Alpha's Last Fight: A Paranormal Shapeshifter BBW Romance (7 page)

I fight. I win. We survive.

“...and in the blue corner, the man you’ve all come to see, the undisputed champion, the biggest, baddest motherfucker on the planet… Hutch!”

Terry milked it for all he was worth. He was good at it. The crowd loved him and he made the crowd love me. By the time I vaulted the ropes, into the ring, he’d worked them into a frenzy. They were ready for the main event. We’d come a long way in five years. Back then we fought on a mound of dirt to tiny crowds getting ripped on moonshine. Now we had bars and lights and seating and everything you’d expect from a legitimate venue. Everything except the permits, of course. We weren’t exactly Reno yet, but we were getting a reputation and I believed that in a couple of years we’d be one of the top venues in the country.

I threw my arms wide and let it wash over me. Waves of adoration and excitement and a lust for blood, fueled by alcohol and the bouts they’d already seen. The women, the men, they all wanted me and they wanted to see me win.

I placed two fingers of my left hand to my lips and a noise died down as everyone waiting to see what happened next. It was shameless showmanship on my part, but it served a purpose.

Territory, dominance, survival? When you’re an animal, it’s all about fucking. With no territory you have no mate. If you can’t dominate your rivals, you don’t get the alpha’s right to choose. And survival? Sex
is
survival. If you can’t figure that one out, just ask the nearest panda how their species is doing.

“I love you, Hutch!”

A shrill scream from an enthusiastic woman in the front row was followed by a tension-breaking titter of laughter from the crowd. I took the opportunity to scan them. Some familiar faces, some new faces. And then I saw her.

Those green eyes and that dress. A dress that barely contained her overflowing curves that were just begging for my touch. Where the hell had she come from? She was kin, but she didn’t run with any pack I knew. A dog, maybe? Probably. She smelled of big cities and small apartments and working nine-to-five to make ends meet.

I’d seen the guy she was with before. The one with the cane. Timmy or something. He dropped by to watch the fights once a month or so. I’d seen him start talking to some of the working girls. He wasn’t the only one who liked a bit of strange. Who wanted to get himself some genuine shifter tail, just to see what it was like. But he always chickened out and went home alone.

He reeked of fear and desperation, but here he was with that fine out-of-town bitch hanging off his arm. What was up with that?

Damn. There was something about her. Something not right about her. Something that annoyed me, which only made me want her more. I could have any woman here. All I had to do was point at one of them.
You. You’re the one. You get to fuck me when I win
.

It started as a joke. Kiss my fingers, point to the prettiest girl in the room to let her know they’re the one. To let them know that the animal they’re watching - the one beating the shit out of his rival - is going to be fucking them like they’ve never been fucked before when he’s done.

When they come to me after the fight, I can always smell it on them. An intoxicating mix of fear and desire. Their panties dripping with a newly discovered need. The truth is, as much as people like to pretend otherwise, deep down inside everyone is an animal. For shifters it’s just closer to the surface. Easier to access.

Everyone is an animal and everyone wants to fuck. Everyone. You can pretend otherwise. I guess some people are so good at pretending that they fool themselves. But it’s still there. Everyone has a primal need to reproduce and deep down beneath all of society’s distractions, right down in the deepest part of a woman’s genetic programming is a flashing neon sign that’s telling them they should reproduce with the baddest motherfucker in the world because at the end of the day all that matters is making sure you and yours will survive.

So that night I pointed to her. I pointed at her and sent her a message.
Watch me. See what I can do
.

She looked confused. The guy she was with, the cripple, looked angry. He knew what was happening. He knew he was going home alone. He knew he’d made a mistake bringing her here. I guess he was trying to impress her or something. But dog or not, she was more animal than he could hope to handle.

I could sense it the second I met her. She needed more than he had to offer and if it came to making a choice, there was no way she could resist. It was a simple gesture, two fingers that singled her out. But it was all she needed. It let her know that this fight was for her. A demonstration of my strength, my ability to survive and defeat anyone who stood in my way.

She was already mine and she didn’t even know it.

When people fight, they are fueled by rage. Anger makes them strong. Anger makes them able to withstand pain. Anger gives them an edge.

When we fight, it’s different. We already have an edge. We have almost unlimited strength inside us, we just need to access it. That’s the easy bit. The hard bit is to access it without shifting. That takes control.

Those who haven’t mastered control… lose. To shift during a fight, to lose control and change form, usually leads to a humiliating defeat. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Sometimes you’ll encounter a young pup who hasn’t learned yet. Who thinks that a wolf can beat a man. Maybe that’s true out in the wild or against regular people. But here, in the confines of the ring, a wolf is clumsy and will struggle to get the upper hand against someone with the strength and speed of a wolf, and the mobility and finesse of a trained fighter.

My opponent was no pup.

Deek was bigger than me and stronger than me. He knew how to fight and he knew he had to stay calm. I was faster and more agile and he knew it. As I danced around him, dodging and weaving, he didn’t lose his cool. He was too experienced for that.

“I’m going to fuck you up, Hutch.”

He grinned, displaying missing teeth and a lopsided smile, and took another swing at me. It was slow and telegraphed, a clumsy trap. I pushed towards him and he was ready for me, a sweeping kick intended to take my legs from under me. But I knew it was coming, and he might as well been moving in slow motion.

When his leg was fully extended, I lashed out with my own. I struck the ankle that was supporting him with the side of my foot and heard a satisfying crunch as I made contact.

Five seconds in and we both knew I’d already won. I was already faster than he was and his only hope was to overwhelm me with brute force, but with his ankle injured I’d be able to dance rings around him. It was only a matter of time.

The crowd hadn’t seen it, though. They saw me narrowly escape two powerful and confident strikes from a bigger foe. They roared, eager for more. Eager for blood.

I grinned.

“They think this is a fight. This isn’t a fight.”

“Fuck you.” I saw a momentary glimpse of the animal within. My ears picking up the barely audible growl beneath Deek’s words as, just for a second, his eyes flashed gold beneath the harsh spotlights that bathed the ring in an unearthly orange glow.

“At least give them a show, you big ugly fuck.”

I slowed, just enough for the bigger man to get my measure. I could have ended it then and there, but the crowd didn’t come to see a main event that lasted a minute. They wanted to see two gladiators slug it out. They wanted a bloody epic and, like it or not, the survival of my pack was at stake. Happy crowds spent money. Happy crowds gambled. Happy crowds came back and brought their friends with them.

Deek must have thought I’d gotten sloppy as he took a wild swing that connected with the side of my head. Even rolling with the punch, the blow made my ears ring. I brought a hand to my forehead and it came away tacky with blood. Another cut. Another scar for the collection. The things I do for my pack.

The crowd gasped. The crowd cheered. The crowd shrieked. I didn’t care about them, though. I wondered what
she
was thinking. Was she worried about me or could she tell I was just putting on a show? I was looking forward to having her explore my scars. Tracing them with a finger as her champion lay beside her soft warm— WHAM. A second punch caught me off guard and sent me crashing to the mat.

That hurt.
Dammit
. What the hell was wrong with me?

I’d win. We’d fuck. And tomorrow she’d be gone and I’d be nothing more than a memory. A benchmark that all her future lovers would fail to live up to. And yeah, she was soft and ripe and I wanted her. But she wasn’t kin and she wasn’t people. She was a dog in denial of her true nature. I guess that had a certain appeal, but it wasn’t anything to get sloppy about.

Deek’s uninjured leg swung at my chest with rib-cracking force, but even though I was distracted, he was far too slow. I pulled my arms up to protect my chest and took the brunt of the impact on my wrists.
Fuck
. Get it together.

I felt my calm slip. The animal inside me was chomping at the bit, begging me to be released and, just for a second, I gave in. I lashed out with inhuman speed and as I relaxed my grip on humanity, there was a glimpse of something else. Something not quite human and not quite animal. A glimpse of gray fur and claws as I raked my hand across the back of Deek’s leg.

Before anyone knew what had happened, I was back in control again. Fur became skin, claws became nails. The animal was back in its cage.

“... The fuck?”

The look of surprise on Deek’s face made me feel a little better about my carelessness. It was my party trick. Very few people had that level of control over their transformation. Certainly no one Deek had fought before. For most shifters the change was like an unstoppable tsunami.

I wasn’t most shifters.

The crowd, predictably, loved it. They were on their feet howling for more. Although both cuts, my forehead and Deek’s shin, were shallow, they were bleeding and the crowd couldn’t get enough of it.

For a moment I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. A flash of shame. I was an alpha. I was physical perfection. The living embodiment of man and beast and here I was performing tricks to earn enough crumbs to feed my pack.

Even though no one could hear it, I felt the growl in the back of my throat.

Fuck them. Fuck all of them.
Fuck that girl in the crowd for thinking she was better than us. For choosing to live with them instead. And most of all, fuck Deek for being big and ugly and slow.

I crouched on the mat as I allowed the strength to flood into me. My legs felt as if they were on fire as I launched myself upwards like a missile. We locked eyes for a split second before I lowered my head. I’d pay for this. But a lump on my head would fade. Deek, on the other hand, was about to get a whole lot uglier.

My forehead smashed into his face with sickening force. The cartilage of his nose crumpled like the bonnet of a car and I could feel shard of teeth embedding themselves in my skin. We both fell to the floor in a sweaty pile of limbs.

Deek groaned. Alive, thankfully, but he wasn’t getting up anytime soon.

There was a beat, an almost uncomfortable silence, and then the crowd erupted.

Chapter Seven

Natalie

The fighter we’d just met strutted around the ring as if he owned the place. Now that he had stripped out of his warm-up clothes, I could see just why all the women in the crowd were going crazy for him. He was big, but not bulky. His lean muscled torso hung off impossibly broad shoulders like a work of art.

A dense tattoo started at his midriff and wound its way in a spiral round and round his abdomen, coming to a stop between and below his shoulder blades. He had other, smaller, tattoos up and down both arms, but this one was something else. I couldn’t make out any of the details, but it looked incredibly intricate.

When he turned away from us, I noticed the beginnings of a nasty looking scar. A slash that ran from the small of his back, downwards underneath the waistband of his shorts. I couldn’t resist daydreaming what I might find if I slid those shorts down over his chiseled obliques.

Ugh.
What was I thinking?
Tattoos and scars and a fighter who was about to try and beat another man senseless in the name of entertainment. In theory, this just wasn’t my kind of man. In theory… but here I was, my heart beating so hard it felt as it were straining at my ribcage.

Then his eyes locked onto mine, and I felt my heart skip a beat. The crowd roared as he pressed two of his fingers to his lips, then pointed in my direction.

“Did he just point at me? Why did he point at me?” I asked.

Tommy shrugged, but he didn’t look happy, “Who knows. He’s just showing off. Watch him get his arrogant ass kicked now.”

“He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to…”

“To what?”

“To lose.”

Tommy grunted.

“Take a look around. He’s already lost. He’s a loser, they all are. They live out here in a slum like animals. For all the smug posturing, he might as well be a circus freak.”

The words hit me like a slap across the face. I tried to process what Tommy was saying.

“You said…”

“What?”

The crowd was getting louder as Hutch and his opponent stepped around each other, sizing each other up.

“You said you brought me here so I could see my own kind. Is that what you think of me? Am I a freak?”

“I can’t…”

Tommy shook his head and tapped his ear;
I can’t hear you
, avoiding the question entirely.

He obviously had an ulterior motive for bringing me here. Was he trying to teach me a lesson? Was I supposed to be humiliated? He’d been overcompensating all night. Flashing his cash around like it was going out of fashion. Maybe this wasn’t about me, but about him. Was I supposed to fall into his arms because he had money and the freaks we had come to watch fight didn’t?

There was something going on here. Something ugly that I wanted no part of. But whatever it was, whatever point he was trying to make, it wasn’t working. I felt excited. I felt alive in a way that I hadn’t felt for longer than I could remember, possibly ever.