fate of the alpha - episode 3 by Tasha Black Read Free Book Online

been worth the trouble.
    He glanced at Bonnie. She didn’t look back, but she looked like she was feeling okay. Impressive.
    Teresa stared out the window. She puffed and her face seemed to disappear in the smoke.
    The whole room was getting warmer by the minute. It was nearly unbearable.
    Just as Erik began to think that Teresa had forgotten them, she turned back to gaze at them frankly.
    “Looks like the time has finally come,” she said with a bitter smile. “It’s been so long. So very long. Those of us who know the true calling started to wonder if it might stay quiet forever. To hope that it would. Some wolves have even moved out of pack lands, to mingle with the regular folk. But I knew.”
    What could she be talking about?
    As Erik wondered, he caught a slithering movement out of the corner of his eye.
    He whipped around, but there was nothing there.
    “That’s exactly what they’ve been waiting for,” Teresa continued. “Waiting for us to grow forgetful of our duty. We offered the world our protection, but no one even knows what we’re up against anymore. But I remember. And I knew, when that man came through, the one with the wolf-head cane. I knew trouble was coming. And when Jake told me about the symbols...”
    She trailed off, and her chin wrinkled as her dark brown eye filled with tears. She blinked them back and breathed in deeply through her wrinkled nose.
    “I told him to leave that mess alone. Bring down those tunnels. Bring down the whole goddamn mine, if need be. But he was headstrong, just like his dad. Thought he was invincible. Now he’s gone. They’re all gone. And where does that leave us?”
    Her gaze moved to the window again. The ramrod straightness of her posture only accentuated her despair, and reminded Erik of someone, but he couldn’t think who. Teresa was suddenly beautiful in her sorrow, the curve of her antediluvian belly under the white shift was reminiscent of a tear drop.
    Erik yearned to comfort her, but didn’t know how.
    “Miss Simkins, we are going to do our best to get to the bottom of this,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, though it put him into the cloud of smoke that surrounded her like a halo. “But we need you to help us understand what’s going on.”
    The heat was unbearable. Sweat poured down his chest and underarms. The smoke grew so thick the wallpaper was hardly visible anymore.
    Another wriggling movement in the shadows caught his eye. This time the mere act of trying to track it made his vision blur around the edges.
    Was he getting high?
    Without his heightened wolf immunities and metabolism, he had no tolerance.
    His heart raced madly.
    Everywhere he looked, he caught slithering movements. How many snakes were in this house?
    He looked closer, and the vines in the wallpaper began to squirm.
    Not vines. Snakes.
    Before his eyes they came to life and slid off the walls and onto the floor by the dozens. They were hiding beneath the love seat, waiting.
    Get your shit together, Jensen, he told himself.
    “Ha!” Teresa’s laugh was old and dry, like crumpled paper. “We need an alpha, and you’re not even a wolf!”
    She was right. What was he supposed to do?
    He closed his eyes and tried to go to a mental place far from the smoke and the snakes. There was more at work here than a little pot. He needed to clear his head.
    “There is something loose in those mines, Erik Jensen.” Teresa’s voice sounded far away. “Something evil and hungry.”
    He remembered the desiccated corpses and fought back the urge to retch.
    “And if it gets out,” she continued, “it will kill every last person in Copper Creek.”
    Erik’s first thoughts were of the Miller kids — the little twins with their pigtails, and Zeke, and Mary.
    “And that will be just the beginning,” she said with quiet authority. “If you’re lucky, you’ll die first, or else you’ll watch as it kills everyone you love.”
    Ainsley.
    Erik stood suddenly, nearly