The Alpha's Fight

Chapter 2 - That Red Haired Girl

As I approached Taylor, he stood from his spot under the oak tree. The sunlight suddenly seemed brighter, or was it his hair? His golden green eyes sparkled with every step I took towards him. The scent of fresh rain enveloped every part of my senses; goddess, I wish I could bottle his scent. I reached up to caress his ridiculously pretty and masculine face, tracing the curves of his cheekbones, his jawline and his lower lip. The tingles I had heard about so much shot up my arm…tingles that should belong to my mate. Was this possible? He didn't have his wolf yet.

There was barely a breath between us. We were close, but not close enough. I pulled him closer, softly gripping his jaw to draw him to me. An almost silent whimper left his lips as I leaned in to taste him for the first time, just as I had wanted for years.

'Hunter!' He called out abruptly.

That wasn't his voice…or was it?

Shit! I didn't know his voice, I had never heard him speak.

'Hunter! For f**k's sake!'

~~~~

My attention suddenly snapped to the present and, now I realised, reality. I narrowly avoided walking into a streetlight, jerking away at the last second.

'Oh, finally, you're back with us?!' My wolf barked in sarcasm.

'...Huh?' I looked around to see if anyone had seen.

'You want a f*****g recap?! I was shouting you to get out of your dream world with our sweet blond boy. You've been walking on autopilot for, like, ten full minutes because you were too busy making imaginary moon eyes,' Hawk shouted, making my face flood with heat. 'And you call me the cheeseball.'

I shook my head to clear my fantasy world. That was the first time I had had such a clear daydream about him. True, I often thought about him, but I was aware that it was just my imagination. This felt as though I could actually touch him, smell him…almost taste him.

Taylor…he was more than a crush. Far more.

What would happen if he was my mate?

I shook my head once more, vigorously this time. That was a dangerous thought to be having. If he was my mate, his life may as well be forfeit. There would hardly be a day when he wouldn't be under threat. And yet, I couldn't stop that blossom of hope in my chest that he could actually be mine, that I could be his…

No!...He was just some boy…he was just some random…perfect…boy…

It was a chant I told myself regularly when my hopes got away from me. But they were becoming less and less resolute. Each time I saw him, they would crumble away that little bit more.

'Sure. Also, interesting fact, De Nile is just a river in Egypt,' my wolf snorted.

'Are you done for today?' I was about at my limit for Hawk's sarcasm.

'I don't know. You gonna walk into a streetlight again?' He clapped back.

And that was my fill for one day for his snark.

I checked my phone, I still hadn't heard back from Jayden and I really didn't want to go home yet. I never wanted to go home. It wasn't 'home' it was just somewhere I slept and ate, that was all. I crossed the street heading for my friend's home instead, arriving at the dark green door of her parents’ wood-panelled cottage. I knocked but received no reply. Her mother would be at work still, and thankfully, her father too. He was one of my own father’s most loyal warriors, one of his best too and every bit as prejudiced and hate-filled. If he had any clue about how Jayden felt about her own identity…

Her mother, however, I doubted she would reject her child for being transgender.

I opened my phone as she wasn’t going to answer otherwise.

Me | Open up, it's just me. There’s no one around.

The three little dots appeared, vanished for a few seconds and reappeared after radio silence.

J | k

I heard soft steps coming down the stairs before the door opened a crack to reveal Jayden’s face, checking the coast was actually clear. She dragged me in, slamming the door behind her and pulled me upstairs to her attic bedroom. The rest of her home was on the ground floor, only her bedroom was on this level. She sagged against her bedroom door after locking it to make sure if her parents came home they couldn’t just barge in. Scott and I were the only ones who knew about her real self, as they knew about me. She wanted to be she, but she was born he. Neither Scott nor I could call her her out loud, because of the situation of our f****d up pack. Maybe one day? She was still trying to figure herself out, some days she was accepting of herself, other days she struggled.

“Sorry I kinda bailed on you today,” she sighed, unzipping her oversized hoodie to reveal her more feminine clothing underneath.

Her room was her only place to experiment with clothes and makeup, to discover what she liked. Today she was trying out a pale blue crop top, a similar colour to her room, a pair of denim dungarees and what I was told was a cat-eye winged eyeliner. Unfortunately for Jayden, I was not the ‘gay friend’ that knew about anything remotely feminine, I was the most stereotypical male in that respect.

“It’s ok. I got the notes for you,” I held up my notebook. “We can do the homework together if you want?”

I sat cross-legged by her bed as she flopped down behind me, resting her chin on my shoulder.

“You not going to ask?” She flipped her dark strawberry-blonde hair out of her dark brown eyes.

“Not unless you wanna talk about it. Just tell me if there’s someone I need to punch in the next gym class,” it wouldn’t be the first time I started a fight at school. Most thought it was me being an asshole…showing that I would be a tyrant like my father, but it wasn’t.

Very few people at school ever bothered her when I was around, being friends with me afforded her protection because I was feared. While it was rare for me to hear any whispers made of Jayden, I knew they were there. They were mainly whispers from the i***t male wolves, ones that I knew I would need to keep an eye on. They called her a ‘fem boy’ and whispered that ‘he's probably some fag’...I hated that word, for obvious reasons. I heard it used by many in the pack, especially Nicholas.

“No one said anything. And you should really stop punching people just because they say something about me behind my back. You're getting a rep,” she knocked the other side of my head. “It was dumb really…I saw something…two kids at school today found they were mates. And it made me panic because what if I find mine here in this pack…”

I heard the sniffle and smelled the slight tang of salt from her tears. I didn’t know what to say to comfort her, because I was as scared as she was about my mate. I knew who I wanted it to be, but they may very well never want me back. Mates for people like us in this pack were dangerous. Anything that even slightly deviated from anything hetero could result in death.

“Scott told me you saw him again, today,” Jayden slyly shifted the topic.

I could feel the heat creep up my neck, recalling that I had actually seen him twice…

Hawk snorted, ‘and almost walked into traffic. Next time, I'm just gonna sit back and watch you march straight into a ditch.’

Goddess, my wolf was in one of his s**t-flinging moods today.

“If nothing else, you have excellent taste. Taylor is just the cutest, like a cinnamon roll,” she grinned.

He really was. He looked boyish now because he was only 16, but I could already tell he would have a soft yet masculine face as he got older.

“Can we study?!” I exclaimed a little louder than I meant to.

Jayden just sniggered to herself, grabbing the geography notebook I had brought for her.

“I can’t believe I used to be scared of you, sometimes,” she grinned at me from the side.

“And I can’t believe we bonded over a tube of f*****g mascara. You know I had no clue what you dropped that day, it could’ve been paint thinner for all I knew,” I smirked and threw a pen at her.

We got to work and I went over what she had missed in class. It was always best hanging out with Jayden like this, where she could be herself, be free and didn’t have to wear boys' clothes or tie her hair back, that she was growing out a little, into a ‘man bun’ to appear more masculine to the outside world.

When we started high school, despite us both being in the same grade, we had never spoken. Like everyone, I kept people out and like everyone, I terrified Jayden at first. Back then I only knew her as the son of one of the most ruthless and strongest warriors in my father’s pack. One of the reasons I actively avoided them. It was just over three years ago, right at the end of freshman year, and in gym class, well, afterwards specifically. I thought I had grabbed my gym t-shirt and thrown it over my duffle bag, but it had slipped off. I went to go back and grab it as everyone had gone so I didn’t think I’d be bothered by anyone. Jayden was the only person there and they leapt out of their skin when I entered. Some small tube had fallen out of their bag and I bent down to pick it up for them. But Jayden's eyes were far from thankful, they were horrified and panicked, like they were about to have a breakdown and instead of taking the item back, they ran. I was completely flummoxed by the interaction and looked at what the tube was to see the word ‘mascara’ sprawled across the side…this stuff went on eyelashes?

I grabbed up the t-shirt that I had initially come in for that was still in a heap on the floor from where it had slipped off my bag. I hurried after Jayden, finding them walking quickly away outside past the oak tree. I stopped them to hand the tube over. I wasn’t sure, at the time, what the fuss was over. They begged me not to say anything, that none of it was what it looked like, only, I genuinely had no clue what was happening or what the hell any of it was meant to look like in the slightest. I just said that it was ok and, with that, Jayden snatched up the tube and ran off.

I took the chance to talk to Jayden and that was where I discovered we had more similarities than I thought. They confided that they didn’t feel ‘normal’, that they felt all wrong. I had an idea what they meant and that was when I told them I liked boys, one boy in particular. Jayden told me they liked boys too and even some girls, but more than that, they didn’t like being a boy.

It took a while for both Scott and I to get into the habit of saying ‘she’ or ‘her’ as Jayden prefered with only the occasional slip-up, but only when we were alone. Out loud, we said ‘they’ or ‘them’ as we knew she hated the alternative.

We were almost done with our homework when the front door downstairs thudded open. Jayden stared in horror for a split second before jumping into action and stripped off her clothing. I grabbed the box she hid under her bed and grabbed the textbooks out so she could dump them in.

“Jayden?” The voice called out.

Oh, s**t! It was her dad! He was off patrol early.

“I’m studying!” Jayden screeched, yanking her jeans up and trying to scrub her eyes with a wipe to get rid of the eyeliner.

I threw her discarded feminine clothes into the box, covering them with the textbooks and sliding it back under the bed. I unlocked the door as she leapt back on the bed to act as natural as possible, just in time for her father to open the door.

“Ah, Alpha Hunter. Always a pleasure to have you over,” he beamed proudly.

“Hey Mr Reyes,” I greeted, trying to be polite for Jayden’s sake.

He always seemed so proud that his son was such close friends with the future Alpha. If only he knew the real reasons. Again, Jayden's association with me gave her some security; it kept her father blind to what was really going on.

“I’ll be starting dinner soon. You’re more than welcome to stay, Alpha?”

“That’s alright, we were finishing up anyway,” I tried to excuse myself, picking up my things to leave.

He looked like a caring father and I am sure to others around he held that mask perfectly well. But I knew what he was really like, what he did to those wolves who were outed. And it wasn’t because he was ordered to by my father, it was because he enjoyed it. I doubted he would hesitate to do that to his own child too, if he ever knew the truth.

I headed off home quickly, satisfied that at least Jayden was feeling better now, better than before anyway.

The pack house where I lived was quiet, as always. The bare minimum of pack members were allowed in here and the reason was staring at me from down the hallway through the archway.

That red-haired girl.