The Alpha Dating Game(31)

All over his body, the need for change took charge and he felt his body transforming. His torso and limbs lengthened and thickened, ripping his clothes and shredding them into ribbons with sharp k-r-a-a-a-c-ks. Caleb responded by transforming himself.

“Stop it!” Their father’s voice was stentorian.

The two brothers were beyond care. Both of them were in their towering bear forms now. They launched their hulking bodies at each other, clubbing each other, trying to get the advantage. Kyle was the bigger of the two but Caleb was slick and wiry. They crashed into the shelves and a dozen priceless tomes fell to the floor.

Kyle drew back his paw and struck his brother in the muzzle repeatedly. His brother retaliated by swiping back at every part of him he could get his paws on. Kyle kicked out and cuffed his brother. So ferocious were his pummels and roars that he failed to register the huge dark shadow behind him.

Jericho, the Alpha, let out a mighty bellow. The glass on the windows shook. The huge great black bear which was his father seized Kyle and threw him off his brother and against the wall.

“Cease this!” the black bear thundered.

Kyle crashed against a low table. The force juddered the entire wall and the plaster cracked. Oil paintings commissioned specially for the study splintered off their hooks and fell onto the floor. Kyle barely felt any pain.

He sprang to his feet, but his father was there with a right hook which caught him on the jaw.

“Stay down.”

“Not until he apologizes.”

“You dare defy me?”

Kyle growled. But defying his father was beyond him. His father was far stronger. One day, he would be as strong as Jericho, if not stronger, but today was not the day. Still, he was incensed enough to want to fight his brother again. Caleb was climbing to his feet and spitting fur out of his mouth, a very human gesture.

The door of the study swung open. Two of his cousins, Abel and Mira, were in their bear forms as they raced in. They immediately saw what happened.

“Seize him,” Jericho thundered, pointing at Kyle. “He has compromised the Gathering. He cannot be trusted to see this through. Lock him in the north tower until I decide what to do with him.”

“No!” Kyle roared.

His cousins charged him. Kyle decided to go for broke. He fought back, clubbing and clawing and biting. Fur flew and massive paws swiped faces, gouged eyes. More werebears flooded the now crowded study. It finally took five of his cousins to bring Kyle down.

He didn’t want to transform, but they held him down. His limbs flailed and he fought them with every ounce of his strength. His father, now in naked human form, appeared in between them with a large hypodermic syringe in his hand. It was filled with a clear liquid which Kyle knew to be a tranquilizer.

The needle jabbed him.

“Don’t hurt her,” Kyle managed to gasp before his veins burned with the overdose. Then his vision turned cloudy and his world went dark.

His last sight was that of his father’s grim visage, which clearly said: You are not worthy to be my successor. Or even my son.





WAKING





Kyle woke up naked and with a splitting headache. He took in his surroundings. He was on the cold stone floor in what was obviously the north tower of the Enclave.

The towers were specifically built to contain werebears and other enhanced were-folk, which might or might not be prisoners of the clan. The towers’ walls were very sturdy, and he was in a cell fronted by a titanium-reinforced grate which could keep an elephant in. He had been here before, of course, but on the other side of the grate.

Now his status was obvious. He was his father’s prisoner. A fallen werebear once poised to be the Alpha, successor to his father. Now he couldn’t be trusted by any of his clan members because he couldn’t rein in his emotions where the human girl was concerned.

It was as his father said. He had been ‘compromised’.

He wondered what had happened to Jessica. Everything was going wrong now. Nothing was going by rote.

He remembered what happened at the last Gathering which occurred one year ago.

His father had selected the virgin, a nineteen-year-old college freshman named Alison Korin from the website. Jericho used his charm to lure them in. He was still a very handsome man, and many college girls were smitten, especially when they were wined and dined with great fanfare. It was usually a girl’s fantasy to be courted by a rich man, and they were willing to make concessions about his age.

The search for a virgin could not start too early, because there was the chance the girl might get to know the hunter too well and start dropping too many hints about who he was. And many girls who started as virgins did not stay virgins, which made it doubly difficult. The search could not start too late either for obvious reasons.