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  Awakening the Alpha

  By Carolina Valdez

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2018 Carolina Valdez

  ISBN 9781634867740

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  NOTE: Previously published by Amber Quill Press.

  * * * *

  To readers everywhere who enjoy suspending reality for a journey into the world of fantasy.

  To all the other writers who enjoy dreaming up these adventures. I love to read theirs, too.

  * * * *

  Awakening the Alpha

  By Carolina Valdez

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 1

  The black wolf shuddered as his dark muzzle shortened and the space between his yellow eyes widened. His ears flattened and reshaped, finding their way to the sides of the head. As the face came into focus, the wiry fur disappeared as it softened and lengthened into hair covering a fleshy scalp and bangs brushed across the emerging forehead. His neck shortened and his spine straightened as the back legs lengthened and their paws receded into feet. The forepaws became hands at the end of long arms. His body convulsed as the transition completed and the wolf was once again fully human.

  Carrigan Morgan shook his head to clear his mind after the change and think again as a man. From a crouch, he rose and stepped back from the torn human body at his feet.

  It was unfortunate the nature lover they’d just killed had wandered into the pack’s secret hunting grounds in the lush Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park. After the excited, wide-eyed, and terrified stranger had videoed Carrigan and his beta shifting into wolf form, they’d had no choice. He had to die. The secret of the wolf shifters in this part of the park had been kept for millennia, and so it must remain for all time.

  Too late, the stranger had dropped rifle and camera and run. The wolves were on him in seconds for the strike. The alpha tore his carotids open, and the beta ripped groin arteries and blood vessels with his sharp teeth.

  The nature lover screamed and collapsed. His cries changed to a gurgle as his mouth and lungs filled with blood, and he bled out.

  Once he was dead, the carnivores withdrew without swallowing even one drop of blood. Despite being in wolf form, eating human flesh or drinking human blood would have been too close to cannibalism.

  Carrigan stared at the crumpled form, surprised he’d gotten as much of a rush out of killing his first human as he had when bringing down an elk. Even now, remnants of that thrill stirred his body, particularly in his balls and swelling cock. Even his pucker ached for a good fuck. He shut his eyes and pictured how he would jerk himself off when he was in private.

  “Carrigan?” Paul White, the gray wolf who was his beta, and, unlike the alpha, truly gray, brought him back to the moment. “What do we do now?”

  “We get rid of the evidence.” Morgan retrieved the camera, deleted the photos, and destroyed the device by stomping it with one boot and crushing it until only pieces were left. “You take his head. I’ll take his feet,” he ordered. “Don’t forget his weapon.”

  “If we leave him, a bear or a coyote will feed on him and leave no evidence of a wolf attack.”

  “And if a park ranger finds him before they do?”

  After a pause, Paul said, “I get your point.”

  “Exactly. Now pick up his damned torso.”

  The upper body was heavier, so it wasn’t a balanced load. Although Carrigan was the stronger man, he was the Alpha and could do as he pleased. It pleased him to be in control and delegate risky things and the hardest physical labor to others. He saved his strength for the important things, such as going for the necks of elk and, now, bringing down this man…this interloper who had been a dire threat to their secrets.

  Paul didn’t protest or offer other solutions. He slung the rifle strap across his chest, letting the gun ride down his back. Then he slid his arms under the dead man’s armpits.

  “On three,” Carrigan commanded.

  They heaved the body up on Carrigan’s count of three and trudged two miles through tall grasses and trees until, scratched and insect-bitten, they reached a private area where they tossed gun and carcass into a deep part of the flowing Lamar River. The rains had been heavy this year, and the river was still swollen and could handle the size of their kill.

  “Good riddance,” Paul said as he sluiced water upstream over his face and hands. “Jeez, that was close, wasn’t it? I’ve never seen visitors in our part of Yellowstone.”

  “Neither have I.” Carrigan studied Paul. “You’ve got blood on your shirtsleeves. Wash it off.”

  After they’d both cleaned up thoroughly in the icy water, they rested, sitting cross-legged with their backs and heads propped against tree trunks.

  Paul lamented, “We could’ve made it here much faster as wolves, without the scratches and bug bites.”

  Carrigan’s laugh had a steely edge to it. “That’s a ridiculous notion. How would we have carried him?”

  “I guess dragging him would’ve slowed us down.”

  “For a smart man, you’re sometimes a little slow on the uptake.”

  Paul frowned, probably not pleased at Carrigan’s attack on his intelligence, but he was, after all, only the beta.

  Carrigan smiled a smile almost as wide as a wolf’s mouth, tongue lolling out of habit. You don’t have to like me, Paul. I am the leader. You just have to submit to my commands.

  He punched him on the shoulder. “Get up. It’s a long way back to my car.”

  Paul winced at the hard hit, then sighed and stood with reluctance. Putting his hands on his hips, he arched his back and rolled his head from right side to left and back again, working out the kinks there and in his neck. He hurried to catch up with Carrigan, who was already many long strides ahead of him.

  Chapter 2

  Blaze Canis, shotgun unloaded and broken over his right arm, walked with the relaxed ease of someone used to a hunter’s stealth and patience. He was early for his job at Markell’s Shooting Range. It was located in West Yellowstone, not far from Montana’s west entrance to the popular national park. Many washings had faded his Wranglers, and his black Roper boots had lost their shine. He wore his blue denim shirt tucked in with the sleeves rolled to mid forearm. The bandanna tied around his neck was black. His shirt was snug over biceps, sh
oulders, and forearms.

  Montana had few gun restrictions, but you did need a permit to carry them concealed on your person. In Yellowstone National Park, you needed a permit to carry them open or hidden. Blaze’s handguns were prominently displayed, holstered from his belt in back and on one hip.

  “‘Mornin’, Blaze.” Tony Smith, the range’s owner, greeted him. “Helluva gorgeous day, isn’t it? You have ten signed up for your class. More’n we’ve had in an age. Word gets around that you’re good, you know.”

  His thoughts on his class, Blaze nodded to acknowledge the welcome and the compliment, but out of habit didn’t stop to chat. If you had secrets to keep—and he had many—it was best if people didn’t know too much about you or get too close.

  Pleasure threaded through him as he anticipated teaching others about something he loved. When he entered the range complex’s classroom, he opened the windows as wide as they would go and spread out a large plastic bag on a table in front of the class, covering it with several sheets of newspaper. It was his exhibit table. He laid down the shotgun, the semiautomatic pistol from his hip holster, and the revolver from his back belt there before fanning out the contents of a gun cleaning kit. To these he added safety glasses, brass cleaning brushes, and a pair of blue nitrile gloves to protect his skin from the cleaning solvent. Blaze completed his preparation by stacking boxes of new kits next to them.

  Next, he put plastic bags on the tables for the class members and covered them with pages of newspapers. He was ready when the first student walked through the door.

  As the students entered, he greeted each one at the door and ticked his name off a list. The nine men and a teen of eighteen chose seats behind the long tables and placed their guns and the other items they’d been instructed to bring on top of the layers of newspaper. Blaze closed the door and easily slid his right hip onto a stool behind the exhibit table, placing that foot on one of the rungs and the left foot on the floor. He leaned in a bit toward his students.

  “My name is Blaze Canis. I was born in the Lamar Valley and have hunted in Yellowstone since I was eight. That’s when my dad first taught me how to handle a gun and hit targets. Since then, I’ve been shooting both professionally and for sport.”

  The new-adult teen looked bored, and Blaze wondered why he’d come. At least he’d brought a revolver. He hoped the kid would become engaged in what he had to offer, because it was time he learned how to use and care for his weapon. It was obvious the older men were eager to learn about their firearms.

  Blaze had them introduce themselves by first names before he continued. The eighteen-year-old was Skeeter.

  The first topic was a discussion of different types of handguns. Each person told what kind he had and why he’d selected it, then Blaze took over from there.

  “Before we begin, let me point out that the bison in the park are not buffalo. The only buffalo in the world are the water buffalo in Asia and the African, or Cape, buffalo. So why do Americans, including Native Americans, refer to them as buffalo? Early Europeans valued our bison hides, and we think the common usage of the wrong term dates back to the times when “buffe” or “buffle” referred to any animal that provided a good hide for buff leather. Today it’s defined as meaning buffalo.”

  He pointed to a large, framed lithograph hanging on the wall behind him. It depicted men charging on horseback as they fired into a herd of bison. It was titled The Slaughter.

  “As you see, the litho portrays bison herds that originally roamed Yellowstone and the Great Plains as being decimated in the 1800s by white men firing rifles filled with black powder. It’s the weapons that interest us here. The residue left from that kind of powder not only gummed up a gun’s barrel, it ate through the metal if you left it on. To stop the powder from corroding the barrels, men learned to clean them immediately after they’d finished shooting for the day.”

  Blaze slid off the stool and stood behind his display. “Today’s powder isn’t corrosive, but it still leaves a residue known as fouling that can cause a gun to be unreliable.” He pointed to his semiautomatic pistol as it lay on the table. “Someone tell us how this gun works, please.”

  The dark-haired man named Logan answered. He sat with his tanned arms folded across his chest, leaning slightly back in his chair. His voice was well modulated and pleasant. “When you pull the trigger on a pistol, the gun fires the bullet and ejects its brass casing. The gasses from the firing cause the gun to pull a fresh cartridge from the magazine into the gun.”

  “Exactly. How might fouling affect this weapon?”

  Logan uncrossed his arms and sat up straight. Blaze could almost see him thinking during the pause before he said, “It could slow the slide. Maybe not feed in a new cartridge?”

  Blaze nodded. “Right. Even if it does feed in a new one, it may not have ejected the fired bullet’s casing. In that case—” he brought his fists together and mimicked an explosion by throwing his curled fingers up wide “—that’s not a scenario I’d want to be in the next time I wanted to take a shot. Would you?”

  The idea of a gun blowing apart in their hand and face sent a low rumble of agreement passing through the students.

  “Is it the same for my revolver?” Logan asked.

  “Good question. What do you think? Anyone else?”

  Crofts, a rough-hewn guy in a plaid woolen shirt, answered this one. “Revolvers depend on the cylinder turning to the next loaded chamber to fire again. A clogged cylinder might be slow in turning.”

  Wilson, whose blond hair was neatly combed and parted on one side, took this one. “If the cylinder ain’t turnin’ fast enough, a double-action trigger will be hard to pull, slow you down.”

  “And then you’re dead, dude,” Skeeter said.

  Ah, the teen had engaged, satisfying Canis that he was getting through to the kid. “Right on, Skeeter. I hope I’ve convinced everyone how important it is to clean your gun each time you’ve come to the range or fired it. Even if you only shoot a round or two. If you’ve cleaned a gun, stored it away, and haven’t used it for a long time, I suggest you clean it again before firing it.”

  “What about rifles…and that?” Wilson pointed to Blaze’s shotgun.

  “Glad you asked. Shotguns and rifles are the topic for another series of lessons. I’ll be teaching those next month.” As he said this, he had quietly opened his revolver, giving them a visual demonstration of the answer to the next question. “What’s the first step in cleaning your weapon?”

  Only Logan was quick enough to have picked up on what Blaze was doing, and he laughed lightly as he eyed Blaze’s quick fingers and hands. “Make sure your gun isn’t loaded. Just the way you’re doing right now.”

  “So I am. No sense in being dumb enough to handle a gun I think is empty and accidentally shoot myself in the foot or, heaven help me, in the balls, or somewhere else even more critical.”

  The men laughed. Skeeter joined in.

  Blaze removed his bandanna and folded it into a long length. “Skeeter, would you tie this blindfold around my eyes, please?”

  He could sense the anticipation in the class as they waited, puzzled as to why this was part of the instruction. “Tight enough that I can’t see.”

  As Blaze handed the dark cloth square to Skeeter, he saw pride flit across the young man’s face because he’d been the one asked to help. It was the kind of response Blaze had felt when his dad had involved him in the learning process when he was eight. He hoped it felt as encouraging to Skeeter as it had to him.

  “That’s good. Nice ‘n’ tight. Thanks.” He heard and sensed the students gathering around his table as he broke down his gun and reassembled it. He broke it down again and reassembled it. Then repeated the motion one final time.

  “In Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and on every other military mission across the world, I stayed alive for twenty years because I knew every piece of every weapon I owned. I kept them clean and functioning even under the direst of circumstances. And in the
dark.”

  Someone showed how impressed he was with a low whistle.

  Pulling down the bandanna to leave it hanging around his neck, Blaze said, “That was your homework assignment—I want you to be able to assemble your weapon blindfolded and in the dark. You ought to know the parts of your guns as well as you know the body of your lover.”

  Skeeter choked. Someone pounded him on the back, and he waved him away. Face flushed with embarrassment, he said, “Choked on my own spit.”

  Oh, I think everyone knows why you choked…We were all your age once, and thoughts of getting a little sex dominated every waking moment of every day. They still do. But if you only knew the kind of lovers I think about, you might’ve strangled on your spit instead of only choking.

  Blaze kept the smile he felt inside from reaching his face.

  As he picked up the stack of small boxes on his table and handed them out, he said, “I’m giving each of you a ten-dollar cleaning kit you could buy in any shop selling gun supplies. They’re an inexpensive brand found almost anywhere in the US. As you become familiar with your gun, you may decide on a different brand of kit or wish to add some items, but for our purposes, these will do. They have all the basics.”

  Walking around the room, he watched each student demonstrate he knew how to be sure his weapon was unloaded. Blaze corrected or helped when needed. Then he instructed them to tear their gun down, reassemble it, and repeat the process. Some were clumsy and slow, but Logan Rider’s long, slender fingers were nimble and sure.

  As Blaze approached Logan, he noticed for the first time how his dark hair gleamed. It was long, pulled straight back, and fastened at the nape of his neck with an ornamented leather strip. Logan looked up to ask a question, and his eyes were dark brown pools in a face alive with interest.

  Shoshone? At least something Native, judging from his distinctive facial structure and skin tone, Blaze thought. He only guessed Shoshone because historically they were nomads whose presence was noted in at least seven states. Considering this was Yellowstone country, the man’s heritage could be from any of at least nine Original American tribes known to have used the land, but among them, the Shoshone had left the greatest imprint, and made the best guess for Logan Rider.