Claimed By The Four Alpha Demons

9. Chasing The Mouse

Raiden’s POV

Two Hours Ago

The house felt like a tomb the moment her taillights vanished into the fog.

I stood at the window of the sprawling, chaotic mess Nate called a workspace, watching the red glow of her car fade until the mist swallowed it whole.

Behind me, the room was alive with the hum of cooling fans and the frantic clicking of a keyboard, and Nate was hunched over his console, his screens flashing with jagged red lines that looked disturbingly like a cardiac arrest in progress.

“She’s spiking,” Nate muttered, his voice tight with a tension he rarely showed. “Her bio-electric field is fluctuating wildly. She’s not just tired, Raiden. She’s…unstable.”

“She’s scared,” I corrected, the beast in my chest prowling restlessly against my ribs. I could still smell her fear lingering in the hallway, a sharp, bitter scent that made my teeth ache. “And she’s heading down the mountain alone in zero visibility.”

“Greyson said to let her go,” Nate reminded me, though he didn’t look up, and his fingers were moving too fast for someone who supposedly agreed with the order.

“Greyson isn’t the one who can smell her panic from three rooms away,” I growled.

I didn’t wait for permission. I turned and stalked out of the room, my boots heavy on the stone floor. My tattoos were itching. A slow, burning crawl across my skin that always happened when violence or chaos was imminent. It was a warning, a physical manifestation of the demon blood demanding action.

I took the black SUV, an armored beast, silent and invisible in the dark, designed for exactly this kind of work.

I caught up to her halfway down the switchbacks. I stayed back, keeping my headlights off, navigating the treacherous curves by the thermal sensors on the dash and my own enhanced sight. She was driving too fast, her car swerving slightly on the wet asphalt, correcting with jerky motions that screamed of nerves fraying at the edges.

When she reached the bottom of the valley, she didn’t turn left toward town. She turned right.

Oak Ridge.

My grip on the leather steering wheel tightened until the material groaned under the pressure. There was nothing in Oak Ridge except gas stations, truckers, and cheap hotels.

“Where are you going, little mouse?” I whispered to the dark cabin.

I followed her all the way to the Grand Hotel. The name was a joke. The place was a beige box of mediocrity that smelled of exhaust fumes and despair, sitting like a stain against the tree line.

I slid the truck into the shadows of the adjacent lot, killing the engine. I didn’t go inside. I didn’t need to. I cracked the window just an inch, letting the cold, damp air carry the information to me.

I heard her footsteps entering the lobby, light, hurried clicks against cheap tile. I heard the ding of the elevator.

And then, I waited.

The silence stretched for ten minutes, heavy and suffocating. The beast inside me settled into a crouch, waiting for the inevitable drop. We knew Liam was here. Nate had tracked the bastard’s credit card usage an hour ago. And we knew he wasn’t alone.

We could have told her. We could have stopped her before she ever left the driveway. But Greyson was right. Callie needed to see the rot for herself. She needed to be the one to burn the bridge, or she would always look back wondering what if.

But knowing it was necessary didn’t stop me from wanting to tear Liam’s throat out with my teeth for putting her through it.

Then, it happened.

It wasn’t a sound, at first. It was a pressure change. The air in the parking lot suddenly grew heavy, charged with static electricity that tasted like metal on my tongue. The hair on my arms stood up, and my tattoos flared hot, the ink shifting from black to a deep, molten red as they drank in the ambient power.

Boom.

A shockwave rattled the heavy armored windows of the SUV, as window blew out on the third floor.

Glass showered down onto the pavement, glittering like jagged diamonds in the parking lot lights, and scream echoed from inside, high, shrill, and definitely not Callie’s.

I was out of the car in a second, my eyes locked on the broken window.

Smoke…no, ozone…was pouring out of the room like steam. The lights on the entire third floor flickered violently, struggling to stay lit, before dying completely.

“Holy hell,” I breathed, a dark grin splitting my face despite the situation.

Nate had said she was a battery. He was wrong. She wasn’t a battery. She was a f***king bomb, and someone had just cut the wrong wire.

A moment later, the front doors of the hotel burst open.

Callie ran out. She wasn’t crying. She was hyperventilating. Blue sparks, visible blue sparks, were arcing off her fingertips, snapping against the fabric of her coat like tiny whips. She looked terrified. She looked…magnificent.

She scrambled into her car, fumbling with the keys, and the engine roared to life before she even touched the ignition. Her magic was leaking, responding to her panic, hot-wiring the machine with raw power.

She peeled out of the lot, tires screeching, leaving the chaos behind her without looking back.

I watched the shattered window for one second longer, and I could hear Liam yelling inside, his voice shrill with panic and confusion.

You survive tonight, leech, I thought, my lip curling in disgust. Because she needs to be the one to finish you. But mark my words…you’re already dead.

I got back into the SUV and followed the storm.

***

Now

The Rusty Anchor was a dive bar that sat on the edge of Northwich like a tumor. It had a neon sign that buzzed incessantly, flashing pink and blue on the wet pavement, promising cheap drinks and bad decisions.

I sat in the dark corner of a vinyl booth, my back to the wall, watching her.

She was sitting at the bar, huddled over a glass of whiskey she hadn’t touched yet. She’d taken off her coat, revealing the black tunic of her uniform, and her hair was a mess, wild curls escaping the bun she’d tried to pin back, framing a face that was pale with shock.

She was shaking. Not from cold, but from the aftershocks of what she’d just unleashed.

Every time she moved her hand, the coaster under her glass shifted slightly, pushed by an invisible force. The lightbulb directly above her head was dimmer than the others, pulsing in time with her ragged breathing.

She looked small. Broken.

But I knew better now. I’d seen the window blow out. I’d felt the shockwave that rattled my bones from a hundred yards away.

She wasn’t broken. She was just waking up.

I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket and dialed.

Greyson answered on the first ring.

“Report,” his voice was cool, clipped, devoid of the anxiety that was currently clawing at my insides.

“She found him,” I said, keeping my voice low, my eyes never leaving the curve of Callie’s spine. “At the Grand. He was with an another woman, meaning…the engagement is over.”

“And the reaction?” Greyson asked.

“Explosive,” I murmured, watching as Callie finally picked up the whiskey. Her hand trembled, and the amber liquid rippled violently in the glass. “She blew out the windows, Grey. She shorted the power grid on the third floor. It wasn’t a spark. It was a f***king surge. She almost brought the building down.”

There was silence on the other end. Then, a low exhale.

“Nate’s sensors went dark for ten seconds,” Greyson said, the clinical tone slipping just a fraction. “He thought it was a glitch. She generated an EMP?”

“A localized one,” I confirmed. “She doesn’t know how to control it. She’s leaking energy everywhere. She’s at the dive bar on 4th Street now. Trying to drown the noise.”

“Is she alone?”

“Physically? Yes. But she’s attracting attention.”

I glanced around the bar. It was mostly empty, but three men at a pool table in the back had noticed her. They weren’t looking at her face. They were looking at the vulnerability radiating off her. They were predators, sensing a wounded animal separated from the herd.

My hand clenched around the phone, and the glass screen creaked under the pressure.

“She’s not safe there,” I growled, feeling the heat rise in my blood. “She’s a beacon. If any low-level supes are in town, they’re going to smell that ozone from a mile away. And the humans…they just see a pretty girl who looks like she needs ‘comforting’.”

“Do not engage, Raiden,” Greyson ordered, his voice sharpening into a command. “We need her to come to us. If you step in now, you’re just another man trying to control her. She’s had enough of that for one night.”

“So I just watch?” I snapped, watching as one of the men at the pool table set down his cue and started walking toward the bar.

“You watch,” Greyson commanded. “You protect from the shadows. Unless her life is in immediate danger, you stay in the dark. Let her process the betrayal. Let her realize she has nowhere else to go.”

“She’s scared, Grey,” I said, my voice softening involuntarily. “I can smell it. It’s bitter. Like burnt sugar.”

“Fear is a teacher,” Greyson said, though his tone lacked its usual bite. “Let her have her drink. But Raiden?”

“Yeah?”

“If that man touches her…feel free to break his hand.”

A dark, feral smile spread across my face. My tattoos pulsed, sensing the permission, winding tighter around my biceps.

“Understood,” I said.

I hung up the phone and set it on the table.

The man from the pool table reached the bar. He was big, wearing a greasy flannel shirt and a trucker hat that had seen better days. He leaned in close to Callie, saying something I couldn’t hear but could easily guess, invading her space with the confidence of a drunk i***t.

Callie stiffened. The lightbulb above her head flickered violently, buzzing like an angry hornet.

She didn’t look at him. She just stared at her drink, her knuckles white around the glass.

Go away, I urged the man silently. Walk away while you still have fingers to hold a cue stick.

He didn’t walk away. He reached out, his meaty hand moving toward her shoulder.

I stood up.

The movement was silent, fluid. I didn’t rush. I didn’t need to. I was the monster in the dark, and tonight, the monster was feeling very, very protective.

Callie Black was ours. She just didn’t know it yet. And I’d be damned if I let some roadside trash touch a single hair on her head before she came home.

I took a step out of the shadows, the sawdust crunching softly under my boot.

Let the games begin.