Double The Alpha: A Paranormal Menage Romance Read online

  After drying my body and hair with a threadbare, grayish towel that had been left on the back of the toilet, I used the restroom, forced to make use of rough, grayish paper from a roll sitting on the floor. Then, I washed my hands at the sink, using the same gritty, gray soap I’d used in the shower. A cracked mirror above the basin showed me that my left cheek now bore a deep purple bruise where Dan had hit me.

  With the sight having brought tears to my eyes, I opened the bathroom door a crack, sniffling, and asked Anna was I was supposed to dress in. If she could tell I was crying, it didn’t move her in the least. She simply handed in a folded stack of clothes and a pair of battered tennis shoes, then pulled the door shut.

  I dressed quickly, drying my tears, forcing myself to be strong. I knew I was going to have to be in order to endure my captivity until I could be rescued.

  When I emerged wearing the battered tennis shoes, loose-fitting jeans, and baggy, long-sleeved dark top Anna had given me, I found her pulling back the curtains of the only window in the room, allowing what appeared to be early-morning sunshine to join the light of a single dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The window was grimy and dusty, matching everything else in the room, including the wood flooring and the tiny wood-framed bed I’d slept on. Other than that, the only piece of furniture was Anna’s low, wooden stool.

  She turned to me mechanically, eyes still flat, expressionless, almost like a robot’s. “Good. The clothes fit. Those will be the only ones you’ll be allowed to wear for a while. If you’re good, Lord Stone says maybe you’ll get a second outfit, though it’ll look just the same as the one you have on. You’ll only be allowed to wear loose pants and long-sleeved shirts from now on... nothing tight. Lord Stone says your body is only for him to see now.”

  Suddenly my eyes began to fill with tears again, and I wiped them on the back of my hand.

  With the pale light from the window making her back-lit curly blonde hair appear like some sort of a halo, Anna frowned. “Don’t cry. Lord Stone doesn’t like it. No woman who serves in his palace should ever cry. That makes women get hurt.”

  Despite my best efforts to stop them, my tears kept on flowing, hot against my face, which was still chilled from my freezing shower.

  I wiped them away, taking a few steps closer to Anna. “Look, Anna, Drago Stone has brainwashed you or something, but you seem really nice underneath, and if you can just snap out of it for a second, you can try to help me think of some way to contact my boyfriend and tell him exactly where we are, and then we can both be rescued, and—”

  “You should never talk to me about doing anything behind Lord Stone’s back.”

  In an instant, Anna’s expressionless brown eyes had changed. They now had a bit of fire in them, and she continued, glaring at me.

  “You should never speak a single word about betraying him. That might make me tell Lord Stone, and that might make you get hurt.” Glaring even harder at me, she paused before speaking in a hiss. “And this is the only time I’m going to warn you about that.”

  Now trembling, but not just because I was still cold from my shower, I nodded. “Okay. Okay, just relax. I won’t say anything else. I won’t ever—”

  “I don’t even remember what you just said.”

  Her eyes were back to dull orbs again.

  “Now, are you hungry for breakfast? I’ll go get it if you are. We get crusts today. And I’ll mash ours up in some hot water if you’d like.”

  Upon hearing this description of a meal, I clutched my stomach, nauseated again. “No. Please, no. No food. Not right now.”

  Anna lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug. “Suit yourself. You’ll eat boiled crust when you get hungry enough, though. It’s all women in the palace are allowed besides oat porridge, and the oats are moldy a lot of the time. The bread crusts aren’t usually as moldy, just tough and hard. The bread crust is really what you’ll want.”

  While I contemplated moldy food, my stomach lurched once again. And that was when something dawned on me. I’d been due to get my period the day before, but I hadn’t. And when I’d used the restroom just a short while earlier, I’d seen that I still hadn’t. I was now officially late, and feeling incredibly sick besides. And normally, even when hearing about something unappetizing, I wasn’t quite so prone to queasiness.

  When I didn’t respond, Anna shrugged again, breezing by me to the door. “Fine. No breakfast, then. Lord Stone will be up to see you soon, I’m sure, and then I’ll be back up at lunch.”

  With that, she left the room, shutting the heavy wooden door behind her. Immediately after, I heard several locks click into place.

  Now feeling too anxious and scared to even cry, I sat down on the small, creaky bed, trying to think. It was clear to me that Drago/Dan wasn’t mind-controlling me anymore, which told me that he probably wasn’t able to do it for long stretches, or else he probably still would be. But then again, I reasoned, maybe he just didn’t have any need to at present. But no matter the reason, it was clear that he wasn’t. Which meant that I was at least free to try to think of some way to get word to Jackson about exactly where I was.

  I remembered calling him and more or less telling him what was happening to me when I was being mind-controlled. So, I knew he’d have an idea that I was being held in Gorgolian territory. I felt encouraged by the fact that Celeste had told me I was in the “palace,” too. I figured maybe that would be the first place Jackson would look.

  After suddenly flying up from the bed and dashing over to the window, I surveyed my surroundings, wondering how many Gorgolian guards were around, and how easy or hard it might be for Jackson and his men to break past them and rescue me. And what I saw made my heart fall like a chunk of lead. Hundreds and hundreds of dragons, thousands maybe, circled the skies above the building I was in. Looking down, I saw that I was two stories up, with some sort of a wide, concrete walkway beneath me, where additional guards in human form walked back and forth, obviously on patrol, ready to shift at a moment’s notice. If Jackson was going to rescue me, he was going to have to bring every last one of his strongest men.

  Just then, the door of the room I was in whooshed open, and I turned from the window, gasping.

  In strolled Dan, dressed in an olive-green military uniform, sneering. “Just as I thought I’d find you. Standing at the window, pining for your beloved Commander Wallace. It didn’t take much spying for me to find out that you were to be the mother of his heir, you know. But that’s not going to happen anymore. And that’s because you’re never going to see him again.

  If he even dares try to rescue you, if he even dares cross one single wing over into my territory, I’ll bring the full weight of the Gorgolian army down on his head, and he’ll quickly be killed. He’ll die, heir-less. And then I’ll not only have you, my most prized possession, once again, I’ll have the additional territory I want. I’ll rule all of D.C. Though, of course, I’ll be renaming it Blackblood South.”

  With Dan standing just a few feet away from me, smirking, suddenly I was angry. I was so angry I felt dizzy. My heartbeat hammered in my ears. I wouldn’t go back to being under his thumb again; I couldn’t. I would never be able to bear it again. But even more importantly, I knew I’d never be able to live without Jackson. And that was when my blood had begun to boil—when Dan had mentioned him, had said he’d be killed. I felt like I wanted to claw Dan’s eyes out, wanted to smash my fists over the top of his head until he fell to the floor, bloody. I wanted him to never be able to say anything about killing Jackson ever again.

  But I knew that obviously, I was no match for him physically. I may have been stupid-level angry, but I wasn’t completely stupid. I knew that if I tried to attack him, I’d probably just end up getting myself beaten badly.

  So, gritting my teeth, I forced myself to keep my curled fists at my side. “Even if you could kill Jackson, which you’ll never be able to, he wouldn’t die heir-less. I strongly suspect that I’m pregnant with his child right at this v
ery second, as we speak.”

  With his strong jaw clenched, Dan immediately paled, smirk fading. But then, within a second, his eyes narrowed, glittering, and I knew I’d made a mistake in saying what I had.

  Breathing a bit fast, he slowly stepped over to me, only coming to a stop a few inches away. Well over six feet tall, he hovered over me, looking down at my face, scowling. When he spoke, I could feel his breath on my skin.

  “Well, that can be remedied. I’ll have my staff doctors come up here, and they’ll give you a pregnancy test. And then if you are pregnant, they’ll give you a pill to take care of the situation. It won’t take but minutes.”

  Right away, a trembling was quaking my entire body, making it difficult for me to stay on my feet.

  Dan seemed to notice, and he curled his thin upper lip into some semblance of a smile that was more like a sneer. “Go ahead and enjoy some time alone now, Vivian. I’ll have the doctors up here in no time.”

  Chuckling, he left the room, turning the locks after him, and I knew I couldn’t wait for rescue anymore, not even a second longer. If I really was pregnant with Jackson’s child, I knew I had to do whatever I could to try to save it, and myself, right then. Or die trying.

  *

  Shaking, I whipped the grayish sheet off the bed, then frantically looked around the room for some other length of fabric to tie it to. I needed something to make it longer. I needed to make a rope of sorts that would reach to the ground. From there, I was just going to run. I was just going to run as far as I could, hopefully past the ground guards if I was fast enough. Then, I was going to pray for some sort of divine help. Help from a sympathetic Gorgolian, maybe, whether they be dragon or human. After all, Jackson and his parents had been Gorgolians, and Jackson had told me than many Gorgolian citizens weren’t cruel.

  My plan was insane, of course, and foolish, I was sure. But I didn’t have any other choice but to do what I was going to do, or at least try. I wasn’t going to let Dan’s doctors kill the baby that I suspected might be growing in my womb right then.

  A quick search of the room didn’t yield anything helpful; there wasn’t even a blanket on the bed. The bathroom search was more productive. I snatched up the thin towel I’d used, and my dress, then found another towel wedged behind the toilet, half-hidden, as if it had been there to plug a water leak.

  In less than a minute, I had the blanket, the two towels, and my dress all tied together. It wasn’t a long rope, but it would be long enough. It would be long enough to get me close to the ground, where I’d drop, hopefully without breaking my neck.

  Fingers flying and heart hammering, I pulled the bed over to the window as quietly as I could, then tied one end of my homemade rope to the frame, praying that my weight on the rope wouldn’t flip the small frame. Praying and hoping was all I could do, because there was nowhere else to attach the rope.

  I knew time had never been more of the essence in my life. I knew I had seconds or a couple of minutes, but no more than that. It was enough time. It had to be.

  I did pause briefly to take a look at what the ground guards were doing, but mercifully, I saw that they’d just went by on their patrol, circling around the side of the house. I’d have a few seconds to climb down my rope and start running before they came back around.

  Before tossing the rope out the window, I took a deep breath, eyes closed, realizing that I really was brave, like Celeste, Jackson, and everyone else seemed to think I was. Either that, or crazy almost beyond words. I wasn’t sure if even car-crashing Celeste would attempt a climb down a homemade rope as raggedy as the one I’d just made.

  The window was unlocked, and I pulled it open, flung the rope out, and then, clutching it for dear life, I swung one leg over the windowsill, straddling it. I didn’t want to look down, but I had to in order to ensure that the guards were still gone. They were, but I couldn’t do much about the hundreds of dragons circling the skies, so thick they were blocking the sunlight, causing a dark shadow to fall over the “palace,” or, as I could now see, the dilapidated house. A crumbling two-story structure, that’s really all it was. I now understood just why Dan wanted to take over D.C. so badly. His own “palace” was a pile of junk, and a ways beyond it, I could see other similar structures, packed into dense clusters, with long stretches of what appeared to be concrete and dirt between them, as if we were in the middle of a slum.

  Praying that the dragons above me were too high up to be able to clearly see that someone was scaling down the side of the house, I swung my other leg over the windowsill, still clutching my makeshift rope, and let myself drop. The bed shifted, I could definitely feel it, but the rope held fast. I immediately began climbing down it, panting with exertion. I knew it wouldn’t take me long to shimmy down the length of it, and it didn’t. Because of all the tight knots I’d had to put in it, it didn’t quite reach all the way down the two stories to the ground, but that was fine. Near the end, when my feet were maybe only three or four feet above the ground, I just let go and dropped, landing on my feet as easily as a cat.

  A glance up to the sky told me that the dragons above hadn’t even seen me. But when I returned my gaze forward, I saw that someone else had. Anna stood at the window of some room that seemed to be a kitchen, staring straight at me. Through the grimy glass, I could see a battered refrigerator behind her.

  I didn’t wait a second longer. After turning heel as fast as lightning, I broke into a sprint, running harder than I’d ever run before in my life. I was sprinting the kind of sprinting that made my lungs burn within seconds. But I didn’t slow; I didn’t even let the thought enter my mind. I was heading south, to D.C. I was going to make it as far as I possibly could. I hoped Jackson would somehow find out that I’d tried.

  As some shrill alarm siren rang out behind me in sharp, short bursts, the thought of Jackson added a pronounced ache to my chest in addition to the burning in my lungs. I just wanted to be able to see his face again, just one more time. I just wanted to feel his strong arms around me.

  It was over, though. My great escape had been for nothing. The dragons were near me. Coming from the south, they were swooping low, hundreds of them.

  I suddenly stopped running so fast I tripped, hurtling forward and almost falling to the broken concrete. The hundreds of dragons coming at me were coming from the south, from D.C. Beneath them, on the ground, large packs of wild animals, animals that at a distance, appeared to be lions and bears, were charging.

  I screamed, a sound half of shock and half of joy, waving my arms. “Jackson! Jackson, I’m here!”

  To my great surprise, he seemed to see me but soared right over me, breathing fire, massive and inky midnight blue in his dragon form. Then turning briefly, he seemed to signal something to a dragon behind him, and not a second later, that dragon descended and landed almost right next to me. A glimmering blood red, this dragon carried a rider on his broad back. It was Celeste.

  Setting her crossbow down, she gestured for me to climb aboard. “Come on! Hurry up! Jason’s been instructed to carry me around for two minutes only before heading back to D.C.! And now you can be a fighter, too!”

  I needed no further invitation. After dashing over, I scrambled up on Jason’s back, behind Celeste, and off we ascended into the sky, tightly surrounded by a group of at least a dozen dragons who seemed to be in charge of protecting Jason, or probably Celeste, and now me, more like. I clutched Celeste’s shoulders just as hard as I’d clutched my rope on the way out of the house, but soon I realized I really didn’t have to clutch that hard at all. Jason was flying so smoothly and level that I didn’t feel in any danger of falling.

  As soon as we reached the level of height where most of the fighting was now going on, Celeste fired off an arrow, hitting a Gorgolian dragon in the tail, making him bellow. It wasn’t hard to tell Gorgolian dragons from Jackson’s, Celeste shouted, because their hides were duller and their tails shorter; and now that she’d pointed this out, I could clearly see the differences
.

  After firing another arrow, though this one missing its mark and rocketing off into thin air, Celeste turned to look at me. “This is going to be the trick, to fire off arrows that don’t hit our circle of guards, but that yet still meet their marks in Gorgolian hides.”

  As the sounds of battle became nearly deafening, with bellowing and roaring all around us, Jason and our circle of guards soared through the sky, periodically dropping low whenever a Gorgolian breathed fire. Celeste fired off several more arrows, one of them hitting a Gorgolian square between the eyes, making him fall to the ground like a stone, though when he hit, thrashing, it was clear he was still alive. Not for long, though. A large group of lions and bears soon took care of that.

  After a few more shots, Celeste passed the bow and an arrow back to me. “I can almost just feel Jason realizing that the two minutes are up, so go ahead and fire one up before he heads back.”

  Carefully aiming to avoid hitting any of our guards, I soon did just that, hitting a Gorgolian in the neck, sending him hurtling to the ground, bellowing. I saw a group of lions finish him off just before Jason turned and began carrying Celeste and me back to D.C.

  A while later, we landed in front of The Arch, where, to my surprise, a large crowd was assembled. When Celeste and I dismounted Jason’s back, everyone cheered. Celeste grinned, holding up her crossbow in some sort of a tribute to “second chances,” she shouted, making the crowd cheer even louder. Jason ushered the two of us inside shortly after, when the crowd began growing a bit too raucous, pulling on my clothes and trying to pick up Celeste and me to carry through the streets.

  In the elevator, Celeste asked if I was okay for about the hundredth time, then pulled me in for a hug. Then, to my astonishment, and seemingly his, too, she suddenly planted a kiss right on Jason’s mouth, then turned to me, smiling.

  “We’re not quite sure yet, but we think we’re in love. But I’m at least sure about one thing. Jason’s the first man who has never tried to corral me or change me, and today, he helped me to be the woman I was meant to be.” Suddenly giggling, she glanced from me to Jason, then back to me. “Sorry. I think I’ve got ‘battle high.’”