Healing The Alpha Collection (5 page)

      
"It's just family problems," Hawk said. "No big deal."

Chapter 5

Aster considered driving to Rowan's house immediately, but something pulled him to another neighborhood. He knew he would find his safety at Rowan's—they couldn't capture his strong friend—but he had to check on Hawk one more time.

      
You knew
, he thought as he pulled onto the street where his fellow alpha resided with his pack.
You knew the entire time.

      
That day on the beach came flooding back. Hawk had always been reluctant to discuss his family life; all they knew was that his father had left at a young age. Aster slammed his hand down on the seat as he stood up from the motorcycle. If only Hawk had opened up that day, if only he hadn't just tried to get them to run away from their problems, they could have been prepared.

      
Satan's Angels came two days after Hawk's conversation and afterwards his mother mysteriously disappeared. Hawk never spoke of her again, but Aster knew the truth: his father was one of them.

      
Like a blind man seeing for the first time, so much was becoming apparent to Aster, so much he hadn't seen for all these years.

      
How could I be so stupid? It was all right in front of my face, everything.

      
Aster didn't know how he would react when he saw Hawk. Would he put his hands around the skinnier, weaker alpha's neck and squeeze the life out of him? Or would he forgive him and ask for help? Both options were dancing through his head, teasing him to go either way. It was obvious Hawk was guilty and had carried that guilt with him for so long.

      
The idea of a new pack that watched the town and knew all seemed like a good idea. He had the Dawnguard to provide security after the merging of the packs, but there was an opening for a fifth pack after that. Hawk had been the one to suggest it to Aster and he had presented it to the other three alphas, who had all voted unanimously. The Dawnguard provided the muscle while the Skyvale pack provided the eyes. It was a nice arrangement, even if it had been born out of guilt and betrayal.

      
Was it really betrayal? Aster stared at the motorcycle as he repeated the question. Yes, it was. It was betrayal by silence. Hawk was going to pay when Aster had the chance to make him. They'd been friends for a long time, but Hawk had kept so much from Aster that he was just now figuring out on his own.

      
Taking a deep breath, Aster began to stomp up the sidewalk to Hawk's two-story home. He stopped halfway and looked up at the windows. The enigmatic watcher was always looking out his window, always aware when he had a visitor. There was no way he hadn't heard the motorcycle's roar, so without a doubt he knew Aster was there.

      
No eyes peered back at Aster from the upstairs windows, no blinds parted and no lights were on.

      
Is he even here?
Aster wondered. If Hawk was present, he would be watching.

      
Several rings of the doorbell produced no results. Aster took to pounding on the front door, trying to get some response, but he still received nothing.

      
"If you don't answer this door then I'm kicking it down, Hawk!" Aster bellowed. There was still no response. Aster knew the others in Hawk's neighborhood were watching, because he could feel their eyes boring into his back.

      
"I hope you all get a good look at my bare ass," he muttered as he lifted his powerful leg and slammed the bottom of his foot into the door.

      
Most normal men could kick a front door open; it happened all the time during burglaries in big cities. Generally it just damaged the door slightly and broke the frame. Aster produced so much force with his kick that the door flew off the hinges and skidded across the entry room of Hawk's home. Everything Aster did was brutal, but effective. He had only found one situation where his strength and power had failed him, and that happened to be the situation that was coming back to bite him right now.

      
"Hawk?" he asked, stepping into the entryway. "Where are you, watcher?"

      
There was one light on, in the dining room just off the entryway. Aster cautiously stalked into the dining room, waiting for something to pop out at him from under a table or inside a cabinet. No such moment came; instead, he just found the half-eaten remains of dinner. There were two plates at the table, one for Hawk and one for an unknown person. Aster glanced around the room, looking for some sign of forced entry, but he found nothing.

      
He wandered through the other dining room door into the kitchen. The back door was nearly ripped off its hinges and there were boot marks all over the white tile on the kitchen floor. Satan's Angels had come for Hawk and had left with him too.

      
Aster glanced out the back door, dancing around the broken glass with his bare feet. There were motorcycle tracks out back and Hawk's gate was lying on the ground. The scumbags had come through the alley in the back and entered through the back door.

      
"So they came after one alpha," Aster said. "That means they probably came for Rowan, too. Fuck."

      
Aster began to rush out the door before he stopped, noticing his reflection in the front hall mirror. He was completely naked, his massive manhood hanging between his legs. It wasn't very becoming of the warrior badass who was fighting to save his town to wander around with his private areas flapping around in the wind. At the same time, nothing that Hawk owned would fit the alpha.

      
"Guess I'm going commando the rest of the night," he muttered. It would making shifting a lot easier, and he was much more deadly in his massive wolf form than he was as a human. Taking a brief moment, Aster put his hands on his hips and stared at himself in the mirror. He was everything an alpha should be. There wasn't an ounce of fat on his body and his muscles looked like they wanted to rip through his skin at any moment.

      
He'd spent some time on the Internet reading about how humans had to lift weights and work out to maintain any semblance of a respectable physique. In the days before the modern era, they didn't have to do that. Hunting for food, working in the fields and building their homes by hand had done plenty to make the human body strong and fit, but as they tended more towards desk jobs and television they lost the hardness of their ancestors and became soft.

      
It was hard for a wolf to get fat; it was just simply the biology of their bodies. But there were plenty who didn't display the muscle and thickness that Aster was proudly showing to the world. Just like the humans, they'd moved into a sedentary lifestyle and were now paying the consequences. Now they had no guts, no glory and no way to fight back against the threat that was bearing down on them.

      
Aster stared at himself in the mirror, feeling like the last real wolf left in Bucklin. There were so few strong wolves in the world. Who would protect the town if he died? None of these scared puppies hiding out in their homes, glancing out the windows at the scary naked alpha on a motorcycle who had just rolled into their lives and broken down their own alpha's front door while bellowing his name.

      
Who would stand for such a thing? Why would they just sit back and watch? Not a one had exited their home and come to see what the ruckus was about. Not a one had offered to assist the head alpha in his quest to save their asses.

      
"It's all your fault," he said, looking at himself in the mirror. Suddenly he wasn't admiring himself, because he wasn't looking at the strong picture of the ultimate alpha. Instead he was looking at a weathered, beaten-down twenty-eight-year-old who spent more time in a suit than the fur that his body was supposed to be covered with. He spent more time hiding his manhood than proudly displaying it in his den as he mated with all the females in the pack. His people were scared and it was his fault. The warrior culture of the five packs was gone, replaced with the need to go to work, make a living and then go home and plop your ass on the couch as you ate microwaved shit and rotted your brain with human television. "You failed them."

      
Aster screamed in rage and grabbed the mirror, ripping it off the wall and hurling it across the room. It hit the other wall and exploded, all the pieces crashing to the ground in a heap.

      
"You disgust me!" he screamed at the shards. "You're a piece of shit that caused this! Abaddon should be dead by now! Dead by your hand you…you…human! You're not better than a goddamn fat human! Mayor? What the fuck is a mayor? A wolfpack doesn't have a fucking mayor!"

      
Aster's rage was boiling over now. He could feel his wolf growling and snapping inside of him, fueling the anger and hatred that he felt. Hatred for himself, hatred for Abaddon and hatred for what they had become.

      
He spun around and put his fist through Hawk's wall. He could feel a stud splinter under the force of his punch. A normal human would have shattered his hand, but the bones inside Aster's mighty fist remained strong as the wood gave way to it. He turned back around and grabbed a table with a potted plant that sat by the front door.

      
"We are not gardeners! We do not need nice decorations in our homes!"

      
He hurled the table into the dining room, watching as it shattered beside the rest of Hawk's human belongings. All he could see now was red. Each piece of furniture, each painting, each carefully placed decoration represented what he had become and what he hated. They represented what he didn't want to be anymore and what he had failed his people with.

      
Aster rushed into the room, flipping the dining room table into another wall. He grabbed a large desk that sat against one wall and hurled it through the two windows that faced the front yard. The glass shattered and the window frame broke, but still he was incensed. These were his people and he had failed them.

      
Forrest had had it right all along: the old ways should not be cast aside so carelessly. Their ancestors had made a mistake by moving them into the city. They had lost the ability to defend themselves and fight for their lives. His father had died due to the old ways, but he had known the stakes when he had challenged Forrest. The elders had led them on this path of ruin and Aster had done nothing to take them off of it, despite so much evidence to the contrary in his face.

      
He stood in Hawk's destroyed dining room, shaking and panting as he tried to calm himself. He was in a frenzy and he would have killed the first person who happened to enter his gaze, friend or foe. Nobody came, though, and he stood in the dining room alone—a beaten and broken alpha.

      
"No more," he whispered. "I am wolf. I am fear, I am beast, and I am fucking death."

      
Aster stalked back out the front door, walking towards the motorcycle that would carry him to his destiny, to Rowan's house, where he knew his journey would come to a head. Nothing could stop him now, not even the devil himself.

      
He paused as he prepared to climb back onto the motorcycle, the chariot that would bring death flaming down the street. He glanced around, noticing there were eyes in all the windows on the street looking out at him. He knew Hawk's pack was there, always watching but never acting.

      
"Cowards!" he screamed. "You're all cowards! Fight! Fight for your people! Fight for your pack! Fight, you cowards!"

      
He stood in front of the bike, scanning the street, waiting for a front door to open. Waiting for a wolf to step onto the porch and declare that they were tired of hiding and ready to fight for their people. But none of the front doors opened, nobody stepped up to defend their people.

      
"Cowards," he muttered as he sat down on the motorcycle. The two-wheeled beast roared to life and Aster gunned it, not even looking back at the house dogs he had just left behind. They had made their decision. They had chosen death.

Chapter 6

"Aren't the stars pretty?" Aster asked as he looked up at the sky.

      
Everyone else had gone home; now it was just him and Leena lying on the sandy beach by the river, staring up at the night sky. Aster couldn't think of any more perfect moment than this: he was outside under the stars with the one person who mattered the most in his life.

      
"You are so sentimental," Leena said, laughing as she moved her head over until the top rested between Aster's chin and shoulder. "For such a big, scary dude, you sure are soft."

      
"I'm not soft," he protested, wrapping an arm around her and hugging tightly. "I just enjoy the beauty of nature. I'm part wolf. This is where I was meant to be."

      
"You waffle so much," Leena said. Aster couldn't see her face due to the angle they were sitting in, but he knew she was rolling her eyes.

      
"What do you mean?"

      
"One minute you're talking about how great it is to live in Bucklin and saying the old ways are bullshit. Then the next day you're naked in the wilderness, catching fish with a bear and declaring how beautiful everything around you is. You're a walking contradiction, Mr. Aster."

      
"I suppose I am," he said, smiling at the stars. He couldn't get anything by Leena; she knew every detail about his life. "I guess I'm torn between the human and wolf side of myself, just like everyone else. I'm not special. I'm just a wolf trying to make it in a human's world."