taller, better built than Bay. But he could grow. And the scent? It isn’t his. These are clearly the pheromones of a stranger… though I’ve heard of artificial pheromone sprays. These may smell very natural, and science keeps advancing. Who knows what’s on the market.
Fuck, my confusion grows, I don’t know anymore, maybe it isn’t him. Maybe someone he sent?
"Who are you?" I whisper weakly.
A short pause.
The stalker lifts his hand and grabs the edge of his mask, but then sudden panic hits me.
I grab his elbow and stop it mid-move.
"No! Don’t reveal yourself! If you’re him… it would… crush me. Don’t fall out of the role, please."
His hand drops.
Why did I stop him?
I realize that if he had said he was Bay, it would have destroyed me.
Torn me into pieces. That once again he would be doing something wonderful, helping me, protecting me, and yet I still would NOT be allowed to have him.
It would feel like being shown a treasure and then having it locked behind bulletproof glass.
Maybe it’s better to keep lying to myself, clinging to hope, fantasizing, hesitating, yes or no, yes or no…
My head keeps buzzing and spinning, my emotions boiling.
But there is still a corpse in my bedroom.
"Will you help me… with him?" I whisper even more quietly.
He nods once and turns toward Oswald, no questions asked, straight to it. Then he leans down and lifts him almost effortlessly.
"So… you’ll take care of… everything?"
No answer, but it’s not needed. I know he will, I love him for it…
Wait, what the fuck did I just think?!
I love him?! Where did that come from so naturally, so effortlessly, almost as if my body suggested it to me?
I’m clearly in a bad place now, my mind confused. I need to get a grip.
When he turns to leave, a sudden wave tears through my body, my heat demanding its rights, refusing to be smothered by everything that just happened.
"Wait," I shout.
He stops, the black mask turning toward me.
"I’m in heat, in case you somehow didn’t notice, which I doubt, but I admire your self-control, it’s very gentleman-like," I rattle out at a hundred words a second, "But I’m suffering, it’s my first heat, unfortunately other people repulse me for some reason…
" I almost choke on the words, "you’re the strange exception, somehow… " and I feel my cheeks burn.
A long moment of silence passes before I mumble, "Will you help me?"
I can’t believe I just asked a stranger alpha to fuck me through a heat.
He seems to stare at me through his mask.
Both his hands are under Oswald right now, but the fingers of one hand make a small patting motion, like he’s tapping Oswald on the shoulder.
I try to guess what it means, maybe something like "I have a more urgent problem first."
Then he turns and walks out.
Fuck.
I run after him, because I realize it’ll be hard for him to open the door while carrying a body, so I don’t say anything, I just push the door and he steps out into the darkness.
I look at the broken lock.
"Hey, the lock is busted…" I mumble, but the wind drowns out my words.
To my surprise, the stalker doesn’t head toward the street but toward the back fence where the cables from the torn-down cameras are fluttering, and I watch him lift Oswald up and toss him over the fence before jumping after him with surprising ease for someone with such a massive body.
So I’m alone now. In an open house. In heat.
And I killed a man, though what scares me most is that I don’t feel enough guilt, even if maybe I should, because I’m sure Oswald wouldn’t have tried to rape me if he hadn’t slipped into rut, and alphas have a hard time breaking free of it, especially young ones when the hormones hit and reason goes dark.
I killed him.
He had parents, maybe siblings, he was twenty-two with his whole life ahead of him, but he made the mistake of coming here, to the house of a fucking… who?
Who the hell am I?
What just happened, and why…
I slam the door shut, but the lock won’t catch. I brace the handle with a chair to secure it at least a little. I need to call some kind of carpenter service, but there’s a more urgent problem.
I go back to my phone and stare at it with focus.
There’s only one person who might know something about my past, it’s more intuition than certainty. I grab the phone and look at the name.
Lake Nolan.
But then another wave of cramps hits my lower belly, folding me in half as the phone slips from my fingers.
Quickly, I need to find my dildo or I’ll lose my mind! If I hoped the stress would stop my heat, it really didn’t.
I return to my room, but the moment I look at the bed, at the ruined nest and the place where Oswald’s dried-out corpse lay, a full-body shudder goes through me.
Shit, I can’t be here, I can’t lie on that bed.
My poor dildo is somewhere near the pillow where he threw it, so I grab it and flee that awful room, heading up to the second floor.
Dereck’s bed is still there, covered with a throw, empty and untouched.
I fall onto it and spread my legs, pushing the dildo into myself to quiet this awful, pulsing ache.