Page 28 of Fated Alpha Baby

“Clarissa, huh? That’s a lovely name. So tell me, where did ‘Bug’ come from?”

She giggles again. “Mommy calls me that because of my fascination with insects.”

My smile fades as a memory is unlocked—a time when I was younger, carefree, and had a pretty unhealthy obsession with small creatures despite being a wolf. I gulp hard, but there’s no indication that the child is wolf-like, instantly dousing my suspicions. I’m about to tell her about my own fascination when the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickle with sharp awareness, as if my wolf’s hackles have risen on the brink of an attack.

At the same time, Simon slides the partition window open.

“Alpha—”

“You feel it too, don’t you?” I ask, curling my hands into fists as I glare out the side window. The night air outside the van—beyond the hum of the engine and tires rolling over tar—is awfully still. Too quiet. Too unnerving not to notice.

“Step on it, Beta,” I command Simon, then turn to the little girl. “Wake your mother up, Clarissa.”

She nods once and does as she’s told, rushing to Hannah’s side and shaking her shoulder to wake her. Hannah’s eyes fly open, and she immediately curls Clarissa into her arms.

“What’s going—”

Hannah doesn’t finish her sentence when a black mass pounds into my window, shattering the glass and sending the van tumbling to its side. The world flips upside down, and Clarissa lets out a terrified scream.

Metal shrieks and groans as the van rolls violently off the road, glass exploding inward while Hannah is thrown against the steel wall with a cry of pain. My own shoulder slams into the roof hard enough to crack bone if I were fully human, and Simon curses from the front as the van tumbles again.

The realization that the demons have found us hits before the van even stops rolling.

The pressure in the air is wrong—thick and rotten, like breathing in burning smoke and blood at the same time. Their presence slithers beneath my skin, cold and familiar in the worst way possible.

The van crashes onto its side with a deafening slam and finally stops moving. Everything goes still, except for the petrified cries of a child, and my heart lurches violently.

“Mommy!”

I frown, looking up to search for her when she doesn’t immediately respond to her daughter. “Hannah?!”

My wolf surges forward before I can think, acting purely on instinct, bones snapping in place beneath my flesh as I shift mid-motion, agony ripping through my spine while the confined space becomes impossibly too small for my massive form. Fur erupts across my skin just as another impact dents the side of the van inward.

Something claws against the metal outside, a screeching cry tearing through the air.

The sound is inhuman enough to make Clarissa whimper, her eyes widening with horror. I shove my body over both Hannah and the child as claws rip through the side paneling.

“Stay down!” Hannah gasps beneath me, and the only relief is hearing her voice, knowing she’s still conscious.

Another slam rocks the van. Then another. The scent hits next, infiltrating the confined space with sulfur and rot. Burned, decaying flesh is like poison that wants us dead.

Simon shifts somewhere beyond the divider between the cargo and passenger sections, snarls erupting through twisted metal as he tears his way out through the windshield.

My wolf snarls viciously at the side panel, at the demons clawing through metal, my protective instinct drowning out everything else as I brace myself over Hannah and Clarissa. The black claws puncture through the roof, and one long, jagged tendril reaches for Clarissa.

That’s when I lunge.

My jaw snaps around the creature’s wrist with crushing force, black blood spraying across the inside of the van as the demon screeches loud enough to split the air. The thing’s skin burns like acid against my mouth as I rip its arm clean off.

The van erupts with shrieking, and the demon’s limb and the rest of its form fizzles, burning through the air like black, molten lava.

“Conan!” Hannah cries out.

But I don’t wait to see what happens next to the demon. I know their previous pattern—get attacked, then morph into an apparition that can easily escape with the wind. With a furious roar, I hurl myself at the back doors of the van.

The metal explodes outward, cold night air crashing into me as I burst free of the wreckage in full wolf form, landing heavily on the dirt road.

Three demons surround the overturned van—not possessed humans, like at the warehouse when we took down their military operations, but true demons. Tall, skeletal creatures with elongated limbs and charred black skin split open by glowing red fissures beneath their flesh. Their eyes burn molten obsidian in the darkness, mouths stretching too wide as they hiss in my direction.