The Alpha's Fight: Huntsville Pack Book 3 (12 page)

Ryder nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay. Well, give them that," he pointed to the paper he'd given to Lia. "And you should be all set."

"Thank you," Lia said, her voice a whisper. The idea of having a phone that contained information she'd put into it excited her. Maybe her brain hadn't stored anything, but her phone would have. There would be pictures. Texts. Phone numbers. She couldn't wait, and her footsteps were light on the way out of The Crescent.

H
udson's mall turned out to be smaller than she had expected. The entire thing consisted of a one story building in grey stone with just two department stores at either end. She wondered if she would find anything. They started at the Cellxis store and once she'd picked out a new phone, they left the staff to set it all up while she shopped.

"I'm going to grab a coffee, if that's okay." Ryder gestured to a kiosk in the middle of the mall's hallway. The scent of roasting beans emanated from it in waves.

"Yeah, sure." When he started to walk away, she put a hand on his shoulder and held him back. He whirled on her, a fist up and his gaze dark, the amber flecks inside flaring bright as fire. She jumped back, holding up her arm. She'd managed to forget the no touching rule less than an hour after remembering it.
Real slick there, Lia.
"Sorry. I just wanted to say thank you for doing this. I know your grandmother roped you into bringing me here, but I really appreciate your help."

He relaxed and his eyes returned to their more normal brown shot through with amber. "I'm sorry myself. I didn't mean to jump on you like that. It's an old fight reflex." He flexed his fingers. "Sometimes they'd sneak a second fighter into the ring if the fight got boring and they would always come up on me from behind."

"Oh. Wow. I had no idea."

"Most people don't. Thankfully, my reflexes are good. I will always react, but I won't just punch people out, you know? And I'm glad to help. I'm at loose ends until my pack situation sorts itself out."

"What pack situation?" She knew something was up from the conversation on the patio at Crescent Pines, but nothing had ever been said.

"I'm leaving my pack."

"Oh? Is that a big deal?"

"It is if it pisses off your alpha. Mason would rather kill me than let me go."

"The same Mason I think I remember?" Fear squirmed in her gut. She'd thought being with Ryder was safe, but he was actually tangled up in whatever had caused her to lose her memory.

"Yep."

"Why is he so awful?"

Ryder shrugged. "Hard to say. It runs in the pack DNA or something. He's always been violent and difficult. All the men in his line are and they make up most of the pack."

"There must be a lot of fighting in your pack."

"I threw my first punch when I was five."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Some fifth grader tried to take my lunch."

Lia shook her head.

"What, no one ever fought in your pack?"

"I have no idea," she said. "I can't remember. I expect boys are the same everywhere though, so there must have been some fighting."

"Yeah, well Mason is all fight, all the time. I was a professional fighter and even I didn't fight as much as him."

She frowned and cast a nervous glance over her shoulder. "And he wants you dead and probably smacked the memory clean out of my head."

"Don't worry. Mason won't find us here. He doesn't shop. No alpha worth his dominance does."

"But you're here."

"Extenuating circumstances. I'm sort of homeless right now and you need clothes, so win-win, right?" He winked at her and stepped away. "So I'll see you in an hour or so?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure." She startled again, so caught up in Ryder that she'd forgotten about the mall.

"Do you need more time?"

She looked from one end of the mall to the next and shook her head. If there were even twenty stores she would be surprised. "I think an hour is fine. I'll let you know."

"Holler if you need me." He also gauged the size of the mall. "I'll hear you pretty much wherever you are in this place."

"Thanks." She strolled off with a wave and headed into a store. For the moment, she was content. Her new phone would reveal more of her life than she could currently remember, and while the mall might be small, the clothing selection appealed to her. She was one step closer to getting her real life back.

***

R
yder's phone rang as he waited in line to place his coffee order and he frowned when he saw the caller ID flash across the screen. Mason. Of course it would be his alpha.

With a sigh, he hit ignore.

The phone rang again after a brief moment of silence.

When he still didn't answer it, the dings of text messages arriving started.

The third time Mason called him, he stepped out of line and answered. "What?"

"You can't hide from me forever." Mason's harsh voice filled Ryder's ear.

Ryder said nothing, refusing to engage. Mason was the type where the more you gave, the more he took.

"I've been looking for you. People have told you I want to see you and you're ignoring me. Disobeying your alpha can get you kicked out of your pack, did you know that?"

"Get to the point, Mason. I don't have time for this."

"If you don't turn yourself in to the sheriff, I'm going to kill your grandmother. How's that for getting to the point?"

Every muscle in Ryder's body tightened. "You do anything to my family and it'll be the last thing you do on this earth."

"Maybe you were undefeated in the fighting ring, but I'm an alpha, not one of those betas the Pack League fed you. You can try to take me, Ryder Chase, but you're the one whose soul will be flying to the moon, not me."

"Everyone I fought in the ring was more alpha than you'll ever be. Do not touch my family. You won't survive it."

Mason laughed, the sound sour. "Too late, wannabe. Did you know that, as her alpha, I can sign her out of Crescent Pines at any time and no one will stop me? She can say no all she wants, and in fact, that's exactly what she did. But I'm the alpha and she goes where I say. They know that there, but you and your family seem to be confused about how a pack works."

"Let her go or I won't stop until you're a bloody fucking smear on the forest floor." Ryder had to force his hand to relax before he crushed his phone. He so badly wanted to reach through the phone and rip out Mason's throat.

"Oh, your grandma's fine. Don't get your fur in knots." Mason chuckled. "We've been playing cards with her all morning. Poor thing is terrible at poker. Did you know that? And she has no money, so we've had to find different ways for her to pay her debts."

"If you've touched one hair on her head..."

"Oh we only started with the hair. We're down to her toes now. Tell me. How many do you think you can lose before it affects your balance as a wolf?"

Ryder clenched his hand into a fist and fought not to shift right there in the mall. His wolf was increasingly desperate to hunt Mason down and rip out the alpha's throat. "Fine. Where do you want to meet?"

"Tell you what. Why don't we pick you up?" The phone went dead after that and Ryder suppressed a howl of frustration.

Pick him up? What had that meant? He froze. Had Mason found him? Sniffing the air, he tested for the peppery scent of Mason's testosterone but caught nothing other than coffee. Turning in a slow circle, he scanned the mall. Had his pack snuck up on him? But he saw only humans.

Striding off, he went to look for Lia. Ryder had a bad feeling itching between his shoulder blades. Maybe he couldn't see or smell any sign of Mason, but he also knew his alpha wasn't prone to empty threats. Promises, he broke all the time, but threats? Mason lived for those and he liked to follow through on them.

If Mason said he would pick him up, that meant his alpha knew where he was.

***

H
e found Lia in a dressing room at the department store at the far end of the mall.  Tracking her scent—a mix of soap on freshly scrubbed skin and the smell of the open road from riding on his bike—he dodged a line of women waiting for a fitting room.

"Hey, you can't go back there," squawked a middle-aged woman, so short she could barely see over the armful of clothing she held.

"Sorry. Emergency." He attempted a pleasant smile, but was too worried to do it properly and from the way the woman's eyes widened, he realized he'd probably done something a lot closer to a snarl. There wasn't time to do anything about it, though. Navigating the narrow hallway in the dressing room, he called out, "Lia. We have to go. Now."

A door opened and Lia poked her head out. "Ryder? Um, I don't think you're supposed to be back here."

"Sorry," he said for a second time. "It's important. I got a call from Mason. Something's happened."

"Okay," she said. "Give me a second. I'll be right out."

He leaned against the wall, arms crossed and tapping his foot, pointedly ignoring the glares of the women just outside the dressing room entrance.

"Lia? Hurry it up. We don't have time for this."

"Sorry. I...ah...seem to be stuck." There was a thud as if she'd bumped into the wall.

"I'm coming in," Ryder said, pitching his voice low in the hopes the humans wouldn't hear him and freak out even more. He tried to turn the handle only to find it locked. "Lia," he growled in warning.

"Ryder," she growled right back.

Cursing under his breath, he flexed his forearm and snapped the handle off, using his body to shield the movement from view. Deftly slipping the handle in his pocket, he nudged the door open with his shoulder and stepped into the small dressing room.

Lia turned as he entered, her face completely covered by the dress she was in the process of removing. "I really don't think you should be in here," she said, her tone sharp.

He couldn't help but notice her toned stomach and the way it moved as she spoke. The thong he'd bought her had disappeared, replaced by a pair of lace panties that, under different circumstances, he would rip off. She wore a matching bra that mounded up her breasts until they threatened to spill over. 

Clearing his throat and dragging his gaze to a random fixed point well above her head, he said, "If we don't get out of here, we're going to be in trouble. Remember your sister?"

"I know." She dragged out her vowels in aggravation. "My hair is stuck in the zipper on this stupid dress. I can't get it off."

She turned around and his gaze slipped back down into forbidden territory, giving him a great view of her ample rear and the way it flowed into thick, yet taut thighs. Ryder bit back a groan. Really? The moon was a bitch to throw such a beautiful woman in front of him when he had no time for the lust suddenly burning in his veins. Grandma Tillie came first. Getting Lia completely naked and fucking her until she screamed his name was nothing but a picture in his head until his grandma was safe.

His wolf whined in his head, in total agreement but unhappy about it. His beast wanted to bend Lia over and pound her until she screamed she was his. It was a powerful instinct, one he wouldn't be able to deny forever.

Averting his eyes in the hope that it would stop his cock from turning into stone and cool his animal lust, he fumbled with the zipper that had trapped Lia in the dress. "It's not the zipper. It's this little pearl button at the top of the dress." He tugged on it.

"Ryder! What are you doing?" Her voice went up an octave as he inadvertently pulled her hair.

"Just stay still, will you?" Losing all patience, he pinched his fingers and ripped the button off the dress, tossing it to the ground.

Lia gasped with horror. "Ryder!"

"Shh. Relax. It's fine, see?" 

"Did you just do what I think you did?"

Ryder leaned in close, his lips almost touching her ear. "Mason has my grandmother. And I think he knows I'm here. As much as I like the view—and believe me, it's a helluva view, one I won't forget anytime soon—if we don't get out of here, you're going to wish you'd just yanked your own hair out to begin with."

That galvanized her into action. She whipped off the dress and flung it at him. "Put that on the hanger, will you?" Then she pulled on her clothes, grabbed her purse and a couple of shopping bags. "I'm ready."

"Great. Stay close and be ready to run. I'm not sure where they are or when they'll make a move." Ryder jammed the dress onto the hanger and hung it on the hook. Cracking the door to the dressing room, he peered out and saw nothing but the wide chest of a very large human male wearing a blue shirt with the word security emblazoned across the front.

The big man cleared his throat. "Sir. We're going to have to ask you to leave."

"Yeah, get a room," said a woman toward the back of the line.

"The zipper was stuck," Lia said, indignant. "Get your minds out of the gutter."

A second security guard snickered and when Ryder turned his head to follow the sound, the man gave him a knowing look.

"You read my mind," Ryder said, pitching his voice into an agreeable tenor. "We were just leaving." Turning back, he whispered, "Come on, Lia." Snagging her hand, he pulled her after him, not wanting them to get separated.

They slunk out of the dressing room and past two security guards, cutting through the line of women who stared at them with open disapproval. Lia kept her head down, refusing to meet anyone's gaze.

"Can you hurry it up?" She pressed closed against him.

Spotting an exit, Ryder tugged her hand. "We're almost clear. Just hang tight."

"I'm pretty sure I've never been so humiliated in my life," she said. "You know what they were thinking, right?"

"That we were having buck wild sex in there? Yeah. I saw it." He held open a door for her. They would have to walk around to the other side of the mall to get his bike, but the freedom of open air and blue sky was just a few feet away.  "People will believe anything. If their noses were half as good as ours, they would know better."

"Yeah, but they can't smell the truth so their imaginations run wild." She covered her face with her hand, a red flush deepening across her cheeks.