Chapter 2: The Alpha's Impossible Recognition

Theron crouched beside the body because it gave him something to do.

Already the face was settling. The jaw drew back into a shape that could pass in a crowd. The teeth slid out of sight. In an hour it would look like a man who'd collapsed on his way home.

He went through the jacket pockets anyway. Nothing. No phone. No keys. Nothing a person could follow back to anyone.

They never carried anything.

Three nights he'd followed this trail across the city. It had brought him here, to a corner store, to a woman behind a counter.

Behind him, a pack of cigarettes shifted on the tile. She'd moved.

His wolf wasn't quiet anymore. It paced the inside of his chest, back and forth, wanting him to turn around. Wanting it badly. Theron stayed where he was one breath longer than he needed to, like a man steadying himself against a wall.

Then he stood and faced her.

She'd come around the end of the counter. Not far. Her hands were pressed flat to her thighs. Her face was the color of paper, but she was upright, and she was looking at him instead of the floor. He hadn't expected that.

"Is he dead?" Her voice was low. Steadier than it had any right to be.

"Yes."

"You killed him."

"Yes."

She took that in. He watched her do it. "Okay," she said, in a tone that meant it wasn't. "Should I call someone?"

Her hand had drifted toward the phone under the counter again. He'd noticed it the first time too.

"Not the police."

"Why not?"

"They wouldn't understand what they were looking at. And I'd rather you weren't the one expected to explain it."

"I don't understand what I'm looking at either."

"I know." It was the truest thing he had, and it wasn't nearly enough.

"You're soaked," she said.

He glanced down. Rain had run off his coat and pooled on the tile. He hadn't noticed.

She crossed to the cooler on unsteady legs, took out a bottle of water and held it out. Her hand shook. The bottle shook with it.

Theron stared at it. A man had just died on her floor, and she was offering a stranger a drink.

"You should keep that."

"I'm fine." She wasn't. "Take it."

He took it. Their fingers didn't touch. His wolf noticed anyway.

She let out a breath that shook at the end. "He said I smelled wrong." A small laugh, close to cracking. "Isn't that insane? Of all the things."

Theron stopped.

He drew in air, slowly, as if it were nothing, and sorted it the way he'd sorted a thousand rooms. Rain tracked in from the street. Floor cleaner. Cheap soap. Under that, fear, sharp and clean.

Nothing else. Nothing a hunting thing should have stopped for.

So what had it smelled that he couldn't?

"Did he say anything else?"

"He asked where I got it. Whatever it was." She shook her head. "Then he said they'd want to know about me. That's when you..." She waved at the door, the floor, all of it.

They. Not a name. Theron felt it settle in his gut like a stone.

He'd killed the thing before it finished its last sentence. Whatever it knew was gone now. He'd done that.

"Ianthe," he said.

He hadn't meant to say it out loud. Her eyes narrowed. "How do you..." Then she looked down at the tag crooked on her shirt, and some color came back to her face. "Right. Yeah. That's me."

"Theron."

It seemed unfair not to give her his.

She repeated it quietly, testing the weight. His wolf went through him like it had been struck.

She took half a step toward him. He saw the exact moment she noticed. She stopped. Crossed her arms over her chest like she'd caught herself doing something foolish. Then she frowned at the floor between them as if it had moved.

She didn't know why she'd done it.

He did. That made it worse. The pull went both ways, and she had no name for it.

"I should lock up," she said. "I'm supposed to close at one. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about..." She looked at the body, then away. "Him."

"Leave him to me."

"That's not an answer."

"No," Theron said. "It isn't."

He should have been working it out already. His people. The cleanup. How to keep this from reaching the wrong ears before morning. That was the Alpha's job, and he'd done it a hundred times without his pulse changing.

Instead he stood in a bright, humming store and watched a stranger try not to shake. Every instinct he owned told him not to leave her. Not for the body. Not for anything.

And he couldn't tell her why. Whatever he said would open a door onto a world she'd done nothing to deserve. Once she walked through it, she couldn't walk back.

He knew what this was. He'd known the second the wolf went quiet.

Every Alpha before him had found her. That was the part nobody said out loud. Each had found the woman his wolf chose and held her for as long as he was allowed. And the curse had taken her anyway.

He used to think he'd feel joy when it came. Or at least a dread he could stand up straight inside. Instead there was only a cold that started in his chest and worked outward.

Ianthe watched him, waiting for something he couldn't give.

He crossed to the door, turned the lock and flipped the sign to CLOSED. Then he checked the street through the glass. Wet pavement. A bus idling at the far corner. Nobody watching.

It should have helped. It didn't.

He made the call while she counted the drawer a second time. She'd lost her place the first. He didn't rush her.

Two of his people would be there within the hour. A third, a young wolf he trusted, he sent to her building to watch the street.

"Check in every hour," Theron told him. "Nothing's too small to report."

At two, the text came, right on time. Quiet.

By then Ianthe had gone home.

His people had come through the back at half past one. They didn't speak. One of them looked at the body, then at the front windows, then at him, and kept whatever he thought to himself. Nobody asked why the Alpha was still there. That was a courtesy. It was also a question Theron couldn't answer.

Now the body was gone, and he stood in the back of the store with a mop bucket, scrubbing a floor that was already clean. It was something to do with his hands.

At three, nothing.

He checked the phone. Then he checked it again. The young wolf had never been late. Not once in two years.

At five past, Theron called. It rang until it cut to silence.

At seven past, he called again. He told himself the wolf was careless. He didn't believe it, not for a second.

The wolf he'd sent to watch her door had stopped answering.