Wolf Prints

Taming the Alpha

"No."

I was in the midst of turning away, but stopped at the single word that left her lips. No was not a word I was overly used to hearing.

Turns out, I didn't like it too much, either.

I didn't consciously aim the tip of the blade at her throat, but it was suddenly within an inch of her pale flesh nonetheless.

She blinked rapidly, startled by my actions at last, her heartbeat accelerating to new heights as she eyed the blade that was little more than an extension of my own hand.

Finally! I cut down the urge to smile triumphantly, but just barely. Maybe this was how I could finally get through to the idiot girl. Mental games weren't working. I should have known she would respond more readily to a physical approach.

Mutts always did.

"Here's the deal." I told her, leaning back to steady the blade, balancing it easily between my fingers. "First lesson. I'm going to throw this knife at you, and you're going to catch it."

Her eyes widened to an impossible level. She took a fleeting step backward. Creating useless space between us. "W-what?" She stuttered, clenching the doll to her chest in a white-knuckled grip. Her eyes danced this way and that, searching for an escape I would never let her take. "How?"

Fear. This is what I wanted from her all along, but when it was showing through so fully on her face, the look of pure terror made me want to...do something. I wasn't sure what. I wasn't sure about a lot of things when it came to this girl. I really didn't want to think too hard on it.

"Instinct." I told her instead, which wasn't entirely true. As a werewolf she was born with a great deal of self-preservation. Did it give her the instant ability to fight? Absolutely not. She would learn that from me.

If she survived.

She swallowed so loudly I probably could have heard it a mile away. "What if I don't catch it?" She asked, but it was a ridiculous question. Wasn't it obvious?

"Then you die." I'm not ashamed to admit I kind of hoped for this outcome. It sure would solve all of my problems.

Before any unbidden and long-ago dissolved sense of morals could kick in, I flicked my wrist in one smooth motion, sending the knife slicing through the air, aimed directly at her heart.

Then it happened. The morals thing. Belatedly, but it definitely happened.

The blade left my fingers a split second before I decided against killing the girl. I almost didn't even have time to regret my decision, it happened so fast.

Moments that change the course of fate almost always do.

A scream pierced the night, but it was cut off just as sharply. The pure sound of it chilled me to the core as nothing else ever had before. Or maybe it was that flash in the chocolate depths of her eyes, filled with such...betrayal? Was that the right word? I really wouldn't know. No one ever trusted me enough to feel any sense of betrayal from me. Lie. Steal. Murder. I wrote the book on the fast track to hell, but even when I do those things, people don't feel betrayed.

They expect it from someone like me.

I tensed to move, knowing I'd never make it in time to stop the attack. Even I wasn't that fast.

It was luck that she survived, not skill. Her body moved purely on reflexes that only a shifted werewolf should have. Instinct.

It saved her life.

Still the blade sunk in to the hilt, piercing where her heart would have been had she not thrown her arms up to fend off the attack. It missed the intended target, and instead impaled the doll's chest, sinking true, but you wouldn't have thought she'd just dodged a very literal yet metaphorical bullet judging by the way the girl was looking at me.