Free fate of the alpha - episode 3 by Tasha Black

seeped into her lungs as she ran, the clicking of Cressida’s heels ringing on the stones behind her. Cressida was faster, but she held back, letting Ainsley take the lead.
    Like the last time, Ainsley had nearly given up on there being anything below the field house but an endless corridor, when she saw a sliver of light from the archway in the distance.
    Ainsley slowed her pace and put a finger to her lips, signaling Cressida to be quiet.
    Cressida tapped her own temple, reminding Ainsley that she need only think a command, and her bond as alpha would do the rest.
    Of course. Ainsley wished, for the hundredth time, that she were better trained at the whole alpha thing. Maybe some time away with Ophelia was just what she needed.
    Together, she and Cressida slipped down the last few feet without so much as a single boot heel click.
    Ainsley pressed herself to the cold stone wall and angled her cheek to steal a glance into the room.
    What she saw there filled her with rage.
    Grace.
    Bound and kneeling on the floor, her navy blue uniform, in which she took so much pride, rumpled and streaked with dirt.
    Charley Coslaw stood over her, holding a gun to her head with a relaxed indifference.
    How could this be the same man that donated all of the decorative flowerbeds in the town square, and had a standing order for 500 boxes of cookies from the local Girl Scout troop?
    The acrid tang of Grace’s fear-filled scent told Ainsley that her friend had been roughed up, but not assaulted sexually. This knowledge filled her with relief and fury at once.
    Again, she had to choke down the shift that was building in her blood. Her very bones seemed to twist against her will, and it took all her discipline not to let them betray her.
    Grace, who was facing Ainsley, had given no sign of seeing her. That was wise, because if Grace looked at Ainsley, so would Charley, and Ainsley would lose any chance of surprising him.
    “I’m afraid Clive Warren used my last silver bullet,” Charley said, his voice expressing his repugnance for the former sheriff. “But I don’t think that will matter for your friend.”
    Fuck. So much for surprise.
    “You’re not going to shoot her,” Ainsley said firmly as she stepped through the archway. “You need her alive to use her as a key.”
    “It’s true,” he said. “She makes a good key. But there are other ways to release the master.”
    “Not without a key,” Ainsley replied.
    “Okay then, Ainsley,” he said with sly smile that looked out of place on his friendly face. “So you come for me. I shoot Grace. You kill me. Problem solved, right?”
    His sarcastic tone told Ainsley all she needed to know.
    Charley Coslaw had underestimated her. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he believed her to be the same goody-two-shoes she’d been all those years ago. A girl who could never see harm come to her friend.
    Fortunately, Ainsley labored under no such delusions about Charley. She knew exactly what he was.
    And she had already weighed her options and come out knowing she really only had one course of action. If she walked away, he would kill Grace anyway, and release the moroi to feast on the town.
    Protecting the pack was Ainsley’s sworn duty.
    She could feel the hum of each of them under her every move, even now in this cold place. The teeming warmth of their green submission bathed her in power and responsibility.
    That didn’t make it easy, though.
    She met Grace’s eye.
    The policewoman’s face was a mask of calm. But Ainsley could see that her best friend’s eyes were terrified.
    If she could stretch this moment across space and time, she would. Ainsley wished wildly that she could call a truce, or even have one moment to say good-bye.
    Grace nodded once and lowered her eyes in assent.
    Still, Ainsley stood frozen. To move toward Charley was to kill her best friend.
    Not to move was to abandon her pack.
    She closed her eyes and tried to picture Ophelia, and the calm way Ophelia