Liam

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I thought the point of being Alpha Male is that you don’t have to answer to anyone, especially not some old lady who can’t go five steps without needing to rest. I only agreed because I know no one will ever read this. Like anyone cares how Scout and I met. Yeah, that stuff about how we Challenged Alphas Stefan and Sarvarna and completely restructured the Shifter and Seer hierarchy is interesting. This? Not so much.

(Scout, who insists on reading over my shoulder as I type, tells me this isn’t the way to start a story and is having a mini-meltdown over spoilers. I would like to point out that: 1. this is an official report; and 2. I’ll start listening to Scout’s opinions on how to craft a story when she writes a best-selling novel.)

It was July when my brother Alex and I arrived in Lake County. Our plan had been to stay in Nashville for a while. It was just an hour south of where the Hagan Pack’s Den was, which left us close enough to evaluate them and eventually make contact, but also afforded us the cover of the city. Shifter Survival Lesson: When you’re trying to hide from other Shifters, go to a city. Sure, it’s a pain in the ass to deal with all the noises and smells on a regular basis, but the things that annoy you the most are the things that will conceal your location. The people, the cars, the buildings, and the general city-ness of big cities make it nearly impossible for a Shifter to follow your trail.

So, Nashville was our intended destination, but we never made it. While driving down I-24, the transmission fell out of the crappy Ford we bought up in South Dakota.

As far as happy coincidences went, Timber, Kentucky, seemed to be chock-full of them. There wasn’t any traffic when the car died, so I was able to maneuver to the shoulder without any troubles. I barely had the hood popped when a farmer with a trailer stopped and asked if I could use a lift. While I waited for the mechanic to declare the car dead, Alex struck up a conversation with another guy who was hanging around the shop. I normally hated it when Alex started talking to strangers, there is a reason the term “stranger danger” exists, but the guy started talking about his roofing business and how he just had to fire two of his best workers for getting into a knock-down-drag-out fight while on the job. By the time we left, I had a job lined up for the following day and the promise of a loaner car from the mechanic. Alex said it was destiny. I said it was life in a small Kentucky town. Either way, we decided to stay.

Our first two weeks in Timber were filled with the typical I-just-moved-to-town non-stop business. We stayed in a rundown motel until we found an equally rundown trailer to rent. Then life really got fun. Utilities had to be turned on. Vehicles had to be purchased. Alex had to be registered for school. By the time I got my first paycheck, I was exhausted and broke. Luckily, the roofing gig paid pretty well. To celebrate having a bit of money again, Alex talked me into taking him to the tourist-trap area of town. Neither of us were particularly interested in paddle boats or water slides, but everyone we talked to said there was one of those burger/dairy shacks that couldn’t be missed. Since Alex and I were both partial to greasy food topped off with gallon-sized milkshakes, we thought it was worth checking out.

After five minutes at The Strip, I was ready to leave. People were everywhere. Screaming kids. Exhausted parents. Preening teenagers. Crooked old men shuffled along behind walkers while babies toddled behind strollers. It was almost as depressing as the headache it was giving me.

One of the easiest ways to determine the level of a Shifter’s dominance is to watch how they react to large crowds. The sharper your canine senses, the harder it is to deal with the overload. I had grown accustomed to all the noises and smells when I lived in a city, but we had been in the country for the better part of a month. I was having trouble distinguishing a single voice from the crowd, and the smells were so overwhelming I couldn’t even think about eating. Alex was almost as twitchy as I was, but he insisted on staying. He claimed a need for human interaction, but immediately sat down on a bench and opened a book. It didn’t look like human interaction to me, but if it was what he wanted to do, we would do it. Alex rarely asked for anything, so when he did, I usually tried to make it happen.

Even if that “anything” was to endure complete and total torture so he could read a freaking book in the middle of a crowded recreation area.

While Alex read, I worked on pulling out individual scents. It was one of the earliest exercises my father taught me. Even before my first Change, I was able to tease out the smells of different types of trees when standing in the middle of a forest. As a challenge to myself, I closed my eyes and narrowed down the scent of a single person. Then, once I had their scent, I would try to mentally picture what the person looked like. Once I had a fairly clear image in my head, I would open my eyes to see how close I was. Usually I got the age and gender correct, but that was about as far as it went. Still, it was something to occupy my time and keep me from getting completely overwhelmed by everything going on around me.

I had just correctly identified a little girl - I even got the pigtails right - when a familiar yet unwelcome smell hit me.

For some Shifters, unless it’s near a full moon, it’s hard to identify another of our kind by smell alone, but that’s not to say we don’t all know each other pretty much on sight. No matter our level of dominance, each of us is a very intuitive animal. Even if we don’t have any concrete evidence to go on, we know if the person standing across from us is a Shifter or not. The stronger your dominance, the more likely you are to catch the animal scent resting just below the human scent. And if you’re dominant enough, you can smell the difference between a coyote and wolf, even if the Shifter is standing across the street, surrounded by a crowd.

I had never met a Hagan before, but I knew instantly he was one. If the grass-green eyes hadn’t given it away, then the smug arrogance would have. Even before becoming the Alpha, studying the various Packs of our world was a priority for me. I knew the Hagans were notorious for their hand-me-down eye color and the fact they were the one of the cockiest Packs in the United States, which was saying something. Shifters, by nature, are fairly cocky.

None of the other kids surrounding the pup seemed to be part of the Pack, but I concentrated on their scents just to make sure. I filtered through the entire cluster without picking up on anything. Then I turned my attention to the two people standing on the fringes of the group, although I felt confident neither of them were Shifters. The guy was more big and lumbering than sleek and cunning like a coyote, and the girl was… well, a girl.