Chapter 31 Zack
Chapter thirty-one
Zack
The hair on the back of my neck lifts in warning as I walk between the rows of books in the library. Someone’s been watching me all day, but with so many alphas jammed together and most of them turning curious gazes on me, I can’t pinpoint where the malicious gaze comes from.
I flip through the thin, shiny books that Al calls magazines, searching for more pictures of my pack. An alpha Red “acts” with has his face on many of the pages, and it makes my belly squirm. He was always trying to put his hands on her.
“Al?” I call, craning around a bookcase to find him.
“What?” he snaps, as irritated as I am. I’m used to living on high alert, but it seems to drain his energy.
“This alpha. Why in magazine?”
He takes the booklet and flips it open, scanning the blur of compact lines at high speed. “This is Bradley Jacks, a famous actor. The OCB raided his house and found unregistered haze, so they arrested him.”
“Broke law?”
“Yes.”
“Coming here?”
Al shrugs. “Probably, after he’s been to court.”
I grin. Cal-ee will make sure that hollow alpha ends up here. “Self-defense,” I mutter, thinking of all the ways I can make him pay for trying to steal my omega.
“You really have a mean streak,” Al grumbles, shoving the pages back at me and returning to his book.
“He touch my ohm-ga for acting. Tried to take her.”
“Oh. Yeah, I can see why you’d be pissy, then. But listen, if your omega wants to keep being an actress, you can’t attack every person she works with. You gotta respect her choices.”
“Respect,” I muse. “What mean?”
He glares at me. I expect him to curse me out as normal, but he just shakes his head. “I should at least get paid if I’m gonna play teacher.” He sighs and scratches his head. “Hmm. Respect means that if someone makes a choice you don’t like personally, you need to let it happen.”
His words echo deep in my heart. The only people who matter to me are my pack. If Red or Ri-ckon choose to do something I don’t like, I should let them? “Hard,” I mutter, thinking of the times they’ve said no to me. Would that apply even if Red didn’t want me to be her alpha?
I wander back to the magazine rack, rolling the idea over in my thoughts. Gently I place my hand on my chest, feeling the murmur of the bond between us. My ohm-ga needs me, so that would never happen, but what if she says she wants Cal-ee in her pack? Do I respect that too?
Well, she does want him. I knew that the day I threw him out. But I could never let him be pack while she still felt trapped by the polished alpha. But now? I understand more now. Maybe I can protect Red from Cal-ee’s faults—if he’s sorry.
And maybe Al can help me work through this one. “What if ohm-ga’s choice is another alpha?” I ask.
Al doesn’t answer. As I spin around, the horrid scent of fresh blood perfumes the air. My cellmate dangles in an alpha’s grip, face turning blue as a strap in the man’s hands closes around his neck. Another alpha wheezes nearby, blood pouring from his lip.
I leap forward, grabbing the nearest book as I run. I drive the heavy spine into the attacker’s forehead and grab his wrist, snapping it sideways.
Al drops to his knees beside the fallen challenger, gasping for air.
I turn on the second man, brimming with burning rage. His eyes widen and he backs up, but he’s not fast enough to evade my thrust. My hand closes around his neck.
“Back here,” Al rasps out, holding his throat with one hand and pointing into the closed-off corner behind the bookcase.
I drag the flailing alpha backward, almost tripping over his bleeding companion. I kick the first one for good measure, and then draw back my fist. For the first time in weeks, I release my full alpha fury, burying my fists into his body over and over. How dare they attack my deal-alpha?
“Fuck,” Al hisses, crawling over. “Don’t kill him, Zack!”
I snarl at the intrusion, but Al smacks my arm with the choking belt. It stings, but only a little.
“Listen to me, ya rabid dog!”
I pause, pulling my attack at the last moment. All the things I’ve learned about self-defense and getting out of prison slowly soak through my blind rage.
“Fuck,” I mutter, rocking back from the limp body. This alpha’s far too weak compared to the fighters I used to face. “Not dog,” I hiss to remind myself.
Al falls backward, catching himself with one hand on the bookcase, gasping for breath.
“Al okay?” I ask, steadying him.
He nods. “Thanks to your quick reflexes, yes.” He massages his reddened throat.
The first attacker tries to lurch to his feet, gaze locked on the door. I shoot out a hand and grab his ankle, twisting until he falls with a loud thump.
Al kneels on his neck, and the man convulses. “Do I even need to ask if the Tax Collector sent you?” he asks, oozing with a chilling scent.
“You know how it is,” the alpha whines. “I got kids to put through college.”
Al sneers, voice dark with threat. “Oh, I’m sure they’d be so proud of their papa.” My cellmate pulls something out of his waistband, and I recognize the sharpened piece of wood he showed me on my first day in the cell.
“Go stand at the end of the row,” Al hisses at me. “Yell if anyone comes.”
Keeping watch. Protect your cellmate. Bit by bit, Al’s teaching me the rules for prison. Self-defense, yes, but more important, never let anyone who attacks you get away unscathed.
The alpha behind me screams as bone cracks, and the tang of hot blood thickens the air. When Al rises, pieces of the men’s hands lie on the floor in a pool of blood.
“An eye for an eye, as they say,” Al says, grinning as he wipes his hands and the piece of wood on the alpha’s shirt.
He picks a book from the shelf and wedges his stick up inside the spine.
“They’ll toss all the cells after this, so gotta stash it for now.
” He glances around and sighs. “We can’t hide the fact we were here, so let’s go listen to music and pretend we heard nothing.
We may end up in solitary, but don’t say anything except you were listening to music.
I’ll introduce you to some sounds I bet your pack haven’t shown you. ”
We run over to the counter where a black-and-silver box sits against a wall, and Al plugs in two headsets.
The music he plays sounds like the old pain that used to throb inside my head, back when I couldn’t understand words or tools.
Back when my life had no meaning. I haven’t thought about the old fighting pack in a long time, but they come to mind as I study Al across the table.
He lifts his headset off one ear. “What?”
“You remind me of alpha.”
“Which alpha?”
“The Death Alpha.” I think back, trying to recall what name the kennel betas called him. I wasn’t aware enough back then to know anything but alpha energy. “He killed . . . I don’t know word. Planned, without wasted energy.”
“Ah. We call that efficient or calculating.”
“Maybe. But no speak.” I tap my throat. “Injury here. Still, most dangerous fight alpha.” Come to think of it, he must’ve gotten lucky to be hit there without it snapping his neck, although the kennel men used knives and string on the wound after.
I shake off my daze and turn back to Al. “You same.” I chuckle and show him my teeth. “But less strong.”
He snorts. “Well, if someone like you thought he was dangerous, that’s still a compliment for me.
” Al rubs at the raw line on his neck. “I’m not a good man, Zack.
I deserve to be in prison for breaking the law.
” He grins. “Not that I want to be here. But you make a lot of enemies doing illegal things. If I let those enemies go without punishment, then more enemies come after me. They get bold. But if others fear me, I get attacked less. We call this having a reputation.”
I scratch, feeling sweat from the attack lodging on my scalp. “What Zack’s reputation?”
He chuckles. “A feral, of course.”
His next words get cut off by shouting as others discover the bloodied alphas sprawled between the shelves. Al slips his headphones back on and lifts his chin, telling me to do the same.
I pull the slim metal plug from the machine and tuck it underneath, cutting off the deafening sounds pouring out of the foam around my ears. I’ve had enough of that kind of noise.
If I understand Al correctly, reputation means what others think about me. So what kind of reputation do I want to have? Instinctively, I always wanted to be feared because that meant a better chance of winning challenges. But my life is more than fighting now.
I cock my head, staring into space. Once I get out of prison, the only people I want to have a reputation with are my pack. What do Mine and White Mine think when they look at me?
The bond in my chest stirs, and I relax. What does a reputation matter when I have love? I can ask Ri-ckon what my reputation should be later, when I get back to our den.
Guards pour into the room, shouting instructions.
Al shifts his hands to his head, one eye closing while he looks in my direction.
I think that’s a silent message, but I don’t know what he wants.
I pull my headphones off and copy him, moving to the wall with a faint growl when a guard shoves me to my feet.
“Listening to music,” I say sullenly.
Al snorts as another guard pats his body, looking for the weapon.
“You dirty rats!” the man behind me hisses. “You attacked them.”
“Zack listen to music!” I declare, more stubbornly. “It sound like lots of alphas howling at the moon, and cars honking, and thunder.”
Al laughs out loud this time. “That’s how you perceive heavy metal?”
The guard holding Al shoves him into the wall. “Shut up! You think I won’t pin this on you, with that mark around your neck?”
“What mark?” Al says, still grinning.
This. This is the word he taught me. Calculating.
The alpha guard holding me runs his hand all over my body, as intimate as Ri-ckon but much faster. I growl at the intrusive touch. The moment he hears it, the alpha slams my chest into the wall.
“Tell them you want to see your lawyer, Zack,” Al says, cheek squished to the wall. “Callisto.”
I nod, struggling in his grip. “Want to see Cal-ee. Cal-ee-stow. See lawyer! Zack listen to heavy music.”
The man behind me huffs. “Yeah, yeah. You’ll see your lawyer, after a few days to cool off.” He drags my hands off my head and locks them into metal cuffs. “I’m so fucking sick of these games. Why do we have to mind an imbecile?”
Al smirks into the wall, breathing hard. “You gotta let him make his call first.” He closes one eye at me again.
Calculating. That’s what I need to be in order to reach Ray. And when I get him in my hands, I’ll make sure he doesn’t get up again.
Without killing him.