Page 27 of Trust No Alpha
My heart nearly burst from my chest as I heard a deep voice say, “What have we here?”
Chapter Eleven
Thorne
A loud sound from outside woke Thorne.
At first he thought the silence of the frozen night had been broken by ice cracking on the roof, or ice shattering and falling from nearby trees.
He was normally not a light sleeper. But tonight the quiet of the night around him amplified all sounds. It could have been anything or nothing.
But he could not get the thought out of his head that this thumping noise had been lower in resonance. Like the opening and closing of his shed door.
His bed was warm. He loathed getting up and going out in that cold. But as he lay under his covers debating what to do, he realized he would not get anymore sleep if he didn’t at least get up and look out the window.
He gasped a shuddery breath as he pushed the covers aside and stood. He always slept naked, and turned the heat off as soon as he went to bed at night, his thick covers offering ample protection against lower temps. Now he regretted that habit, for it was fucking painful, that cold. Like the bottom of some forgotten sea. The time it took to get his robe around his shivering form seemed far longer than a few seconds.
Hugging his arms to himself, he walked to the window and drew the curtain aside.
The shed stood off to the left, a small dark square with a sloping roof in the middle of waves of white snow illuminated by starlight. It looked normal. The door was closed. The window dark. He listened intently but heard nothing else.
As he was about to turn away and shuffle back to his warm bed, he noticed something. Squinting, he saw a disruption in the smooth patternless snow. As his eyes focused on it, he saw the snow had been disturbed in a curving line that led from his driveway straight to the shed’s locked door.
Thorne’s intruder had left a trail.
“Well. Damn. Fuck.” His words whispered through his bedroom as he quickly climbed into his warmest, fleeced pants and shrugged into a thick sweater and heavy boots. Grabbing his coat and scarf from the hook by the front door, he stepped out onto his porch.
He stared at the shed which sat dark and silent against the white landscape. Still, all the hairs on his body prickled. He went back inside and started toward his gun cabinet. But the pact he’d made with himself years ago stopped him.
I’ll never be responsible for another’s death as long as I live.
He went for his flashlight instead. If the stranger out there wanted to kill him, they would have broken into his house, not the shed. On this cold night he felt it only rational to assume they were looking for shelter and nothing more.
The light shone gold in the snow as he crunched a path over the ice to get to the shed. When he saw the brass lock hanging on the handle, open, he knew for sure now that whoever it was was still in there.
At six-three, he still felt somewhat vulnerable standing outside in the middle of the night about to open a door on an intruder. His gloved hand trembled as he reached for the handle. His flashlight wavered on the shed wall and the snow.
Taking a deep breath, he yanked open the door and shone the flashlight inside with full force.
A man in a dark coat, all bundled from head to toe and hugging a bag to his chest, jolted awake with a painful cry that stabbed Thorne straight through the heart. He skittered back among the shadows but Thorne followed him with his light, shining it straight into his eyes.
The light illuminated the man’s face. He was young, his mouth open in shock, his wide gaze darting about.
“What have we here?” Thorne kept his voice neutral, flat. It wouldn’t do to frighten the guy any more than he already was.
The young man’s mouth opened and closed as if he were trying to speak. Or breathe. He had beautiful features from what Thorne could see. A strong nose and chin. Dark eyes that lit up under the flashlight beam. Scared, yes, but intelligent. Not mad. Not underfed or sick or in the midst of a Burn.
“Are you a runaway Omega?” Thorne asked. But he already knew it wasn’t true. Though handsome, the man did not give off the right scent.
“You don’t smell like an Omega.”
The man seemed in shock. He sputtered a bit. He groaned. Then coughed.
“You don’t smell like an Alpha, either. You smell better.”
He wasn’t going to accuse the stranger of being a Sylph, but that’s what came to his mind as he tried to assess him. But he couldn’t be. Sylphs were all madmen. And most didn’t evolve an intelligence past the age of three. Plus, what did Thorne know about Sylphs and their scent? He’d never even met one.
“What’s your name? What are you doing here?”
