Alpha's Last Fight: A Paranormal Shapeshifter BBW Romance (6 page)

“Looking good yourself,” I said. I didn’t lie—he looked handsome, and his clothes were tailored perfectly, as always. But the attraction that I’d carried around during my high school years was nowhere to be found. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” he said, a bright spark in his eye. He opened the car door for me and I slid into his world, a world that smelled like leather and cologne, a world full of things that I couldn’t afford. I determined to smile my way through the evening and scoot away at the end of the night.

Maybe it was coming home to someplace that felt not-quite-home. Maybe it was that Tommy seemed so eager to see me. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I really didn’t want to get involved in a relationship right now. Especially with the guy I’d already hurt so badly to begin with. He didn’t notice my reluctance, or if he did, he didn’t care. Smiling like it was our first date, he revved the engine and we pulled away into the night.

I thought that he might be taking me downtown, to one of the fancy new restaurants that my dad had told me had been popping up all over the place. But Tommy took the exit onto the road that headed out, away from downtown. We drove out of town, and then kept driving. Warehouses lined the roads in this part of town, tall hangars with walls of sheet metal and high fences surrounding train yards.

“Where are we going?” I asked again.

“You’ll see,” he said. He patted my knee, and I shrunk back into the seat. The dress stretched tight over my thighs, and I tugged the hem down a bit, avoiding his hand. My eyes tracked the streetlights as they passed by outside of the window.

“It’s amazing, really,” he went on. “How much has changed since you left.”

The car slowed and we turned down a side street. Barbed wire topped the fences here, and the streetlight flickered overhead.

“This place opened up three or four years ago. At first it was just hillbillies and those unemployed assholes who just drink all day, but it’s started to get a bit of a reputation. Regular, reputable folk started going, ironically at first. But now it’s the place to be.” he said. I turned to him. His eyes gleamed with the reflection of the streetlights through the windshield. Whatever our destination, he seemed to be pretty proud of it.

“Let me guess, they’ve finally opened up one of those Bondage Clubs I’ve heard so much about. Kinky...”

“Ha! I forget how funny you are,” Tommy said, chuckling as he pulled into a parking lot. There were a ton of cars parked outside of the warehouse – over a hundred, if I had to guess. There were a few guys standing outside near their truck, dressed in nice pants and polo shirts, and they watched us roll past.

“What is this place?”

“So curious! You’ll see,” Tommy said, patting my knee again. I didn’t even mind this time. I
was
curious. Why were there so many people on the outskirts of the worst part of town, dressed up? What were they here for?

After opening my car door for me, Tommy held out his arm. I took his elbow and made my way through the parking lot, my cardigan clutched close around me. It had been a while since I’d worn high heels, and I almost stumbled once over a curb. The warehouse loomed large in front of us, and I could hear a noise coming from the inside, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

The security guards standing at the front door nodded at Tommy as we walked forward. The noise inside was a dull roar behind the walls, and as they opened the door for us the sound exploded into pure cacophony.

The lights inside were blinding. Rows upon rows of people stood facing the center of the warehouse. Shouts and screams rose over the cheering of the crowd, and I felt my chest constrict. I could barely breathe, the air was so full of heat from all the screaming bodies.

I stood on tiptoe to see past the mob of people in front of us. I couldn’t see much—the side of some kind of stage?—and I felt a tug on my arm.

“This way,” Tommy said. “We’ll be able to see better.”

I clutched his arm gratefully. My heart was pounding and I still couldn’t catch my breath. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Claustrophobia usually didn’t get to me, but this crowd of people was more than I could handle, for some reason. And I felt something else too... a kind of desire, something that drew me forward through the crowd, even though they scared me.

As we made our way around and up a metal stadium staircase, I finally saw what everybody was cheering for. There were two men in a fighting ring at the center of the warehouse, beating the crap out of each other. One of the men threw a punch, sending the other one flying into the ropes. Drops of blood misted the air.

“Oh my
god
,” I said.

“Don’t worry, they’re fine,” Tommy shouted back to me. “They’re like you.”

I gasped. He couldn’t hear me over the roar of the crowd, but I gasped.

Like me?

That was it.
That was why I was feeling so crazy, my body overreacting to everything. It was the pheromones of other shifters, the scent of them near me.

“What—wait, what?”

I had stopped cold in my tracks. Tommy turned around, a sly grin on his face. A fresh burst of cheers erupted as the fighters crashed into each other once more. He leaned close to me to talk into my ear over the noise of the crowd.

“I’ve been trying to find out more about... people like you. I wanted to learn more about shifters. And that brought me here.” He pulled back, his face slightly disappointed. “I thought you’d be happy to find more of your own kind.”

I shook off the nervousness.

“Sure, yeah, I mean...” I said, trailing off as the fighters got my attention again. They were circling each other, slowing down. The crowd was still in a frenzy, and I could see a fistfight over on the other side of the ring. Waitresses in crop tops and hot pants passed through the mob carrying chilled jugs of beer, and vendors passed sleeves of roasted nuts across the lines of spectators sitting down in the stadium seats.

“It’s just a lot to take in,” I said. To be honest, I was struggling to keep the monster inside of me from showing its ugly head right then and there. I could feel it in my bones, growling for a chance to shift. No. I wouldn’t let it.

“If you don’t like it, we can leave,” Tommy said. He sounded disappointed, but I don’t know what he’d been expecting.

“No! I mean, let’s go sit down,” I said. “It’s hot here.” The air was so hot and cramped I thought I might faint. I tugged off my cardigan, ignoring Tommy’s glance down and the fact that it exposed
way
too much of my cleavage. I was already sweating my way through the fabric.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes!” I said, nearly screaming to be heard over the noise. I turned around to continue up the stairs, and ran straight into someone, dropping my cardigan. I breathed in sharply, stumbling forward.

Instantly the world began to spin around me. My hands flew out in front of me as dizziness swept through my body. The man I had run into caught my arm and held me steady in front of him. I stared dumbfounded at his huge hand, which wrapped entirely around my arm as easily as if it had been a pencil. His other hand held my wrist.

“...alright?”

I looked up to see who it was that I’d stumbled into. The guy in front of me must have been a fighter. He was huge and tattooed, his skin already glowing with the humidity of the air. Every part of him was muscle, and I could feel his fingers like iron around my wrist. His eyes pierced the air, fairly glowing under the few strands of dark hair that hung across his brow. I opened my mouth and couldn’t breathe.

“I said, are you alright?”

I swallowed, trying to clear whatever it was that was stopping up my throat. Every muscle in my body was tensed, like I was ready for a fight. And the monster inside of me was
throbbing
.

It wasn’t just fear or adrenaline. Desire washed through me like a tidal wave that swept through everything it came across. There was one thing I knew for a fact. The man in front of me was a shifter, no doubt at all in my mind.

And the animal inside me wanted him
bad
.

As I stared into his eyes, a sneer came over his face. His lip curled.

“Did you get lost on the way to church? Or,” he glanced down at Tommy’s cane, “maybe some kind of fancy dress party?”

“Get away from her,” Tommy said. “She’s—”

“
I’m fine
,” I snarled. Immediately the fighter looked down at me with a different expression. I could tell that the growl in my voice had tipped him off. I wasn’t just a regular girl. There was something inside me, something like him. His lips retracted into a possessive smile.

He brought my hand up to his face and kissed the tops of my knuckles.

“Yes, you certainly are.”

My forehead was already drenched with sweat, but the moment his lips touched my skin I was drenched in an entirely different place... for an entirely different reason. Every part of my body went insane. My nerves sparked through my arm, making my skin tingle from my shoulder to my fingertips. My heart jumped. And the monster under my skin
roared
to be let out.

I’d like to say that I was strong enough to resist him, but if he hadn’t been holding me up with his insanely strong hands, I would have melted into a puddle on the floor. All of my energy was being used to keep the monster back.

Don’t shift... don’t shift...

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were kin,” the fighter said, still grinning. I could tell he knew the effect he was having on me, and he liked it. I flushed hard and struggled to keep the animal inside of me from breaking through. If I shifted here, I’d be a danger to everyone. “I’m Hutch, this is my place.”

Whatever this “Hutch” character was stirring in me brought with it a whole range of new feelings. Not just this crazy, nerve-jangling desire, but it was if all my senses had gone into overdrive. It was like someone had turned the world up to eleven and it was all just so much more vivid. I could sense the emotions of everyone around me like a wash of colored swirls. Everything from the passion and ferocity of the fighters to the blood-thirsty excitement of the crowd.

Tommy reeked of disdain, but when Hutch claimed ownership of this place, there was an unexpected spike of pure outrage. Under different circumstances I might have asked him about it, but it was completely overwhelmed by the power of Hutch’s presence.

I wanted to tell him my name, but I couldn’t speak. He took it in stride. I wondered if this happened to him a lot.

“Okay, then. Unfortunately we don’t have special seating for the handicapped.” He glanced at Tommy’s cane again. I think it was intended as a joke, but his tone was just a little too cruel and I saw Tommy bristle in a way that brought back memories of the high school bullies that never cut him any slack. “If your boyfriend needs a hand getting to yours, just find one of the ushers and tell them Hutch said to look after you.”

He’s not my...
I desperately wanted to make it clear to him that Tommy and I weren’t an item. This was just… I wasn’t sure what this was exactly, but he wasn’t my boyfriend. But before I could speak, he turned and left me standing weak-legged and soaked through and through. As he strode away through the crowd, Tommy nudged me and I came back to my senses—well, at least as close to my senses as I could be in that place.

“Sorry about that,” Tommy said, his arm encircling my waist protectively. “I should have seen that brute coming.”

“No problem,” I said, grateful to be around someone who didn’t turn my brain to mush. But as we made our way into the stands and toward our seats, I couldn’t stop scanning the crowd to see if I could find him again, even though I pretended to myself I was only people-watching. I certainly wasn’t going to let myself be attracted to some animal of a fighter, even if he was a shifter like me. A brute and a bully. That’s what he was. That’s
all
he was.

Chapter Six

Hutch

Sometimes I wonder why people fight for sport. I wonder what they get out of it. People don’t need to fight. They go to work. They drink coffee. They have kids. People have plenty of things to do. When they fight, I guess it’s because they’re frustrated or because they’re angry and they lash out at a convenient target. But for sport? For entertainment? Who knows? People are a mystery to me most of the time.

Animals fight because they have to. To be an animal is to be in a constant fight against your environment, your rivals, your predators. We fight for territory. We fight for dominance. We fight for survival.

I am an animal. The clueless people cheering from the stands and getting hard at the sight of a little blood might find it entertaining. They might think of it as sport. But I’m not fighting for them. I’m fighting for me.

I’m fighting for territory. I’m fighting for dominance. I’m fighting for survival. It’s hard coded into my DNA.

“Kick his ass, Hutch.”

Gina grinned at me as I approached her in the tunnel. Her face was a mess. One of her eyes swollen and closed, her lip split and bloody. But she’d won and, as far as she was concerned, that was all that mattered.

As we passed, we bumped fists.

“You know I will.”

This was my home. This was my pack. Territory, dominance, survival. That’s what I told myself. Why do I fight? I’m an animal. I fight to survive. And I fight… because I fucking love it.

All the crap that I have to deal with for the sake of this pack. The bills, the ghouls, the threats and uncertainty. I can’t fight that. I just have to wag my tail like a good little dog and do what needs to be done. It’s all bullshit. I can’t beat it by being better than it or by being faster and meaner.

But when I’m in the ring, my enemy has a face. And if it has a face, I can hit it. I can break noses and splinter teeth and just beat it into submission. In the ring, no one can fuck with me or mine. And to the victor go the spoils. The money we make from the fights and the cut they take from the gambling keep the ghouls at bay for another day. This is how we survive.