Call of the Alpha - Part 1(7)

This is so not the time, she told herself. You don’t even know him.

She hurried to the bathroom. Once she was there, she closed the door behind her and pulled her cellphone from her pocket. Finally, she could put that call through. She pulled up the hospital’s number and as she did, she noticed the battery icon flashing in the top right corner. There was a red X through it. As she noticed it, the phone gave its little bleep-bleep noise, indicating a battery that was nearly dead.


“Damn,” she said, hoping there was enough juice to push the call through. She put the phone to her ear and heard a single, faint ring. But that was it. The phone beeped again and then died.

She stared at it as if it had betrayed her and then set it down on the sink before her anger caused her to throw it across the room. She’d forgotten to charge the damn thing the night before, something she did far too often, and now she was paying for it. She was just going to have to hope he fell asleep or passed out again and then make the call from her landline.

She grabbed a heavy duty antiseptic cream that she’d used herself last winter when she’d fallen in the ice and snow, tearing open a gash along her forearm. She carried it back out into the living room, very aware of the dead phone she left behind in the bathroom. For now, she was simply going to have to accept the fact that she was out here all alone in the woods with a bizarre man that she knew nothing about.

“Okay,” she said as she approached him again. He was still on his side as she had instructed and she again made herself look away from his somewhat exposed and slightly scratched ass. It was not easy to do, as those large, nasty claw marks were only six inches above.

And when she looked at those claw marks this time, her breath caught in her throat.

They were half the size they had been two minutes ago. She tried to convince herself that they had always been smaller, and she had removed some dried blood and grime when she had cleaned him, but if she was honest with herself she knew that was not the case. The cuts themselves were smaller. Jessica knelt down by the couch and examined them more closely. The flesh around the edges of the cuts was puffy and pink, indicating a recent successful healing process. The hell of it, though, was she was sure that those puffy pink edges had not been there when she had cleaned him.

What on earth is going on here? she thought.

She reached out and touched one of the cuts, pushing lightly down on it. “Does that hurt?” she asked.

“Just a bit,” the man said.

She kept her hand there for a moment longer, once again feeling the fever coming off of him.

“One second,” she said, and ran back to the bathroom. This time, she grabbed her oral thermometer from the medicine cabinet. When she went back into the living room, she was practically running.

She looked to the cuts on his back and while she couldn’t be sure, she thought they were even smaller than they had been when she had touched him there.

“Roll back over,” she said.

He did so, moving a bit quicker now. She noticed now that his breaths also seemed to have normalized, coming in deep inhales but shaky exhales. He still sounded tired and out of breath, but it was much better than it had been when she had placed him on the couch only ten minutes ago.

She showed him the thermometer and he looked at it as if he had never seen one before. “Open,” she said, and poked the end against his lips. Again, he was obedient and opened his mouth.

She put the thermometer in, waited about ten seconds before it beeped, and then took it out. She read the display and her heart sank. 104.2.

He’s already infected, she thought. Maybe one of the cuts. Maybe it was—

But she stopped herself with another thought. No. That’s too damned fast. Unless he was already sick with something when he went running out in front of my car…

“Why can’t I call an ambulance?” Jessica asked. “You really do need to see a doctor.”

“Trouble,” he said. “There could be trouble.”

“But your fever,” she said. “You’re burning up.”

“Yes, I know,” he said simply.

She almost commented on the rapidly healing scratches along his back but kept quiet. She then looked to his leg where she had seen a bruise earlier. Now it was nothing more than a slight discoloration, a dark brown that was quickly fading out.

“What kind of trouble are you talking about?” she asked.

“Please,” he said. “I promise you…give me the night to heal and I’ll be able to leave.”

“Heal?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer her and she didn’t push it any further. The thought of those healing cuts on his back was proof that this man wasn’t normal. She wanted to ask him to roll over again so she could see them, but wasn’t sure if she’d be able to handle seeing them almost completely healed, as she suspected they now were. It was insane…it was impossible.

So she sat there beside him, looking at his sleep-heavy face and then glancing to the phone on the other side of the room. She stared at the phone, trying to understand what she was feeling. She was terrified to be alone with this man but at the same time, she was growing more and more certain he wasn’t a risk to her. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want to end their time together just yet.


She looked back to his face and saw that he was falling asleep. Sleep made his features soften, making him look almost at peace after the initial pain she’d seen on his face in the ditch. He was handsome, she realized. Dark hair, shortly cut, a strong chin and a subtle growth of stubble along the bottom half of his face. She then looked a bit further down and she remembered that he was still naked beneath the thin blanket she kept in her car. Quickly, she stood up from the floor and walked towards her bedroom.