Alpha

"What do you mean she’s been kidnapped?"

Cannan’s angry voice echoes in the little house. Rudi is sobbing from shock, Zeeva sits stone-faced, Cannan is furious, and the other guys just don’t seem to know what to do with themselves. As much as I hate it, I feel like I have to maintain control of the situation. My friends are falling apart and have no clue what to do.

"Alright, listen, Cannan, we all get that you’re upset, but we all need to calm down. We need to be rational about this." I give Rudi a cloth, and she mops her tears with it. "We need to come up with a game plan. Obviously, I’ve tainted the trail, and it will be faint, but we should still try to see if we can place that scent—I know I’ve smelled it somewhere. Lovett, we’re both upset, but we need to get over it because, right now, Susanne needs us. You have the best nose, so maybe you’ll be able to figure out what it is—who it is. I want everyone to just wait here for us, and don’t do anything stupid. We’ll figure out how to move on from there."

Everyone stares at me like I'm crazy. I roll my eyes.

"Come on! The longer we take, the further Susanne gets!"

They accept that I’m taking over as Alpha here, and I am calling the shots. Lovett and I leave and are hit with a gentle waft of air carried by the wind. I watch him follow Susanne’s scent through the woods, following the direction in which she ran. We head slowly this way for about 30 minutes before he pauses. The sun continues to rise in the sky.

"This is where it happened," he mutters certainly. We stand in a small clearing with about a three meter diameter, the perfect amount of space to grab someone else. And then I notice that the underbrush of bushes is thick all around...except in one place where it appears to have been slashed through with a knife or sword.

"He wasn’t alone," I murmur as Lovett picks up the scent again. "But wait... There are only two scents; Susanne and the kidnapper. So where was the other guy?" I sigh. "My head hurts." I put my head to my forehead as we continue walking.

He goes straight through the path that was cut out as his hypersensitive nose follows the trail. We eventually reach the tree that I picked up the scent from, and I groan guiltily. "They passed right in front of me. I could have caught them if I would’ve paid attention."

He looks down at me and gently lifts my chin to look at him. "It wasn’t your fault, Louve. You were upset, and you’ve been pretty stressed lately. If we're throwing blame around, I was the one who reminded you and upset you even more. Don't worry. We’ll find her."

He then turns away and continues to sniff the air. Sure enough, he follows the exact trail that I had wandered down earlier, and the tiny bit of hope I’d held earlier disappears.

We get to the road where the smell stops and is replaced by the smell of metal and oil and gas. Lovett looks at the road curiously, and I realize what he sees—skid marks followed by a faint trail of oil.

"Lovett, do you know what this means?" I ask, suddenly very excited with a new surge of faith.

"We might be able to get Susanne." His voice is quiet, but there’s an undertone of excitement that mirrors my own. I see the first bit of emotion on my brother’s face that I’ve seen in days.

I pause, unsure how to proceed. "Well I’m torn," I mutter. He glances at me inquisitively, and I explain my thought process slowly. "The way I see it, we have two choices—go ahead on the trail alone or go back, get the others, and follow it with them."

"Look," he says, looking faintly amused. "It’s up to you. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m kind of looking at the new Alpha."

"How so?" I ask confused.

"Listen, an Alpha doesn’t just lead the Pack. The Alpha keeps the Pack united when there’s a crisis. The Alpha tells us what to do, when, and how things are going down. I only took the spot because I was already in charge when the others started joining us, but Ryder began fighting that and trying to take things over soon after Susanne joined us, not that I would ever follow his lead. But just because I've always been Alpha, doesn't mean that that can't change. You may be the youngest out of all of us, but involuntarily, you did exactly what the Alpha should today when Ryder and I failed—me for obvious reasons and him for, well...whatever. You found out what was going on, and then you told us what we have to do without accepting an argument from anyone. For now, at least, you are the sole leader of the Pack." He looks at me with a serious but gentle and playful expression on his fair-skinned face. "So, now that you call the shots, what are we doing, chief?"

I groan and give him a look. "Can’t you just tell me what to do like you used to when we were kids?" He gives me a knowing look, and I groan again. "Well...the longer we wait, the further that Susanne is getting. We may as well just do it now and see where it goes. If it goes for too far, we’ll go back and get the others."

He nods in approval and trails me as we follow the path of oil. Unfortunately, we hit a dirt road where wind-blown dirt covers up the path.

"So, do you want to tell Cannan, by chance?" I ask, disappointed.

Lovett sighs and smiles sadly down at me. "Unfortunately, you’re now Alpha." He half laughs at my blank expression. "That means that that is now your job."

I groan for probably the umpteenth time today, and he wraps his arm around my shoulder as we turn around to head back to the house.
* * * * *
"Okay, so we found the place where Susanne was taken from. It should have been a two man job, but there were only two scents there—hers and the kidnapper's. We followed the trail to the road, and followed an oil trail until it was cut off at a dirt side road that it took."

"So you’re saying that we’ve got nothing?" Cannan asks incredulously, his British accent especially predominant in his anger. "You’re just giving up?" He seems even more furious now than he was earlier.

"Look, we tried—"

He cuts me off and punches the wall. "Well try harder!" He shouts, turning away from the new formed dent in the wood. Cannan always did have a temper. And Ryder and Lovett are right by his side in a flash, keeping him in check. Lovett glares at Ryder over Cannan’s head, annoyed that they feel the same about me in different ways—Lovett hates Ryder and hates it even more when they agree. They always carry great animosity in encounters.

"Back. Off," Ryder whispers threateningly in Cannan’s ear, blatantly ignoring my brother. The other boy considers for a moment whether he could take all three of the guys—Eyulf is standing next to me in a dangerous stance as well—but seems to decide that it isn’t worth it. He huffs at me in fury before turning and stomping out of the room.

I rub my face in exhaustion, pausing to massage my temples. Everyone talks amongst themselves for a while before the group separates and wanders off to their own devices. But I pay no attention, not until I shriek in surprise as I feel myself being lifted up by Ryders massive arms.

"What on Earth are you doing?" I cry, laughing at the same time.

"You, my friend, are exhausted. I’m just doing you a favor." He smiles down at me with bright white teeth, his light blue eyes shining. In the room I share with Zeeva, he swings me around in a circle and places me gently on the bed, sitting down beside me.

I sit up and scoot closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder as he wraps his arm around mine. "You screamed when I lifted you," he teases me, snickering.

"Well...I was surprised!" I reply, flustered.

He snickers again. "You scream like a girl."

"I am a girl, stupid!" I grab a pillow and hit him with it before rolling my eyes. And then he leaps up and scoops me up again. "Ryder, put me down!" I yell without much conviction.

He laughs and dances around the room, swinging me in his arms as I cling to his neck for dear life. After a while of dancing around the room, he finally sets me back down on the bed. Both of us have tears of hysterical laughter sparkling in our eyes, and we both fall on our backs on the bed. I scoot closer to him as the giggles subside and curl up against his side, and he wraps his arm around my shoulders. The silence between us is so peaceful, so sweet, so wonderful. Not awkward, just nice.

And then Rudi busts into the room, Eyulf in tow with Zeeva and Lovett shadowing them, coming in down the hall. I shoot up on the bed, ignoring my overprotective brother’s scrutinizing glare. "Rudi, what’s wrong?" I ask, closing the short distance between us and placing a comforting hand on her arm.

The poor girl is struggling not to cry—she’s shaking violently—for which I commend her. "It’s Cannan," she whispers, her voice struggling to stay steady. "He...he's gone."