The Alpha by Jenika Snow

9

Cian

“It’s a damn bloodletting club, Cian. For fook’s sake, those vampires are sick bastards,” Odhran grumbled as we made our way up the stairs to my female’s apartment. He’d been going on about the secret club Adryan had shown us for the last hour, which was held in the bowels of the vampire’s newest establishment.

“Everyone knows Adryan is a deviant, sadistic motherfooker.”

“I know, but to see it firsthand?”

I looked over at Odhran and saw concentration on his face, as if he was picturing all the shit the bloodsuckers did down there. Although the decor had seemed elite, sophisticated even, with the same red-and-black color scheme, with patent leather and velvet accents, there was no denying the images that had also gone through my head.

Humans laid out on a slab of wood, dozens of cuts lining their bodies as they let themselves be used for blood consumption.

And although Adryan and his nightclub was the last thing I wanted to think or talk about, this was the first time—since Odhran had lost his mate—that he’d acted mildly interested in anything other than warfare.

He’d stopped talking about finding his mate ages ago, but I knew it was all he ever thought about, knew he was forever trying to figure out how to find her. I could see it on his face and watched all that darkness wash across his eyes. So just because he didn’t speak with us any longer about his journey to find his other half, it didn’t mean it wasn’t the only thing on his mind.

So I didn’t snap or growl and tell him to shut the fuck up about the nightclub. I let him talk about it, because it kept his mind off the most important thing in his life that he was missing. Odhran wasn’t just my soldier in the Guard; he was like a brother to me, and loyal down to his marrow. He’d always had my back, as I had his, and he was continuously giving me his strength, solidarity, and unwavering support, even now.

We said nothing else as we made our way up the last few flights of stairs. I was anxious, irritable, and the need to hunt my female down thrummed through my veins.

I stopped in front of Evelyn’s apartment door, my lip curling at the thought she lived in this piece-of-shit, unsafe building. I wanted her with me always, my protection fierce enough I’d kill anyone or anything that thought to come within touching distance. My protective side rose up so violently I smelled the scent of blood and glanced down to see my nails had turned into claws and were tearing at the flesh of my palms.

“Ye’ll find her. She’ll be safe,” Odhran said, and I closed my eyes and nodded, letting those words of truth move through my head like a mantra to calm my beast, or at least try to placate him for the moment.

I will find her. I’ll make it safe for her, because she’s never leaving my fooking side.

I looked to my left, then my right. The hallway was empty, quiet. I could have done this in a professional manner, picked the lock, which would have been easy enough with the flimsy construction, but instead I gripped the handle, my impatience riding high.

I turned the knob with a quick, firm twist of my wrist, breaking the handle right off, and the door swung open, the lock disengaged.

I stepped inside and instantly stilled as I inhaled deeply, smelling my mate’s scent for the first time. It was sweet like candy, hitting the back of my throat before rushing down and filling my belly with sustenance. It was the only thing I needed to survive.

I took in the small, sparse confines of her apartment. Although I didn’t know my female personally—not yet—I could imagine these aesthetics fit her perfectly. A small, green velvet couch that looked a little worse for wear was to my left, the coffee table made out of pallets in front of that.

The kitchen was catty-corner to the “living room,” small and compact, the appliances and cupboards from the ’70s. But my mate had clearly made this her space, with woven colorful tapestries hanging on the wall and a few potted plants placed throughout the boxlike room, which upon smelling deeply once more I realized weren’t real.

I could have never imagined living in the city—too many people, nowhere to run free, no wilderness for my beast to be let out. But as I stood there among my female’s things, taking in her scent, I realized I would’ve stayed anywhere with her and been so grateful, so thankful that a higher power had given me the gift of having my other half.

There was a framed picture sitting on the pallet table, beside an old boxy TV. I found myself walking toward it before I realized I was moving. I picked it up, the light, silver-colored frame looking old, oxidized. The picture was of my female and Darragh, but it couldn’t have been taken too long ago as both females didn’t look much younger than they were now.

The sun was in front of them, the bright glow casting fierce light across their faces. Evelyn had a hand lifted to her brow to block some of it, her smile big, her long, dark hair seeming to be caught in a gust of wind as it was suspended in a veil of black behind her, a snapshot of beauty.

She was all I could focus on.

I couldn’t see her eyes because she squinted from the glare of the sun, but I remembered how bright and big they’d been as she stared at me with shock and a hint of awe.

I set the picture down, and I closed my eyes, letting everything just wash through me, these new and powerfully pleasing sensations moving into every single part of my body.

Although I’d gathered any and all information I could on Evelyn on the plane ride over, I’d also had Rory, the resident Lycan hacker and tech genius, do an even deeper dive on who my mate was. But now that I had her scent ingrained in me, memorized and tattooed in the very essence of my DNA, I’d find her no matter where she was.

They didn’t call me the greatest Lycan tracker for nothing.

I let all my thoughts coalesce on my mate, on who she was, until it coated my skin and caused this feeling of finally having purpose, of being home, to reverberate through me.

Evelyn Williams. Twenty-three years old. Human female who started working at the tender age of sixteen. Mother was a junkie, father unknown.

She now worked at a small hole-in-the-wall bar called Bosco’s, and this small apartment was what she called home, or close enough to what that word meant. Before she’d become an adult, she bounced around foster homes. She’d met Darragh in those same foster facilities, where the two women had become tightly knit.

She was a fighter, my female. She was a survivor.

My eyes were still closed as I sensed Odhran moving around Evelyn’s apartment. I opened my eyes and looked over at him, my hackles rising as possessiveness slammed into me at the thought of another male in my mate’s space.

Odhran made his way to the kitchen, his big body dwarfing the already small space. He walked down the tiny hallway… toward my female’s bedroom. A fierce growl ripped through me before I knew it was happening, the walls shaking from the force of the primal sound. He froze, his back tensing as he looked over his shoulder at me.

I felt my chest rising and falling, my breathing picking up as my animal rushed to the surface. My head was lowered, my gaze trained on him, my eyes now glowing. The very thought of him in her bedroom, where she slept, got undressed, had me baring my teeth, my canines elongating in warning.

He held his hands up and stepped back, and I made a low grumble as I stalked toward him. Having a mate certainly changed everything, made me even more territorial, more aggressive. To even think of somebody looking at Evelyn, let alone touching her, made me want to kill them, rip their hands from their bodies, gouge their eyes out, and offer their mutilated carcasses to my mate as a gift.

And I knew this was just the start, the beginning. I knew once I finally had her, claimed Evelyn, and put my mark on her neck, I’d be even worse, so fucking protective it would no doubt be unbearable for her. I just prayed to whoever would listen that she’d understand that when a Lycan found his fated mate—his other half, the missing part of his soul—she’d see me as a gift as well. The way I saw her.

All I wanted was to make her happy, to make her life feel complete, even if I pissed her off with my possessiveness in the process.