Page 91 of Dominion

The Alpha’s Promise

A Dark Paranormal Romance

1

Just a few more weeks and I’m out of here.

Melissa headed up the sidewalk to the rundown rental house where she and her loser, soon to be ex-boyfriend had lived for the past eight months. She couldn’t wait to be done with the place. Her heels clicked on the concrete, pencil skirt too constraining in the early June heat after a long day showing houses.

She braced herself for the annoying clutter of half-filled moving boxes. At least it meant that in less than a month Jeremy would be out of her life, forever.

The relationship never should’ve happened in the first place. She’d mistaken bonding in a crisis situation—Jeremy had saved her life after he and his buddy had kidnapped her last year—for true love. Maybe she’d just wanted what her sister had with her new husband.

In another of her classic bad judgement moves, she’d forgiven him for the kidnapping, been grateful for his change of heart. Moved in with the guy who’d put her life in danger. That f-ed up statement pretty much summed everything up. She was too loyal, too trusting. Thought that the attraction would last. It hadn’t. Four months later she’d been totally over him, but it had taken her four more to figure out how to get out of their lease, even after they’d broken up. Her stuff was already packed into boxes. By this time next month she’d be free of Jeremy and this dump.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open, then stopped dead with a gasp.

The place had been wrecked. Destroyed.

Boxes had been opened and emptied—stuff was strewn everywhere. The pottery dishes she’d bought from her artist friend in college lay in a broken heap, paintings had been torn from the walls and smashed.

A sob rose in her throat. She turned in a slow circle, her heart thumping hard in her chest. When she saw the maroon spray-painted words scrawled across the back wall, she screamed.

Pay up by Friday or you both die.

A sheet of ice flashed through her. She literally couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Her body trembled all over. Her hand closed around her cell phone, but something stopped her from calling 911.

This wasn’t just a break-in. It was personal. And it had something to do with Jeremy. Had something happened at the dispensary? He was always afraid they’d be robbed at gunpoint—it had happened at other dispensaries because they took in a large amount of cash.

Oh, God. She should’ve known. She should’ve run fast and hard from Jeremy the moment they were free of the kidnapping trauma.

He had a knack for landing in trouble. He associated with the wrong sorts of people. He liked to party and used drugs. He might even deal harder stuff out the back door of the dispensary—she didn’t know, she’d been turning a blind eye to all that.

Would calling the cops ensure someone’s death? She gulped. Hers?

With trembling fingers, she dialed her twin sister instead. Ashley and Ben had gone to the Canary Islands for their honeymoon. She shouldn’t bother them, but… she really didn’t know what else to do.

“Hey, Mel,” her sister’s voice called gaily through the earpiece.

“I’m sorry to bother you.”

Her sister instantly picked up on the pinched, wobbly quality of her voice. “What is it, Mel? What happened?” Ashley asked sharply.

“I-I’m not sure. I just came home and the place has been wrecked. And there’s a spray-painted message on the wall.” She told her sister what it said, without having to voice her suspicions about it being some trouble of Jeremy’s. Ben and Ashley already had the lowest opinion of him.

“I’m going to check upstairs, do you mind staying on the phone with me?”

“Of course I don’t mind, but do you think you should call the police?”

She walked up the stairs, holding the phone tight against her ear, as if it somehow made her sister closer.

Ben’s sharp tones had started at the mention of police, and she listened to her sister explain to him what had happened.

The intruders had trashed the bedroom upstairs, too. Her dresser drawers had been dumped onto the floor, hamper unloaded. It looked like they’d even torn the carpet up from the floor. What had they been looking for? Money?

“Mel? Ben’s going to call someone he knows in Colorado Springs, so just sit tight, okay?”

“Okay.” She was more relieved than she cared to admit to hear that Ben knew what to do.