Surrogate For Alpha Dom

Sinclair

I growl down at the man before me, who is younger than I thought he would be, for one with

such power. He has thick black hair and a day’s worth of stubble on his thin cheeks. The man

glares up at me with dark, angry eyes and opens his mouth to speak but before he can, I slap him

– hard with an open palm.

–

The man gasps with surprise and pain, his eyes going wide as he stares down at the floor, and I

smirk. I doubt this man has been slapped anytime recently, if ever. He has the smug look of

someone used to being in charge.

But he’s in my house now.

“You’ll speak when we tell you to speak,” I growl, and then I turn to the head of my

–

reconnaissance team, who is standing against the wall, his hands on his knees, panting a little.

Craig isn’t a small man to see him so undone by the efforts suggests that this diminutive priest

is, indeed, powerful in other ways.

“How did you catch him?” I snap. Craig looks up at me and does his best to straighten up.

“We followed the leads, sir,” he replies, looking me in the eyes, “that we gleaned from the

conversation with the other priest, who wished to remain anonymous. They were…fruitful. We

found this one’s lair, for lack of a better word. It was actually in a sewer -in an abandoned

maintenance room. He was living there doing…” Craig hesitates and then shrugs. “Forgive me, Sir,

for the dramatic language, but ‘arcane magics‘ are the only words coming to my mind now. Lizard

skins…and and snail shells, in jars – he had a cauldron –”

“Thank you,” I say, interrupting and nodding towards the head of my investigative team. “You.

will give your details to Alastair, as soon as you can. For now, though I want everyone here for

the interrogation.” I lean forward towards the priest, who watches me with wary eyes and a

clenched jaw.

my voice and slowing my words,

need

man, then, by baring his teeth at

at him, which makes him faulter. And then I step away, secretly grateful for it, because

this man’s

crossed as he looks down at the man

you are. And what your people want

man just grins at Roger, a too–wide expression that shows all of his teeth. “No,” he

him blandly for a moment

standing behind the priest who whips forward

against the

making him shriek and twist in pain, but my man, well

priest goes a little slack in his chair,

the chair to

people want with my nephew.”

as the priest looks up at Roger again and just

“It doesn’t matter,” the priest says, shaking his head and

on his face. “You are already…too

he starts to laugh – really, truly laugh, as a crash of glass sounds and a

upstairs –

heart stops as I recognize it, instantly, as Ella.

Ella

tense, in my rocking chair by Rafe’s basinet, one hand on

quietly

–

heard a little tapping sound at the glass of his

looked towards it curiously, expecting a little bird

me when I saw a black–masked

gasped, my body turning to ice as I froze, as he quietly pointed

for him.”

–

seemed to go so fast – the man pulled back his arm, and made a fist, and crashed it

window

have broken his hand – Sinclair paid to have those

room through the hole he made with his

cracking and shattering around

–

the floor, only half an instant later, my

child’s rolling basinet behind me and screamed –

back into the

the window. As he

–

–

their way up to the

unnaturally fast

his feet now, grinning at me, starting to