Alpha vs Alpha

By Channing Sheffield

Someone...or something...is on a killing spree in wolf-shifter country. Two Alphas, opposites in every way, are guaranteed to love, to fight, and to die.
Hamilton Fairchild—earthy, powerful in his own right—has zero cravings to follow his Alpha father’s footsteps or deal with pack politics. His profession is tracking, his passion is freedom. While en route to tackle the latest crisis, Hamm is intercepted by Blade Villere’s patrol unit. Local wolf-shifter communities have always conveyed a single piece of advice: Avoid the outsider’s property at all cost. Why? No one knows. The mysterious Alpha—a cursed executive hiding ancient secrets—lives within a culture of secrecy, and what Hamm discovers will shock him from head to paws, including his heart.

Alpha vs Alpha, an erotic, gay paranormal novella, is intended for mature audiences. M/M explicit sexual content.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Channing Sheffield
• Release date: Mar 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301946457

Channing Sheffield

Channing Sheffield is a voracious reader of several genres from mystery and thrillers to sweltering paranormals, romances, and erotica portraying powerful characters and engaging storylines. After penning a few paranormal novellas featuring gay and straight characters, Channing joined the self-publishing procession, introducing the Villere Shifter series with Alpha vs Alpha leading the pack.Here’s what Channing says: “Reading great stories is one of my aphrodisiacs when my workweek ends. I do enjoy a stiff, vodka martini or two or...exotic meals, playtime...to jumpstart weekends, given the opportunity. But, I’m a loner when characters—swaggering with happiness, discontent, or conflict—and dialogue redirect my attentions. It’s a mind-movie I refuse to ignore. What better way to stifle the noise than to put each scene in writing or on computer disk and build from there? Yup, I’m a true hatchling at selling books. No website or social-media logins, so far. Each day only contains 24 hours! Meanwhile, give all writers loud applauses! They work damned hard entertaining readers.”

Book preview

ALPHA vs ALPHA

(Villere Series, Book #1)

Channing Sheffield

Copyright © by Channing Sheffield

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase you own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*****

ALPHA vs ALPHA is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Dedication

To every writer, reader, and all of my friends.

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Whether my journeys involved business, entertainment, or hightailing out of tenuous situations, I traveled light, and today was no exception. Duty called. I’m a tracker by profession. Nose detective. A few idiots had used noser as a slap to my undaunted ego.

My name: Hamilton Fairchild. I answer to Hamm.

Refreshed after an ice-cold shower, I shook out my slightly long hair and smoothed the dark brown waves off my forehead, then toweled off. My sister said I needed the shaggy mess cut. Whatever. Maybe next April or May I’d spring for a trim. Leave it to her, my scruffy Fu Manchu would’ve been a figment of my imagination.

I’ve lived under my parent’s roof most of my life. My bedroom’s located on the upper southeast corner of their two-story farmhouse. Yeah, I know. At twenty nine, I should be renting or owning somewhere. Don’t even think to call me or two of my brothers lazy. We must maintain cleanliness and neatness on the second level, rotate on kitchen detail, dust cobwebs from ten-foot ceilings throughout the house…we dwarf Mom and we love her homemade meals.

Through the open window I breathed in fresh autumn air deeply, staring out at dawn’s new day, its beautiful denim-blue sky brushed with pale pink and orange, and noticed a change coming our way. Crisp, a light breeze nipped the air swaying pine trees and aspens. For three days I’ve sensed a thickening beneath the surface of my suntanned body. Harsh weather has never been a problem for me, not when I shift into the skin I was born in. My body acclimates easily to cold climates. Bred to withstand shitty conditions, animal shifter bodies heat well under thick fur. When temperatures rise steadily during springtime, we shed our winter coats.

I’m hitting the highway, so to speak, got a job to do, and I have no plans to dress. My closet and small bureau contain little more than jeans, T-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, and a single pair of jogging shoes: no socks, boxers, tight skivvies, or any clothing inhibiting free movement.

Once I reach my destination, the pack’s Alpha would provide clothing, if necessary, and food and shelter—natural consideration by our distant kinfolk when we weren’t feuding. I required nothing more…well, maybe a warm body to relieve the tension after the tedious trip north.

I looped my small, brown satchel containing cash, ID, and my debit card around my neck, including condoms in case a hot female I intended to fuck happened to be in heat or nearing her cycle. Wolf males have great scent receptors. Mating and raising pups were not going to be part of my future anytime soon, if ever, despite my Alpha father’s demanding abrasiveness.

We’ve lived near Durango, Colorado for ages, it seems. In fact, Wolf Creek Pass runs close to our property. Past generations seized the land and my family—and its pack—have acquired an abundance of acreage for the duration.

Dad, at his Alpha father’s insistence, moved us here some twenty-six years ago when I turned three years old. Like my sister and four brothers—sextuplets are common among our breed—I was learning to shift into human skin. For a kid, transformations between the two entities were painful training sessions. Then, to our mortification and utter disbelief, my parents required that we attend school—as humans since wolves can’t talk English and humans can’t hear our thoughts unless they’ve joined our pack. Fat chance of the latter happening.

Blending in was tough for me as a child in human society, particularly when my wolf emerged. I disciplined playground bullies, made my naptime nest with my teachers’ coats, and scent marked the classroom if I had a crush on someone.

My brother, Cain…well…his temper was, and still remains, unmatched. Shaking the principal by the necktie wasn’t the ideal method for advancement into first grade. He was suspended, but Cain was also remanded to kindergarten, under adult shifter tutelage, with several other temperamental shifters.

All of my littermates caused one problem or another and school officials contacted my mother often, for one reason or another. So, at her insistence, homeschooling became the norm of our community until we reached puberty. Age thirteen for most humans and shifters. Past middle age for domestic canines, the poor devils that are leashed and arthritic by that time.

As our township’s numbers increased, we built educational facilities, supermarkets, restaurants, department stores and so on. Tucked away from the outside world like most shifter communities, we’re ostracized to a certain extent. Do we care? Nope. As long as we kept to ourselves, and we weren’t systematically offing humans, only a few of their stringent laws applied to us. For centuries, they’ve known of shifter populations living among them, have cautiously, if not distastefully, accepted the unchangeable. Some humans dated shifters, even married on occasion, and many of them suffered familial contempt, barefaced hatred, or banishment.

To be honest, we scared the shit out of humans. Why? Because we don’t fit their norm? We breathe air, we eat and drink to survive, we bleed the same color, and we show emotions. We’re also intelligent creatures. If anything, shifters should be the fearful ones. Humans made guns, ammunition, killed each other because of religious beliefs, killed because of an innate fear of the unknown, killed for sport. Not shifters. We fought with our claws and fangs. Hand-to-hand combat and the all-famous bite. We killed for food or righteous justice. Until human weapons fell into our paws.

And it isn’t just fear of wolf shifters and not simply fear in the United States. Shifters are everywhere, from wolves, to felines, bears…then the threat from vampires upended lives, adding stunned panic to every red-blooded being on the planet.

My pack lucked out; we’ve avoided contact with the bloodsuckers, seeing how we keep isolated. Avoidance still doesn’t mean vampires haven’t played a role in luring or snatching our kin and sucking their victims dry. I’ve seen them in action from a distance. Vicious creatures when pissed or in bloodlust. Too bad early-Europeans were unable to segregate the fiends from society or destroy every last one of them. But then, as dominants of all upright species, humans were xenophobic by nature, even among themselves. Weird, and chances were they’d attempt to annihilate shifter populations too. Their fear factor: monumental. Probably through eternity.

You about ready to head out? Dad asked from the doorway to my bedroom.

Spencer Fairchild built the farmhouse Mom coveted, which took two years of backbreaking work. Since, as Alpha, he’d become architect and construction contractor for every new home and business—including renovations—among pack members and the human population living near our neck of the woods. Of course, Fairchild Innovative Building Contractors employed my entire family. Except me. Dad was a big man, a smart man, a resourceful lycan—the rationale for his top-level position.

Soon, I replied. Gotta say tally-ho to the family or I’ll never hear the end of it from Mom. Or Kasey.

My sister’s a bitch on wheels—or paws—and sure to rise in status, become some future pack’s Alpha female once she finds her mate, the unlucky fool. To the unknown person who’ll spend a lifetime with the runt of our family…good luck, you’ll need it.

When Dad raked his fingers through his black wavy hair, a nervous habit, I knew something unsavory was up. We’ve had another report of a missing wolf. From Jamison’s. Female this time, snatched right from under their noses during a hunt. Three young wolves in as many weeks, two different packs. If we find them dead the count will jump to seven, all in two months time.

The Council should’ve called me in sooner. I’d’ve cut my getaway short and left Muscle Beach immediately.

As future Alpha, I want you to stay far away from Villere property. Remember, there’s barely a mile easement between Branson’s and theirs, Dad reminded. Anyway, something’s going on we haven’t figured out yet. Open trouble out of the Villere camp? I don’t know. They follow a culture of secrecy. Feral rogues, vampires? Possible. Second worst-case scenario, human vigilantes, but save us all if the damn hyena pack returned, looking to retaliate. By now, they’re numbers have increased exponentially.

War broke out five years ago after the Purcell hyena clan destroyed, and ate, two young lionesses and their cubs. Wolves, wild dogs, lions, and tigers tracked down the stinking murderers and their co-conspirators, slaughtered Queen—their bitchy leader—and five of her eight sibs. An eye for an eye. We lost one wolf and one wild dog in the battles. Three male lions and three female tigers kicked much ass. They ran the remaining killers out of Colorado and into Utah.

Last we heard, splinter groups from the Purcell clan had migrated to Salt Lake City and Boise.

If you’d quit refusing to buy a car or bike, tightwad, you wouldn’t be going through trials and tribulations and risks. I’d prefer you go by bus or hitch. You could take a safer route through Moab and work your way down. Or go through the Springs.

Colorado Springs sits about sixty miles south of Denver. When I visited last time, I left long before dawn, via the motel’s bathroom window to escape the big blonde, sporting cactus legs, hell-bent on marking me to secure a mate anyway possible when my mate alarm had neither whimpered nor whined. Never would, not the way I lived footloose and fancy-free. I’d spent four days with her, had a great time partying and fucking. I liked her, just not as much as she wanted me for a mate.

And future Alpha? I sure as hell don’t want the job. I don’t need the hassle or drama associated with pack politics.

I had plans and expectations, to go where I wanted to go, see the world, do what I wanted to do without issuing directions to others or others relying on me to pass judgments.

Freedom.

Dad—

No, son, this is non-negotiable. It’s time for you to grow up, time to step into your rightful position and master an Alpha’s duties. Your mother has her mind set on me retiring in the next few years. The pack needs you.

Rightful? Sure, we all knew I was born to lead. I’d made it clear during childhood, kicking ass when necessary, protecting the weak,