Page 41 of The Alpha Experiment
“Newt, I—” He stopped and shook his head. “I hope we don’t regret this,” he said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him.
“It’ll be fine.” I turned away and swung out of the car, backpack in hand, trusting that he’d follow.
The sun had come out today, and it shone down through the trees in bright, cheerful beams. It made everything a little too blinding, but I didn’t want to wear sunglasses. I’d need my depth perception if I wanted to give him any kind of a hunt. The fermented deer blood was starting to make a lot more sense to me, as a way to even the playing field by confusing the pursuer’s senses.
I sucked in a deep breath, filling my lungs to bursting with the fresh, chilly air.
The Nobel Prize. Everyone at the university who’d looked at me askance and whispered behind their hands staring at me in awe. Grants, pouring in like the Hogwarts letters at the beginning ofThe Sorcerer’s Stone. A brand-new lab, with my name on the door in big official-looking letters. A top-of-the-line automated electrophoresis system, that I didn’t have to share withanyone.
I straightened my spine and firmed my resolve. The advancement of science—and let’s be real, the possibility of fame and money—meant a lot more to me than temporary physical discomfort.
And it would absolutely be fine.
“I’ll be in the woods,” I tossed over my shoulder. Colin gave me a thumbs-up. And I headed out into the forest.
Chapter 13
For Science!
The day before, I’d been thinking it’d be difficult to get myself frightened and stressed enough to have a suitably hormone-inducing reaction. After all, day one of the experiment hadn’t done more than annoy me and get a lot of dirt in my hair.
Unfortunately, it was the same today.
I should’ve been freaked out. The rinsing-out and the self-lubing and the safeword conversation had been more than enough to rub in the reality of what we were about to do.
But none of it mattered. The sticky underwear, the knowledge that I’d have Colin fucking me within an hour or two…now that I was here, with my phlebotomy kit in my backpack and the prospect of real results, I couldn’t bring myself to care. If anything, I was hoping I’d be able to focus enough on the visceral parts of the experiment to get a reaction that’d be worth it, instead of my mind wandering to all the lab work I couldn’t wait to start later that evening.
Besides, this was Colin, and I hated myself for doubting him—but yesterday’s ‘getting carried away’ notwithstanding, I couldn’t help thinking he was as likely to make some dumb sex joke at a crucial moment as he was to really get into his role as a predatory, Neanderthal-esque alpha with no concept of consent or boundaries.
But maybe I was wrong about that.
Maybe he’d play his part perfectly. Maybe he’d manage to overlook my lack of breasts, a vagina, and everything else he tended to find physically appealing. He’d only had one semi-serious girlfriend, a werewolf he’d met while I was away at grad school. She’d been petite, curvy, platinum blonde, and gorgeous, not to mention female. In other words, my absolute polar opposite in every way. Weirdly, I still kept in touch with her, since she’d gone on to get a biology doctorate and occasionally did research that impinged on my areas of interest, and we had similar senses of humor.
Colin and I apparently had ‘girls who left us for higher education’ in common.
I checked my watch. Okay, it’d been half an hour. He ought to be coming after me any time now. I took off my backpack and did one last double-check to make sure nothing breakable was in a position to get crushed if he jumped me like last time. To make extra sure, I took off my jacket, wrapped it around everything, and tucked it back in. I didn’t need the jacket anyway, since the clothes would presumably be coming off in a bit.
I set off again, trying to take a different route than I had the day before—not that I had any confidence in that. I liked trees. But they all looked more or less the same.
A flock of birds startled out of some of those identical trees fifty yards or so away with a chorus of raucous protests, and I jumped, my heartrate finally going up a few beats a minute. Colin? Or something else?
I kept going, angling away from where the birds had come from, dodging and weaving to confuse my scent trail. He was being awfully careless, giving his location away like that.
Five minutes later, more birds burst out of the treetops—only this time, it was right in front of me, and closer. I stopped dead.
Okay, so that was weird. Colin couldn’t be moving that much faster than me, could he? I turned and looked back the way I’d come, and then spun around, scanning for a glimpse of anything that looked not-treelike.
Nothing. In any direction. No sounds once the squawking faded away.
I got moving again, faster this time, going…north? Maybe? Anyway, it was north if the first birds had been to the east and the second flock to the west. A loud snap cracked and echoed—in front of me. Somewhere.
This time my heart did a double-time tango. I was starting to feel not hunted, butsurrounded. Colin couldn’t possibly have gotten all the way over there without my hearing anything else or catching sight of him. Right?
After a few more steps, I stopped again. All the hairs had risen on the back of my neck. There was something over there, and it might not be Colin. And I couldn’t keep going. Icouldn’t. My instincts were screaming at me to back the hell away.
I did just that, stepping carefully back, one step, then two, and then that feeling built and I spun on my heel—there was another snap of a twig—I stumbled into a run—and muscular arms caught me like a vise, a giant clawed hand slapping over my mouth and jaw and yanking my head back.
I let out a muffled yell that would’ve been a scream if it could’ve been, my mouth opening against his palm. The arm around my midsection tightened and pinned my arms at my sides. Without even planning to, without any conscious thought, I started to fight like a madman, kicking back at his legs, writhing around, jerking my head to try to free it from that punishing grip.
