Reluctant Alpha

Reluctant Alpha

Aaron’s Kiss Series Book 7

By

Kathi S. Barton

World Castle Publishing

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

World Castle Publishing

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © Kathi S. Barton 2012

ISBN: 9781938243233

First Edition World Castle Publishing May 7, 2012

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Licensing Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

Cover: Karen Fuller

Photos: Shutterstock

Editor: Brieanna Robertson

CHAPTER ONE

“
I’m sure this is the right street. The man said to go to the fourth building over on this street and then one street up.” Diana had written down the instructions just as the man had told her, and Al knew they were perfect. Diana had been her assistant for nearly five years now and knew the woman to be a perfectionist. Al turned where she had indicated, but it didn’t seem right. This whole thing didn’t seem right. And it hadn’t for a couple of days.

They had been in this town for two days now going from tourist place to another having a grand time. But she’d felt like someone was following them since they’d left Munchen three days earlier, but she didn’t know why. They were just there on a vacation, a tour of Europe. They were touring six cities throughout several countries and then home again to the States. Right now they were about halfway through the itinerary and in a little town right outside of Jablonec nad Nisou, of the Czech Republic. Her father wanted to visit a chapel there and as it wasn’t on the regular tour map, they’d had to rely on the locals to get them there.

“
Jacob, see if you can see the street sign over there and tell me what you think it says, I think the translator is in my bag.” Al glanced in the rearview mirror to see her father rummage through his ever present knapsack.

“
Dad, you don’t need the translator to read the street signs, you just have to compare the letters to the ones he wrote out for us. Sheesh, Al, tell him.” Jacob had that look again. One that said, “I’m too old for this crap, but I’ll go along for the ride.” At sixteen, he was a little old for that particular look, but she had been spoiling him since he was ten and he had it down pat. She smiled indulgently. She loved him and spoiling him.

“
Dad, he’s right. Diana has the street map, and that gentleman back at the pub said that it would be easy to find. Churches that big are not that easy to miss, I wouldn’t think.” Al’s dad, Patrick Bennett, loved old churches and the architecture that was unique to them. He had been a structural engineer until his retirement four years ago, and this vacation was a dream comes true for him, especially since they all had been able to go.

Al was just glad that she could take this time out of her busy schedule and take them all. She had been working harder than she ever had for the past four years and this down time was just what she needed.

Her real name was Alastriona Airic Bennett, but she had been called Al since she was in first grade, even by the teachers. The only people who called her by her full name now were patrons of her art. Al was an artisan, a potter by trade who had become an overnight success when she started using the clay as her canvas. She started out as a true potter, using a kick wheel and raku firing technique that she had learned at her mother’s knee. Her mother, a college art professor, had passed away when she was only sixteen and Jacob was ten, leaving a hole in her life that she filled with art. When she found and fell in love with the electric wheel, she started using porcelain, a low fire white clay. She started using it to throw large pieces and firing them to about fourteen hundred degrees in an electric kiln. Having dabbled in oils in college, she started experimenting with glaze recipes and found a whole spectrum of colors to work with. Her genre was nature, anything and everything in nature. The piece that had made her famous was a tree that represented all of the seasons at once, winter, spring, summer, and fall. That piece had been bought by an anonymous buyer that she had never been able to track down.

“
Al, look, there it is, straight ahead. Oh my, you’re right, it would be verily hard to miss something that large. Quick, Jacob, get my camera for me.” Al parked the rental car on the street just in front of the beautiful church and waited until everyone was out before getting out herself. She liked to make sure that there were no bags or purses out so that they didn’t become an easy target.

“
Dad, it’s not necessary to hurry. The church has been there for nearly three hundred years. I don’t think it’s going anywhere in the next ten minutes.” She hugged him to her. Her father and Jacob were everything to her.

“
Oh Al, would you just look at those towers, arches, and buttresses. I could spend a whole life time going over each inch of this place. Thank you, my dear heart. I love you very much.” He kissed her on her cheek and moved away. She watched him walk toward the building through the little cemetery and then around it, snapping shots as he went.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up again and she looked around sharply. Nothing. Just like in town this morning and late yesterday afternoon. But the feeling of being watched, more like being stalked, wouldn’t go away. She knew she suddenly needed to leave, to gather her family and go. Right now they needed to get away.

She moved toward the church in the direction her father had gone when she heard the first scream. She froze; it ripped through her and made her whole body become incased in ice. It was seconds, precious seconds, before her brain could make her feet move. The second scream rent the air and was abruptly cut off. She was running now, slipping and sliding over the wet grass in the graveyard next to the church. Falling down, she landed hard on a stone and it cut into her arm; blood poured from the wound and ran down her arm.

When she rounded the church proper, she stopped. It was if she had entered a nightmare of her own making. She watched in absolute horror as wolves—no, that wasn’t right, men dressed as wolves were standing up on two feet and tearing her brother apart, his arm pulled one way his leg another. She knew he was dead because of the way his head flopped around on his neck. Moving only her head, she saw her father. Oh God, her father was lying on the grass and two other men were eating off his stomach. They were eating his stomach, she suddenly realized. Dizziness pulled at her, making her want to drop to the ground and be sick. But she knew that they needed her. She looked for something to attack them with, they needed to stop, and that’s when she noticed Diana. She was being dragged away, still screaming and grabbing at whatever she could grab to try and get away from two more. Al started running toward her, not seeing the last man until he bit into her. His teeth sank into her belly and he pulled her down and shook her around like a rag doll. Pain rolled through her; her thought process shut down. When her head connected with one of the gravestones, blackness thankfully took her away.

CHAPTER TWO

“
Miss, miss, you need to come with me. Miss, can you hear me?” The voice sounded so far away. Al rolled tighter, oblivious to the pain, keeping her body as small as she possibly could.

“
She’s in there, but I don’t know if she is able to answer us. She might be dead. Poor thing might hope she was.” The first voice, a man, didn’t sound like the things in the cave with her. This one seemed much younger, his voice less intense.

“
Well maybe if you’d back the fuck up and let me in there I could bring her out. And she isn’t dead, you jackass, but I’m sure she’ll appreciate you thinking she was.” This voice was a woman’s and she didn’t sound all that happy. No, that wasn’t it, she sounded pissed. Al decided that she would just ignore them and they’d leave her to die. She wanted to die, needed to be dead. She felt herself fade away again, going to the place she found the most relief.

Al moved back away from the overwhelming light that had penetrated the room a few minutes, or hours, ago. Time had no meaning in here. It was always dark. She didn’t like moving; it hurt so much to move. She raised her one good arm up and used it to cover her eyes.

“
Hey, you! Come on, lady, I wanna get you out of here before the newspaper idiots show up. If you can see me, just say something, I don’t care what.” The woman, her voice sounding frustrated, was closer now; Al could practically feel her coming closer to her.

“
Fuck off.” Her throat hurt. It was either from screaming or from lack of water, more than likely both. It also sounded gravelly and rough to her. Small wonder, she thought. She’d been here for years it felt like.

The laugh brought her back to the woman and her demands to be answered. Had she said something funny? She couldn’t remember. But she had said that the newspaper people were coming, Al thought. She didn’t want to see anyone. And she certainly didn’t want anyone to hear what she’d been through. Wolves, those things were wolves, and they had killed her family.

“
Are you Bennett, Alastriona Bennett? If so, I’ve been hired to find you. The were’s that took you are all dead. They won’t be bothering you again. I want you to let me come to you so that I can take you out of here, okay?” The woman had a kind of no-nonsense sort of voice and Al figured was used to people listening to her.

“
No, I want you to leave me. Please just leave me here. They took everything, my family. I don’t want to leave here, ever.” Al tried to make herself smaller. That hadn’t worked for those things, she didn’t know why she was still trying to make it work, but it was all she had.

“
I’m really sorry, lady, but I can’t do that. Your friend Diana Lake is worried about you. She’s in the local hospital being treated for animal bites and exposure. We found her the next day. You’ve been missing for six days, Miss Bennett. My name is Bailey, and like I said, I’ve been hired to find you. And now that I have, I can’t very well leave you here. Come on, let me pick you up and take you out of here.” The woman came close to Al and touched her injured arm.

She tried not to scream. Screaming had sent the things into frenzy, and terror rode through her at the thought of them coming back again. Whimpering and begging her to be left alone, the woman, Bailey, simply picked her up, carried her to the mouth of the cave, and sat her down as if she weighed nothing at all.