Page 15 of Running with the Alpha’s Son (The Alpha’s Son #3)

DESERT

A painful howl tears through my mind as I’m wrenched from sleep, springing upright, my hips pressing against my fastened seat belt.

What was that? Was I dreaming or was that the same howl I’ve heard before in my visions—only magnified? I thought I was escaping the noise, yet somehow it’s traveled with us. Maybe it was just a dream, a fluke, the last death rattle of a fading life force. It has to be, right?

“Sorry,” the flight attendant, a petite blond woman who has been super-duper friendly the whole flight, says. “I didn’t want to wake you but”—she glances up and down the plane as if to say You’re the last ones on board —“we’re here.”

“California?” I ask like a doofus.

“Uh-huh, welcome to the Golden State.”

Jasper is beside me, only just stirring awake. He opens a squinty eye. “Are we here?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I think they want us to leave.”

Jasper sits up, having spotted the flight attendant. “Right. The car should be waiting.”

He’s adorably sleepy, his hair sticking up at a strange angle on one side, his eyes a little puffy. We both must have slept all the way through landing. I would’ve thought someone would have woken us, made us put our chairs in the upright position. Things really are different in first class.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?”

“Will be…with coffee.”

“I’ll have some waiting for you as you disembark,” the flight attendant says, still friendly, but obviously wanting the sleeping passengers to get out of her hair so she can begin cleaning up after us.

It’s dark out when we exit the airport. There’s a car waiting for us just outside the sliding doors of the arrivals terminal. It might as well be Jasper’s car’s identical sibling; it’s so similar. The valet driver hands off the keys and we slide in.

“Ready?” Jasper says. “It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive.”

“Perfect.” I nestle into my seat and try my best to stay awake as we drive off into the night—though of course, it’s all of three minutes before I’m drifting off again.

When I wake we’re still driving. I glance over at Jasper, who looks content behind the wheel, his eyes focused on the road, his finger tapping along to some slow song on the stereo. Outside I can’t see much. We’re on a long, thin road with no streetlights. I can just make out the dusty edge of the road and a bit of the natural surroundings: rocks and dry-looking plants, the occasional cactus.

“Almost there,” Jasper says.

“Sorry,” I say, smacking my dry lips. “I didn’t mean to drift off.”

“It’s okay. You must be tired. And we’re on holiday now so you can sleep as much as you like.”

“Music to my ears.”

Jasper leans forward as if trying to make out something in the distance. “The turnoff is ahead. Just a few more minutes.”

We finish the drive in silence. Jasper takes it slow as we leave what I guess was a highway and travel up a winding dusty path, the tires jumping on the bumpy road surface as we go. Eventually we come across some sort of oasis. Palms and large-leafed succulents are lit by moonlight, a rainforest seemingly sprung up in the middle of this desert. Jasper slows to a stop and parks the car. The headlights stream through the layer of foliage to shine on the caramel beams of a fence, the boundary of the property.

Stepping out, I feel the crunch of sand beneath my feet and warm, dry air on my face—a welcome relief after the hours of air-conditioning. The air out here smells and feels different from the air back home, sweeter almost: aloe and sand, pure, clean, uncomplicated. I throw my head back and breathe in deeply, then I spot the stars.

“Whoa.” I turn in a small circle as the Milky Way rotates over me. I’ve never seen a sky quite like this: so clear, the darkness deep and unending, but dotted by the most brilliant stars—so many they seem to twist and meld until they’re a river of light, swirling through the cosmos. For a moment I feel like I’ve closed my eyes and am reaching out with my blood-wolf senses, the sky and the stars the void of my mind and the souls of all of wolfkind.

“Pretty spectacular, isn’t it?” Jasper says, hoisting open the trunk and grabbing out the bags.

“It’s…ridiculous.”

Stretching out toward the inky darkness in every direction is a moonlit desert. There’s not another house or town or even a light source whichever way I turn. The horizon is dotted by the spiked limbs of desert plant life, the curved shoulders of large rock formations, and the jagged silhouettes of the smaller rocks that pepper the landscape.

Jasper sidles up next to me, watching me as I explore our new environment.

“The next house is over sixteen miles away. Out here it’s just us.”

“We’re really alone,” I say, closing my eyes and enjoying the quiet. The humming sensation at the back of my mind is gone, the pressure of wolf noise vanished and in its place stillness, calm, a cool balm on my tired consciousness. Then a pinprick pierces that calm.

I glance behind us to see the headlights of two other cars, wobbling their way along the rocky path. Our entourage of security guards. They stop about two hundred meters from us, flip their lights off, and switch off their engines. The purr of car motors dies away, leaving only the quiet of the night. I rub the side of my head where their presence made itself known.

Jasper must notice because he says, “I’ve asked them to keep their distance. Hopefully they won’t bug you too much.”

I shoot him a smile. “It’s fine. Better safe, right?”

“Sure. You want to see the house?”

“Can’t wait.”

Crunching footsteps in the dirt, I follow Jasper through a narrow gate, flanked on either side by large cacti with tear-shaped arms. Inside, a paved pathway lined by monstrously large aloe veras curves toward the house, an adobe cottage with smooth dusty-red walls, light wood finishings, and a low-corrugated-iron-roofed veranda with a rustic fence.

I stop on the path and take it in. Jasper stops as well.

“You like it?”

“It’s—not what I expected. It’s sort of quaint.”

“You were expecting one of those sleek, modern Architectural Digest mansions?”

“Pretty much.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No, this is perfect.”

Jasper was right, I had been expecting a wall of concrete, some complex feat of engineering, burnished metal, treated timber—a smooth, hard, modern piece of design that stood out amongst the landscape. This is a cottage, a humble casita: it blends in with the vistas surrounding it, like it belongs, like it’s been here forever.

“My mother found this place,” Jasper says. “Dad would probably have bought the first concrete slab house he saw but she…” He fades off wistfully, his eyes traveling over the wonky roof, the plants growing up the sides of the walls, the lopsided windows and natural finishings. “She wanted this place to feel homely—less like we were imposing on the land and more like we were being welcomed into it.”

I step to meet Jasper and slide my hand into his.

“I love it.”

He takes one last little breath. “Come on.”

It takes some rattling but Jasper is finally able to get the heavy iron key to turn in the lock. He steps inside and flicks on the overhead light. The house blinks to life. A warm glow from the dusty bulbs is cast over the terracotta tiles and patterned rugs. Immediately before me sit a few burnt-orange leather sofas, with woven rugs draped over the seats and armrests, and cushions all along them. A mirror hangs on one wall over a thick wooden shelf dotted with handmade-looking ceramics and old magazines. Beyond the living space is a kitchen with bottle-green tiles, a deep farm-style sink, light natural wood cupboards, and an island topped with more hefty natural timber. Doors lead off on either side of the living space.

“Through there is the meditation room,” Jasper says, pointing in one direction. “And the bedrooms are this way.” He makes in the direction of the bedrooms, ducking through the low doorway.

I follow him into a small hallway. An alcove at one end with a window looking out onto the back patio is furnished with a hanging chair and a stump of wood that serves as a table, and three doors punctuate the opposite wall. Jasper stops midway to nod at an open doorway.

“Bathroom,” he says, then moves on.

I stop to appreciate the geometric pattern on the tiles, the tub by the window, the large waterfall-style shower, then follow Jasper, who is turning into one of the bedrooms.

He tosses his bag onto a chair at one side of the large bed, already made up with white linen sheets, rich-yellow pillows, and a woolen throw, while I linger in the doorway.

“Is this…” he says stiltedly, glancing from me to the bed. “Are you…I’m usually on the left.”

I shake myself back into the room. “That’s okay. I usually sprawl, so…”

“There’s another room if you’d prefer. I can—”

“No,” I say before I know I’m speaking. “This is good.”

Finally, I enter the room, with a nervous smile, dropping my bag on the opposite side of the bed. I don’t know why I’m acting all bashful but there’s something about the quiet and the distance from the rest of the world that makes the fact Jasper and I are here together without supervision, without anyone to interrupt, all the more apparent, and all the more real.

We turn to face each other, the mattress an ocean between us. Jasper wipes his hands on the sides of his legs, his shoulders lifting and his lips pressed together. I chew my lip and rub my neck.

“Shall I…” Jasper begins, a little unsure, “show you the rest?”

“Yeah! That’d be great.”

Relieved to be leaving the bedroom, but also a little disappointed we didn’t christen the bed right there and then, I follow Jasper to the other end of the house. The meditation room is furnished with cane chairs, rugs and pillows with geometric patterns, candles, a small gong, and a few ferns in pots leaning their fronds against the wall, reaching for the window. It occurs to me that everything looks a little too clean, a little too ready for visitors for a place that hasn’t been used in years.

“Was someone here before us?” I ask.

“We have a property manager, someone who comes out here regularly to clean, water the plants, and fix anything that’s broken.”

I run my hands over the strands of string hanging from a dream catcher that’s hung on the wall. “Someone comes here to take care of this place even if no one comes here.”

“Yeah,” Jasper says, clearly feeling a little awkward about this admission. “It was actually my idea. A few years ago Dad wanted to sell the place. I convinced him to keep it and to hire someone to watch over it.” His eye catches on something sitting on the windowsill. “Oh, look at this.” He picks up a small glass figurine from the sill and I move to his side. Made from a dark-burgundy shade of glass is a horse figure, its mane flying furiously in an unseen breeze behind it. Jasper holds the delicate object up so I can take a closer look. “This was my mother’s. I remember she bought it at a local market. My father told me not to play with it because it was too fragile, but Mom—she showed me how to hold it so it wouldn’t break.”

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “She must have cared about this place a great deal.”

“She did. She loved it here almost as much as I did.” Jasper lifts his gaze from the object and surveys the room. “I can feel her. Her energy is all over this place.”

His eyes become glassy as he goes completely still, lost in thought or memory, I’m not sure which.

“Are you okay?”

He lowers his chin and smiles at me. “Yes. I like feeling her presence. I—I’ve missed it.”

Gently, he places the horse figurine back in its spot on the windowsill and glances out through the glass. “There’s more,” he says. “Come on.”

The back door seems to be stuck, but with a kick and a shoulder Jasper manages to dislodge it from its frame. For a moment he fumbles with the light switches next to the door, declaring “Uh-huh!” when he’s found the right one and flicking it on. A web of string lights illuminates the back porch, hanging from the slatted wooden veranda that stretches along the entire back of the house. Cool tiles rest under our feet, and a large wooden table sits with eight hefty chairs around it waiting for guests. Large planters line the edges of the veranda, encasing us with verdant plant life. Cacti, cacti, and more cacti! Beyond the veranda sits a glistening blue pool, also lit up and casting refracted swirling light onto the ceiling. Beyond that is nothing but desert, drifting off toward a mountainous horizon until the light can’t reach and everything becomes shadow.

“It’s so huge,” I say, stepping off the tiles, onto the dusty ground toward the pool and the expansive, arid world beyond. “It looks like it goes on forever.”

“It sort of does,” Jasper says, arriving at my side.

“And it’s just us,” I say, then remember the guards camped out in their SUVs on the other side of the property, “well, almost.”

“We can go exploring tomorrow,” he says, although if he’d offered me his hand and said, “Let’s go, right now,” I would have taken it and run off with him to the mountains this very second.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” I say, taking a long inhale of desert air. “I think this place is exactly what I—we needed.”

Somewhere far off I make out the distant call of a coyote. My mouth falls open half in shock, half amazement. I turn to Jasper and his eyebrow is arched as if to say, I know.

“Pretty wild, right?”

I nod and turn back to the view. The next couple of weeks are going to be perfect.