Alpha Betrayed: A Dark Shifter Romance

Ford

An hour later, Catherine, Juliet, and I are crouched in the woods across the street from the gated entrance to the Zion Mountain Private Ski Resort. The gatehouse, usually manned by at least three or four armed guards when the pack is in residence, is empty and the compound beyond is eerily quiet.

"They're not here," Juliet says, her gaze tracking slowly up and down, from the gatehouse to the shop-lined road and the massive main lodge beyond. "Surely, even if they were hiding in the basement, we'd be able to feel them. The pack has an energy, especially when they're all together."

"The smell is off, too," I agree. "Zion wolves were here recently, but not anytime in the past few hours."

Catherine lifts her bound hands. We had to make do with tearing my extra t-shirt into strips and using it for rope, but it will do to keep up appearances. And the thin cotton has the added bonus of being easy to rip through should Juliet and Catherine need to get their hands free quickly.

Our plan is to pretend I've come to deliver Juliet and Catherine to Hammer and take my place at his side, then double-cross him as soon as possible.

"So, should we ditch the ruse?" Catherine asks. "Or are Juliet and I still fake prisoners?"

"Let's stick with the plan," Juliet says. "For now. We should know pretty quickly whether we need a cover story or not."

"All right, then let's go," I say, drawing the only gun between us, the one Layla was able to sneak to Catherine before we crept out of the camp earlier this morning. "I'll punch through the gatehouse door, and we should be able to get around the gate that way. Once we're in, stick to the left side of the road, under the shop awnings, just in case they have snipers in the top floors of the main lodge."

"And if they do," Juliet says, "I'll shift and fly up to take them out while you two make a run for it. At least then we'll be able to tell Hermione without a doubt that it was a trap."

But as I kick through the door and we move through the gatehouse and into the compound proper, the air remains as still as it was before. No one rushes out to warn us to stop, no alarm sounds, not so much as a rogue squirrel bounces across the street and up a tree. But squirrels aren't stupid. Shifters may not smell any different to humans, but prey animals know a predator when they scent one.

So far, however, we're the only predators here.

"It's probably a lot less creepy with people wandering around, right?" Catherine murmurs as we move past the closed ice-cream parlor and arcade, the ski shop, and the tiny movie theater where I had my first kiss.

It was Missy Crawly, seventh grade, we were both thirteen and her braces scratched my lip. My friends teased me the rest of the night for failing to draw "first blood."

"Depends on who you are," Juliet says. "I spent a lot of time hiding out in the nursery, trying to stay off the radar of the bigger, meaner wolves. On the island, there's room to spread out and avoid the people who hate you. Here, we were all kind of on top of each other."

"I'm sorry I didn't protect you when you were a kid," I murmur softly, continuing to scan the street and our twelve and six, even though I'm growing increasingly certain, we're the only ones here.

"It's okay, you can make up for it with forty or fifty years of o*****s," Juliet murmurs back.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

"Sixty," I counter. "I'm going to be able to get it up until I'm at least ninety."

"A man's faith in his dong springs eternal," Catherine murmurs, shivering as she adds, "There's definitely something off here. The vibes are...real bad."

"Agreed. I wonder if this is the heebie-jeebie feeling Layla was talking about in Montreal, but..." I trail off as my stomach balls into a knot and anxiety flutters through my chest.

"But worse," Catherine finishes as we reach the end of the shops and move toward the circle drive directly in front of the lodge. "Bad enough that even people without vibe-sensing powers can feel it."

"I don't know what Layla felt in Montreal," Juliet says. "But I definitely have the heebie-jeebies now. I've never felt anything like that here before."

"Me, either," I murmur, opening the heavy front door to the lodge and doing a quick sweep with my gun before motioning the women into the quiet lobby.

The only movement in the usually bustling space, filled with overstuffed furniture, a soaring central fireplace, and floor-to-ceiling windows, is the flicker of sunlight across the activity tables on the far side of the room. It's where little kids make holiday crafts before solstice and where the old folks play cribbage on long winter nights. I have nothing but good memories of that table, but even it feels haunted right now.

"Basement first?" Juliet asks, pausing not far from the fireplace to peer down the long hallway to the right.

"Unless your gut's telling you something different," I say, following her gaze. "Like that we should go that way."

"I'm feeling that way, too," Catherine says. "I mean, if we're talking about moving toward the bad feeling instead of away from it."

"That's what we're here for, right?" Juliet murmurs, lifting her bound hands in front of her. "But I'd prefer to go in with my hands free. Whatever this thing, force, entity is, I don't think we should give it any advantage over us. Even the few seconds it'll take to rip through our t-shirt ropes."

"Agreed," I say, keeping my gun trained on the empty hall as I pull my knife from its sheath on my belt. I cut Juliet's hands free and then pass the knife to her to take care of Catherine. "And we should look for weapons for both of you. Something bigger than a hunting knife. Just in case."

"I saw a fire axe back by the front door," Catherine says. "Not to brag, but I can do a decent amount of damage with an axe."

"And I'll go in furry and feathered," Juliet says, stripping off her sweatshirt and pants. She rolls them into two small balls and stuffs them into the top of my backpack. "I'm good with a gun, but I'm better with fire and claws."

My lips part to tell her how much I appreciate another chance to see her naked this morning-I intend to make flirting with my wife a top priority, even in times of trial-but before I can speak, the ground vibrates beneath our feet. The tremor is strong enough to make Juliet stagger a step forward and Catherine make a startled sound on her way back with the axe.

"What the hell was that?" Juliet asks, throwing her arms out to her sides as a second tremor hits, followed by an ominous rumbling sound.

"I don't know, but I think we should hurry," Catherine says.

"Let's go." Juliet spirals into her phoenix form and starts down the hall in a flurry of red and orange, her feathers brushing the walls with every churn of her wings.

I hurry after her, with Catherine close behind, forcing myself to keep going even as my every instinct screams for me to run the other way. By the time we reach the end of the hallway and Juliet shoves through the door leading to the indoor pool and hot tub area, my skin is crawling, and bile surges up my throat.

Inside the space, the air is filled with a thick, acrid blue smoke. I gag, then start to cough as I pull my shirt up around my mouth and nose. Catherine slaps a hand over her face, groaning as she's assaulted by the smell. It's like a mixture of rotten eggs and charred wood, but worse, and Juliet is the only one of us not slowed by the stink.

Maybe her phoenix has more tolerance for terrible smelling things or maybe she's simply made of tougher stuff than the rest of us. I wouldn't be surprised. My mate is badass, a fact she proves by flying straight at the glowing yellow orb floating above the hot tub in the corner.

It's the source of the smell, there's no doubt in my mind about that, even before a fresh rush of flame surges into the room from the other side, followed closely by more foul-smelling smoke and the snout of something scaly and way too big to be a shifter. Or of this world at all.

At least not the world as we know it.

Though...Layla did say that dragon shifters weren't extinct, at least not in the Parallel. Maybe Hammer managed to bridge the gap between our world and the parallel dimension, after all. Or maybe this fire-breathing monster is from another universe altogether. I don't suppose it really matters right now. All that matters is that we get the portal closed before this thing figures out how to get out of its world and into this one.

As Juliet swiftly closes the distance between herself and the dragon's nose, it shoves forward, straining the sides of the portal and sending another tremor rocking through the earth. When it pulls back, the portal is a little bigger, allowing the thing to hook a claw around the bottom, just below its snout.

The only good thing about any of this is that the creature can't see through the portal just yet. It's completely unaware that it's about to get a taste of its own medicine until Juliet has already shot a stream of fire into its nostrils.

The dragon lets out a piercing scream that makes Catherine flinch beside me as Juliet wheels around, flying hard back toward us. Run, she shouts, Run and get help! If I burn, I'll come back. You won't. Get Hermione and the others. I'll stay and do my best to keep it from getting out.

Before I can demand that she come with us, the dragon screams again and sprays enough fire to make the water in the pool start to evaporate. Soon, the room is filled with a toxic mixture of smoke and glowing blue mist. I can barely make out the shape of the dragon's snout as it wiggles forward, clearly not in the mood to back down from a fight.

I reach for Catherine blindly, but she's not beside me anymore.

My fingers swipe through empty air before knocking against my thigh and then going through my own skin and bone, like a ghost passing through a wall, as the blue glow gets brighter.

I have a split second to realize something deeply f****d up is happening and then I'm gone, blinking out of our world, and spinning through a tunnel of light and fire.