Page 32 of The Alpha Experiment
I listened, but I couldn’t hearanything. The birds had gone silent too.
“Colin?” I called out softly. He’d be able to hear me with those enhanced ears, even if I nearly whispered. But then again, so would most of the other things that could be out here. I might as well have shouted. What if whatever had growled was close enough to pinpoint my location from my quiet voice, but Colin was still too far away?
I cleared my throat, and called more loudly, “Colin?”
The air felt charged, heavy and dangerous.
I sensed a presence. I wasn’t psychic, magical, or anything else besides plain old human—but even humans had instincts, and mine were screaming at me. It didn’t feel like Colin.
“Colin? If that’s you, just answer me, okay? Or give me a sign?” My voice spread out into the air, thin and scattered.
No answer.
Panic blinded me, and I ran, tripping over branches and with pine needles whipping at my eyes, nearly falling face-first into a clutch of mushrooms and catching myself on my hands, mud and detritus stuck all over my palms, pushing to my feet and stumbling on again.
I panted, my breaths rasping, needing water again but unable to stop.
The growl sounded from off to the side, louder this time, and more menacing. “Colin, if that’s you, cut it out!”
Another growl, this time with more of a snarl: a direct threat. I could almost feel sharp teeth ripping into my throat, the gush of hot blood down my shoulder, the lightheadedness and chill of imminent exsanguination.
It’s an experiment, Newton, you’re supposed to be scared.
My lizard brain overruled that little attempt at reason in about a millisecond.
I ran likehell, my vision blurring and my legs pumping, running faster than I’d ever run in my life.
I got just far enough that I thought it mightbeenough, through some trees and around a boulder, and then I slammed into the ground like I’d been hit with a freight train. My face landed in the mud, pine needles and twigs scratching my forehead and cheek, and the impact knocked the wind out of me. My fingers scrabbled against the ground, digging gouges into the earth. I shoved up, but the heavy weight on my back pinned me down.
And then hot breath brushed my ear, and my senses caught back up with me, even through the frantic vibration of my heartbeat echoing through my body. I caught the scent of the…creature on top of me: wild, deep, animal, unfamiliar. A huge, clawed paw pressed down on the back of my neck.
I couldn’t even get the breath to scream, and those claws digging into the thin skin over my jugular made me freeze like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over me.
My body felt like it’d lost its mind, lightheaded and absurdly heavy all at once, my gums itching, my fingers tingling, a weird itch under my skin that I didn’t want to scratch, but that made me squirm.
The weight on top of me changed, rebalancing, becoming lighter in some places and heavier in others.
The paw shifted, the fur replaced with skin.
Human skin. Shifted. I sucked in a breath at last, but the claws didn’t go anywhere.
But with that breath came something I recognized: Colin’s scent, the spiciness of him mingling with the nearly overwhelming reek of forest mud and pine.
“Colin,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure if it was an expression of relief or of betrayal.
Gods. I’d talked him into doing this. This had been my idea. And I felt like if I saw his face, I might cry. Or break his nose. Why not both?
The chill damp of the ground had seeped through my jeans and my jacket, my leg was twisted under me at an angle that had my knee throbbing with my need to stretch it out. And Colin stayed on top of me, his claws still almost poking through the skin of my throat, his breath hot on the shell of my ear.
The panic faded, leaving the shaky aftermath of adrenaline and a heartrate that felt like it’d never go under one-twenty again. I shoved up with my shoulder, wary of accidentally impaling myself on Colin’s claws but not afraid he’d hurt me with them of his own accord. Annoyance had started to replace fear, and I needed to turn the hell over before I became one with the forest floor, and some long-future archaeologists found my unfashionably clad bones.
Colin’s grip loosened, and I managed to wriggle my way to my side and then flop onto my back, his hand shifting to grip my shoulder in the process.
And then I froze again.
Colin’s knees rested on either side of my hips, his body stretched out over mine, with one hand braced next to my head and the other on my shoulder, claws pricking through my jacket. His face was still partially shifted, too, his eyes glowing a brilliant gold and his canines elongated into fangs.
And he was naked.
