Page 27 of The Alpha Experiment
“Theoretically,” he said flatly. “Theoretically, or hypothetically?” I straight-up gaped at him, and he smiled sourly. “I know how to read. Sometimes I read your publications. With a dictionary.”
My heart gave a pitiful little flutter, and I felt my cheeks go all hot. “You do? I mean, you actually read my papers?”
Colin shrugged, looking over my shoulder instead of meeting my eyes, as if the fridge had suddenly become incredibly interesting. “For a certain definition of read, dude. That’s not the point. Point is, are you actually basing this on some kind of evidence you already have, or is it just wild-eyed guesswork?”
I couldn’t look him in the eye and flat-out lie, so I hedged a little. “Somewhere kind of in between?”
Colin chewed on his lip for a second, his gaze far away, and then he refocused on me at last. “Okay. You want to simulate a mating ritual. It sounds like the chase is your top idea?” I nodded. “So you need a werewolf to chase you around and pretend to hunt you.”
“Wow, you make it sound so scientific,” I grumbled. “But yeah. More or less. Preferably an alpha. Even more preferably a female alpha, since my body chemistry responds positively to women, but since the only female alpha I know is my little sister…” I grimaced, and he laughed.
“Seriously, Newt? Only you. ‘My body chemistry responds positively to women’? That’s the nerdiest fucking way of saying you like chicks I’ve ever heard.”
“This is science,” I said, sounding a little prim even to myself, and uncomfortably aware that my face had flushed again. “I need to consider the hormonal variables in order to create a viable experimental model.”
The coffee maker chose that moment to hiss, spit, and gurgle in a way that sounded incredibly rude, and I jumped and spun around, Colin’s laughter ringing out behind me.
“That’s what the coffee machine thinks of your viable experimental model, Newt.”
I focused on pulling down a couple of mugs, not deigning to reply.
I’d gotten as far as pouring two cups and turned away to the fridge to grab the milk when he said, in a tone so casual the meaning of his words didn’t hit me right away, “I guess that means it’s got to be me, then.”
Him? What did he—and then it hit me, and the milk carton dropped out of my nerveless fingers and onto the counter, the corner of it denting and milk splattering out of the spout and all over me.
I righted the carton and stared down at the droplets of milk on the counter. “What?”
“Me, Newt.” His voice was closer than it had been before, right over my shoulder. I turned my head and found him a foot away, crowding into my space and looking dead serious. “Who else?”
Chapter 9
The Worst Possible Person for This
The slamming of my car door sounded incredibly loud in the peaceful quiet of the forest. We’d driven southwest out of town a little ways and parked at a trailhead, somewhere that had across-the-board one-star reviews online for being poorly maintained, isolated, fraught with sliding rocks and crumbling cliffs, and inconvenient.
Perfect for us, in other words.
Colin leaned his arms on the roof of the Cadillac and looked across at me. “Are you sure about this, Newt?”
The late-afternoon sunlight struck little glints of gold and peachy-pink in his sandy hair, which had tufts poking up in all directions; he had a massive case of hat-head, having just removed his cap and tossed it in the car.
He definitively didnotlook like the type of dangerous, sinister predator that would cause my body chemistry to go haywire and start frantically combing through its genome looking for creative means of escape. Honestly, I was trying to hide a grin.
This plan had so many problems, the biggest being it looked really unlikely to work.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “I haven’t come up with anything better, and I think it’s worth a try.”
I’d spent the last two days reading a truly stupendous stack of books and making copious notes. I’d found a couple more possibly apocryphal accounts of spontaneous shifting in response to stimuli, both mating-related. Both involving a chase. I couldn’t have explained the mechanisms there with a gun to my head—with six months or so working 24/7 in the lab, maybe.
But for now, I had to stick with the only hypothesis—yes, thank you so much Colin, not a theory yet—that fit.
Colin looked around dubiously. “It’s going to be dark soon. Are you sure you want to do this? Here? Now? The terrain’s not great. We can find somewhere else. And go there tomorrow.”
I rolled my eyes at him. He’d been like a broken record the whole drive out here. I suspected he just felt incredibly, paralyzingly awkward about the thought of chasing his best friend through the woods pretending to hunt me down so he could rip my clothes off and mate with me by force.
Well, join the effing club, dude. I wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm.
“Yes, here, and yes, now. There’s literally no one around for miles. And it’s better if it’s getting dark, and the terrain is perfect. The idea is to increase—”
