Alpha Dom and His Human Surrogate

Ella

Cora and I pound down the stairs, gasping for breath by the time we reach the bottom. She starts down the dark hall, holding Henry’s phone out in front of her, its flashlight blaring through the darkness, but I cry out a little and grab her hand.

She turns to me, frantic, desperate to get away, but I beg her to wait just a moment. “The carrier,” I say, reaching for it, “for the baby.”

Understanding, she hands me Rafe’s carrier and I quickly bend down to strap him into it, wanting to ensure that he’s ready to get in the car as soon as we get there. As I work, Cora glances around the passage.

“A lot of spiderwebs down here,” she murmurs, “I don’t think anyone’s been down here for a long time to do maintenance. I hope the car…” her words fade out as I stand up straight but I grimace at her, intuiting her thoughts and hoping that she’s wrong.

That when we get to the car, it starts without a hitch. I nod to her that I’m ready and together my sister and I start to hurry down the hall, going as fast as we can without breaking into a run. The tunnel is long – longer than I thought it would be – and I’m starting to panic a little when we finally reach a door. Cora yanks it open.

The door leads to a very, very small space, with only a nondescript blue sedan tucked away in it. Cora dashes to the driver’s seat as I open the back seat to the car, lifting Rafe’s little carrier inside and buckling him in. Rafe is crying a little and I do my best to shush him, to tell him that it’s okay, but I don’t think it helps that my own voice and hands are shaking. If my baby does intuit my moods, as Sinclair thinks he does, then there’s not a big chance that he’s going to stop crying anytime soon.

As I buckle Rafe in Cora finds the car’s keys tucked into the visor and quickly turns them in the ignition. We both breathe out in relief when the car stars and she flashes a smile over her shoulder at me. I pull myself out of the back seat after Rafe is buckled and

close the door behind me. Then, seeing a switch on the wall in front of the car, I quickly move to it and press it once. A mechanism starts to grind somewhere in the room but I don’t bother to look for it, instead pulling the passenger door open and quickly slipping into my seat.

“Ready?” I ask Cora as I buckle my seatbelt.

“I have no idea, Ella,” she murmurs, but she puts the car in drive and, when the wall before us folds upwards enough to reveal a steep driveway, she guns the engine so that we quickly climb the rise and find ourselves, to my surprise, deep in the woods.

on flat ground, Cora pauses, looking around. “Where…” she murmurs,

glancing back at Rafe. “Just drive Cora –

waving a hand at all

say, shaking my head at her. “He – they wouldn’t have put this car here if there wasn’t a way

as I say, starting to wind the car through the trees. And, to my surprise, I start to see a road. There’s nothing marking it nothing mystical or magical about it but…it’s almost as if someone really

little hysterically. “I

driving, I

the little road is starting to become clear before us, something slams into

look around, frantic, and – there

gasp and go pale when I see, through the back window of the car, a priest in a dark robe standing, glaring at us, with two men at his side. The priest holds one hand tensed

she sees the direction of my gaze and she gasps too. “Shit! Ella! Shit!” And then, in complete panic, she slams her foot down on the gas in

I watch, the two men and the priest start to

Sinclair

who are already beginning to hurl spells at me, at Roger, at

advancing on the priests at my side. His answer is a clear and absolute

a set of three priests together, transforming into our wolves and working in a pattern of attack and defense drilled into us since we were children – one of us advancing while the other holds the back, so our enemies who outnumber us – cannot slip by and attack our men.

behind me. I know that

I take one priest by the throat and end him quickly, his blood dripping from my fangs as I turn to the other two. Their faces are afraid when they see how quickly their comrade goes down, but they are by no means unprepared. One stands behind the other, taking much the position that Roger

cut, burn, and freeze my flesh – but in the end, I work too fast for them, rearing up to my full heigh to pound the substantial weight of my body into the first man’s shoulders, knocking him down and trapping the second

snarl and tear at each of their throats. They leave this world gasping for air, their dying breaths bubbling the