And it was all thanks to that name.Alpha.Even coming from a fucking robotic voice assistant, I imagined the word leaving Joanna’s lips. I saw the furrow in her brow, the irritation in her eyes—because to her,alphawas code forasshole.
And I loved it.
My twitching cock stopped spilling into Amber’s mouth. Amber lifted her head from my lap, looked me dead in the eyes, and swallowed the way she’d done to her beer.
She began rubbing her fingers against the two mini tents protruding from her lace top. She licked her lips. “My turn.”
A rapid succession of booms split the air. Blood curdling screams immediately followed.
I yanked Amber toward my chest as the Hummer shook, rolling over to pin her down. The thunderous blasts continued, and I covered my ears, still able to hear the haunting cries coming from inside Club Luna. Once I was sure the rumbling stopped, I leaped off Amber.
“What the hell was that?” she screamed.
I began fixing my pants as I scrambled out of the vehicle.
“Marcus!”
“Stay here,” I demanded. My hackles rose, the pungent smell of blood wafting from the club. “Shit.” I slapped my face a few times to clear my drunken haze and bolted toward the building.
A few humans dashed out like chickens with their heads cut off. Their entry stamps glowed in the moonlight, pulsing on their skin, keeping them disoriented.
The woman closest to me looked fine except for the blood trickling down her arm.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my eyes scanning for injuries.
“Yes… Yes, I’m fine. There was a loud bang. Then another. And…” she trailed off, her eyes glazed over in shock.
I grabbed her arm, looking for a bullet hole or a burn…
What I found was silver shrapnel.
“What the fuck?” I tapped the woman’s cheek. “Do you have a cell phone?” She didn’t reply. “Ma’am.”
“I have mine,” Amber said from behind me.
I turned. “Call 9-1-1.”
“What if there are wolves in there?” she asked, alarmed.
Fuck. That was a good point. “I’m going in. See if anyone who made it out needs help. If I don’t come back out within two minutes, that means it’s safe to call the police.”
Amber nodded, securing her blonde hair back with a hair clip before leading the human woman away.
I ran into the club and gasped in horror. Broken glass lay everywhere. Groans of pain sounded from every direction. Strobe lights danced across motionless bodies on the floor. None of my kin had even had time to shift.
I found Darnell kneeling over a werewolf. The shapeshifter’s human eyes were open but empty. A jagged piece of silver jutted from his neck, leaking rivulets of blood to the ground.
“Are you okay?” I asked Darnell, hurrying over to him.
Darnell used his hand to close the fallen shifter’s eyelids, his expression grave. “Yeah… but he’s not,” he sighed. “Bro has been coming here for years.”
“What the hell happened?”
Darnell stood, looking around the club. “Bombs went off one after another.” He lifted his black shirt, showing me the weeping cut on his chest. “I got hit by the first blast but ducked behind the bar during the others.”
“How many are down?”
Darnell shook his head, rubbing his hand over his rows of braids until they grew fuzzy. “A few humans. More than a few werewolves.” He flung his hands in the air in defeat. “How did I let this happen? The vibe has been off fordays,and I knew it, man. But we were still raking it in. We should’ve closed. I—”
