An Alpha Who Smells of a Human

My head jerked back, trying to refuse the impossible vision in front of me. I stared at the unbroken, unblemished skin of Adrian's shoulder, an area where, mere hours before, I had washed and bandaged three grotesque wounds. There was nothing. No line, no scab, no even faint pinkness of new tissue. It was as if the wound had never been. A figment of a nightmare. But I knew it had been. The rumpled, blood-stiffened gauze scattered on the floor was my proof. The metallic smell of it, faint but biting in the morning air, was my proof. The memory of his fever-hot skin in my trembling fingers was my proof. Reason, science, every logical rule I had ever been taught screamed that this was impossible. But my eyes would not lie. For my entire life, I had clung to comfort in the hard, verifiable facts of books. Now, the most inescapable fact in my universe was the one that made the least sense: my best friend was not human. The floor beneath my feet seemed to shift, the comfortable familiarity of our shared dorm room twisting into something strange and terrible. I was no longer just suspicious; I was afraid.

I moved as a robot, picking up the bloody gauze from the floor. It was cold and stiff under my fingers. I curled it in my fist as I stood there waiting for him to wake, my heart a cold, heavy weight in my chest. When Adrian finally awoke, stretching with a languid ease that belied the violence of the previous night, his eyes met mine. He smiled his easy, charming smile, but it faltered when he saw my face. "Ethan? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost." His voice was husky with sleep, warm and familiar, but it did nothing to calm the fear twisting in my belly. I didn't reply. I just held up my hand and uncurled my fingers, showing him the bloodied patch. His eyes went wide, the colour draining from his face. The rest of the sleep was forgotten, replaced with a wary, panicked look. He sat up, instinctively checking his shoulder. "I… I don't know what you're talking about," he stammered, voice losing its confident tone. "I told you, I fell. It was just a scratch."

"A scratch?" My own voice was deeper than I'd anticipated, filled with a cold mix of fear and betrayal. "Adrian, I cleaned it. I saw it. Three deep slashes, like. like claws. And now they're gone." I advanced a step, my determination growing. "Don't lie to me. No more. The midnight excursions, your increased strength, what you did to Josh, the howl I heard last night. and now this. What are you?" The question hung between us, heavy and crushing. Adrian seemed stuck, his eyes scanning the room as if searching for an exit. He raked a hand through his hair, his breathing growing ragged. He gazed at my face, then at the bloody gauze, and back again, his façade finally cracking. A look of raw pain flitted over his face—the look of a man whose carefully built world was shattering. "Ethan, you don't understand," he begged, his voice falling to a pitiful whisper. "You have to believe me, I never intended to bring you into this. I was trying to protect you."

"Protect me from what?" I insisted, taking another step closer. "Protect me from the truth?" Before he could answer, his entire body tensed. His head whirled around to face the door, a low, animal hum vibrating through his chest. It was not a human sound. It was a growl, low and threatening, the same one I'd heard in the quad, but a hundred times more ferocious. His eyes, focused on the hall beyond our room, darkened, the pupils expanding until they were almost entirely black. The nice athlete had disappeared, replaced by a predator in high gear. "Get back," he growled, his voice a killing rasp. He leapt to his feet, interposing his body between me and the door in a flash of movement, his body a physical barrier. "Adrian, what is it?" I breathed, my own fear ratcheting up to a new, unacceptable level. He didn't answer. The door to our room, which we'd left open, creaked on its hinges.

Marcus Hale was in the doorway. He did not smile this time. His face was calculating and cold, his eyes projecting a palpable hostility. Kevin and Josh stood on either side of him, their faces set and unnervingly compliant, like dogs waiting for a cue. The room grew thick, charged with a unspoken violence that was raw and animal. This was not a visit from a fraternity adversary; this was an invasion, an invasion of space. "Cross," Marcus said, his voice smooth but threaded with steel. He let his gaze sweep the room before it came to rest on me, hiding behind Adrian. A flicker of something predatory and possessive flashed in his eyes. "You look awful. Bad night?

"Get out of my room, Hale," Adrian snarled, his shoulders hunched, his muscles contracted like a bunched rubber band. He was bigger than Marcus, but for a moment they were two forces of equal, horrifying magnitude. "This is my territory. You're not welcome here." Territory. The word was alien, animalistic. Marcus stepped deliberately inside, an open act of disrespect. His nostrils flared slightly. "I can smell him all over you," Marcus sneered, his eyes on me. "An Alpha who smells of a human… It's a weak smell. Makes you smell weak." Alpha? Human? The words were English, but they belonged to a language I didn't understand. I froze in place, as a quiet, primal war of wills raged between them. It was in their posture, the challenging tilt of their heads, the raw ferocity of their stares. This was a game of dominance, and I was somehow the pawn in the middle of it.

"What I do, and who I spend my time with, is pack business," Adrian growled, moving me further back behind him. "It has nothing to do with you." Pack. The word was a kick to the stomach. The howl. The claws. The impossible healing. It all fell into place, a picture so ugly and unbelievable that my mind let out a shriek of denial. Marcus gave a hard, humourless laugh. "When your vulnerability puts our entire kind in danger, it has everything to do with me. This human makes you irresponsible. The Elders are not going to be happy to hear about your fight last night. Or about how you can't even handle a few Omegas from my patrol without getting torn apart." He was referring to the wounds. The wounds he couldn't possibly know about unless he was the one who had given them to me, or paid someone to give them to me. The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. This wasn't a rivalry. This was a war.

Marcus's cold blue eyes met mine over Adrian's shoulder, and the stark predatory hunger in them sent shivers down my spine. He wasn't looking at an individual; he was looking at a tool, a weapon to be employed against his enemy. "He has everything to do with it," Marcus reproved Adrian, his voice a deadly whisper. "You should have kept your pet on a shorter leash." And with that final, venomous warning hanging in the air, Marcus nodded again, the barest movement. He and his two silent enforcers turned and left, leaving behind a vacuum of cold fear. I stood there, shaking, back to the wall. The world had spun on its axis and broken into a million pieces. My best friend, the boy I'd grown up with, the boy I might even love, wasn't human. He was an Alpha. And his enemy, a man who now looked at me as prey, was another. I wasn't standing on the sidelines any longer, watching Adrian's secret life.

I was standing right in the middle of the hunting grounds, and I had just been marked.

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