The Loneliest Alpha (The MacKellen Alphas) (37 page)

He
thought back to their fight that morning and the way he left. God, he was such
an asshole. No better than the past prick she’d dated. He needed apologize, get
on his hands and knees and tell her he loved her. Beg her not to leave him. He
needed her at his side, not just today or tomorrow, but for the rest of his
life.

Someone
knocked on the door and Jo came in, spotted Gavin and grinned. “Saw your woman
today. Looked like shit.”

“Watch
your mouth,” he snapped.

He
shrugged. “She said she wants to talk to you.”

His
shoulders hitched with tension. “About what?”

“I
think she wants to apologize, man.”

Gavin
headed toward the door in a heartbeat. “Jo, stick with Hart on this. I don’t
want him interrogating the Graham brothers alone.”

“Got
it,” Jo said.

“Good
luck,” Hart said.

Gavin
didn’t give a shit that Jo and Hart laughed at him. All he cared about was
fixing this shit-storm that had been riding him all morning. What the hell had
he been thinking talking to her like that? Sure, he’d been stressed and pissed
off, but the very last thing he wanted was to push her away. Which was just what
he’d done.

God,
the sight of those tears had nearly undone him.

He
got into his truck and floored it all the way home. For the first time since
she’d arrived he didn’t sneak into his own house, but ran inside. The front
door slammed closed behind him.

Little
signals struck him at once. The quiet of the house. The fact that she wasn’t in
the living room or in the kitchen table as he’d expected. And that scent…

He
tracked the unusual smell down the hallway, past the basement door, and into
the kitchen. The basement door hung open. The lights were on down there but no
music, horrible singing, or sounds could be heard.

Agony
struck him hard and swift. A metaphysical sword through the heart. The backdoor
hung open. Splotches of blood were smeared on the linoleum.

The
beast inside him roared its mighty head and lunged against the cage enfolding
it. Gavin’s head fell back and he let out a fierce battle cry as his lykaen
came out. His muscles became harder, stronger, his senses uncanny in their
detection.

With
new senses, he inhaled deeply. Two distinct smells struck him at once. The
soft, gentle scent of Alicia and his brother, Will’s. A knife lay against the
ground, blood still wet on the blade. He raced outside, trying to catch their
scents but all he smelled was trees and pollen that made his nose itch.

He
took her. He took my mate.

Those
were the only two thoughts running rampant as he ran toward the woods. If Will
had taken her, then he wouldn’t do it publically. Will would take her through
the woods to hide her better. She must have fought. Not even twenty yards out,
he found Dan Knight, one of the pack lieutenants behind the shed of his house.
He’d been hit with a crowbar over the back of his head, and the wound still
oozed with blood.

Gavin
knelt down and called Jo. He made the orders then hung up before his brother
played twenty questions.

Growling,
Gavin threw the crowbar away from Dan.

How
could he do this? How could he hurt innocent people? Will was only nineteen
years old. He wasn’t a violent kid.

“Help
will be here soon,” he promised Dan.

But
he couldn’t wait around. Not when his mate was out there in the hands of a
psycho.

Gavin
raced into the woods, eyes scanning for broken branches, blood, a lock of her
hair,
anything
. He sucked in swift breaths of air to try to catch their
scent, but it had vanished just like she had.

Still,
he kept searching. He wouldn’t give up. Refused to.

Something
dark and ugly had taken hold of him and he knew that if he found Will, he’d
kill him. He would not be able to control himself.

Jo’s
scent closed in on him and then others. He recognized their faces. Pack
lieutenants, family, even his sisters. He spun around in a circle.

“He
took her.”

“Who
took her?” someone asked.

“Will.
He took her.”

“No,
it can’t be. Are you certain?”

His
eyes leveled on the lieutenant who dared to speak against him. He was in full
alpha mode and the man lowered his eyes, muttering an apology.

“Find
her. I want him alive.”

The
team set off like a pack of bloodhounds on a scent. Gavin did too. One way or
another, he was going to find Alicia and bring her home.

Will,
on the other hand, had better say his prayers.

CHAPTER 23

Someone’s
incessant cursing roused Alicia from sleep. She’d been dreaming of terrible
things, one after the other. The first was a replay of the car accident
nightmare she’d had, but that dream had morphed into one much more terrifying.
She’d been running from a masked killer in Gavin’s home. No matter how hard she
fought, kicked, or screamed he was always one step ahead of her. At the end, he
caught her.

As
her eyes fluttered open, she realized while her nightmares had been scary,
reality was much worse. The masked man, Will MacKellen, paced an agitated path,
his hands burrowing through his shaggy hair. Cursing and mumbling, the boy made
no sense.

Alicia
restrained her movements so he wouldn’t notice she was awake. She took stock of
her fingers and toes, her face and body. In doing so, she found her hands tied
behind her back with rope. The binding was too tight so that even the slightest
movement made the rope cut into her skin, pinching it. So much for being poor
at tying knots. Apparently Will had been practicing.

Her
stomach throbbed from where she’d been kicked but aside from that there was no
other noticeable damage to her stomach. Her face, well, that was a whole
different matter. Not only did it hurt to blink but the skin felt tight and
pinched near her eye and swollen and puffy on the crest of her cheek. Her eye
only opened partway and she knew it would look bad when she saw it—if she ever
saw it.

“Fuck,
fuck, fuck.” His eyes were wide with panic. His sleeves were pushed up to his
elbows and she saw red scratch lines running down his arms. Sweat matted his
hair back from his brow. Some drops even ran down his temple to splash on the
ground.

Alicia
knew the signs of freaking out when she saw it. And Will was freaking the fuck
out. As he should be. After what he did, this couldn’t bode well for him. Even
she knew Gavin well enough to know he’d want blood for taking her.

She
took stock of her environment. Maybe while he was panicking she could make a
move. Peering around her, she saw they were in a dilapidated building. Or at
least that’s what it looked like. An old warehouse of some kind.

It
smelled of rancid water, mildew, and rusted metal. It was dark, but light
filtered in from a cave-in in the ceiling. Orange and yellow rust had eaten
away at the metal roof creating little areas of light to filter through.
Puddles of dirty water, probably the host to that foul odor, lay directly under
those gaps.

Massive
steel beams held the sagging roof up. Crumpled cardboard boxes sat against a
wall. Cigarette butts littered the ground. She could hear the wind stirring
outside, pressing against the metal walls. This place looked like a warehouse
where a machine shop or something similar might once have been. She might know
more about the location if she’d grown up in Oregon. Just her luck, she was
states away from a recognizable town. She struggled to think how far away from
the MacKellen pack they could she be. God, she hoped not far.

They
had to be out of the territory though. There were no run-down warehouses in
pack territory. Had he gotten her into a car and driven her here? They could be
close to the pack or very far. She couldn’t really tell by the amount of light
coming through to say what time of day it was.

Realizing
he’d been quiet for several seconds, Alicia carefully looked over her shoulder.
Will MacKellen stared straight at her, eyes cold as night.

“You
shouldn’t have fought. I didn’t want to hurt you. Now he ain’t never gonna
forgive me.”

Moving
slowly, she sat up in the most comfortable position she could manage. “What
makes you think he’d forgive you anyway? If you hadn’t hit me?”

His
jaw tilted up into an arrogant angle. “He doesn’t like to hit women. Neither do
I. That’s why I told you to put the knife down. But you wouldn’t.”

Taking
a deep breath, she went into calm mode. “I’m sure if we go back, I can explain
that everything’s fine. He’ll understand.”

He
let out a high-pitched laugh. “Understand? Are you stupid or somethin’? He isn’t
going to understand shit. I took his woman.”

“Why,
Will? Why’d you do it?” she asked gently.

He
rubbed his arms. “Just shut up. It’s not even about you.”

Then
it hit her. The attack today, the poison, the car accident. “It was all you,
wasn’t it?”

His
eyes darted over her, never lingering, as if he couldn’t stand to look at his
own handwork. “Huh?”

“You’re
the one in that car that hit me and Jo and, and, you work at the butcher. You
poisoned the meat for Gavin and me. Why? Why on earth have you done all this?
Why do you want to kill me?”

His
fingers stabbed through his hair. “I don’t want you dead. I want you gone!” he
screamed, face flashing red.

“Why
would you want that?”

“Shut
the fuck up.” He panted, pacing in restless jerks. She knew she was cornering
him.

So
she stood and carefully stepped closer. “Why do you want me gone, Will? I haven’t
been anything but nice to you. Maybe I never baked you cookies, but I never did
anything to hurt you.”

“SHUT
THE FUCK UP!”

His
words echoed throughout the warehouse in one long wave. And then silence. She
took several steps back, discretely looking for an exit. She saw one but it was
behind him and far down the lot. With her hands tied behind her back, she wasn’t
sure how far she could get before he caught her. She bit her lip as she
contemplated it.

“I’m
sorry,” he said, sounding hysterical. “I didn’t mean to yell. I just…everything’s
fucked up right now, okay.”

“It’s
okay. No harm, no foul.”

He
eyed her tiredly. “Yeah.”

She
tried to reach him another way, show him that it wasn’t too late. “You know…Gavin
went looking for you last night. I insisted on going out with him. I love him
and I’ve decided to mate with him, if he’ll have me. We searched every inch of
the pack for you. He blames himself.”

“Blames
himself? He fuckin’ should. That alpha position was mine. He
swore
he
wasn’t going to participate in the challenge. He’s a fuckin’ liar. I told
everyone I was goin’ to do it, and then he humiliated me. Everyone was there.
Everyone saw him push me away and claim my place. Do you have any idea what it’s
like to see everyone’s pitying eyes when they look at you? They look at me like
I’m some kind of weakling now. No one even wants to talk to me. Especially the girls.
They see me as weak now. And it’s all because of him.”

“Gavin’s
sorry and he feels guilty for all of it, as he should, like you said. But he
loves you, Will. You’re his younger brother and as the eldest he can’t help but
feel protective of you. You seem to be very protective, so can’t you try to see
how it was impossible for him to let you do that.”

“Nah,
nah, what he did was wrong. He needs to let me be a man,” he said.

“Let
me ask you something honestly. Do you really think you could have beaten Marcus?”

Will
pulled something out of his waistband. Her mouth went dry. It was a knife. He
twirled it, catching it by the handle. The kid worked at a butcher’s shop. All
she could think was how smoothly he wielded that blade. He had lots of
experience.

“You
think you got it all figured out. You don’t know shit. See, I’m good with a
blade. Real good. I was gonna slip one between Marcus’ ribs as soon as he got
on me. I’d slip the blade away again and no one would know the difference.
I
would have won!
But after that shit Gavin pulled…Marcus and I were both
angry. We were both wronged on different levels.”

Alicia
froze and took a step back, her eyes watching that blade. “What happened then?”

“The
whole pack was shit-faced. Even Marcus and I were. We got together and followed
Gavin home. Surprised him. Conked him so he wouldn’t come to, and well…” He
scrubbed a hand over his face and pressed his palms into his eye sockets. “Well,
I let Marcus cut up his face. He said it was payback, a brand, his mark to be
permanently left on Gavin. I wanted it. I wanted to see him squirm in pain. He
did too, even when he was unconscious. His body jerked and his face scrunched
up as Marcus poured salt on it. I let him use my knife.”