Alphas Unleashed 1 by Cora Wolf

Chapter One

    I had never met a werewolf that had lived to see twenty. Soon after I made that realization, twenty became my secret goal, the one thing that kept me stumbling forward. If I could just make it to twenty, maybe that would mean I was a survivor, that I was the exception. I was constantly alone, and cold, and afraid, but twenty was the flicker of flame in my heart that stopped me from giving up.
    But there I was, nineteen, and cornered by two vampires.
    I'd almost made it to the full moon too, that was the most galling part. If I could have only kept ahead of the hunters for one more night I would have been able to turn on the full moon and make an escape. The vampires that hunted our kind were happy enough to track a werewolf in human form, but on the full moon, for just one night a month, the tables turned. On the full moon the vampires were the ones that hid themselves away while the wolves roamed the night, hunting them. And it wasn't that the vampires couldn't take on a werewolf in wolf form, but why fight fair when the odds were in your favor the other twenty-nine days of the month?
    I never hunted the hunters though, as tempting as it was sometimes, as much as the wolf within wanted to kill and take vengeance. I always used that one night to run as far and as fast as I could, so that the vampires didn't have a chance of picking up my trail again. At least not for a couple weeks. Most werewolves didn't do that though, most chose to use the full moon to hunt vampires. Most of them died the night after. I ran, and survived.
    I looked around the dead end alley one more time, hoping to see a door that had eluded me, a window, some shred of hope. But there was nothing. Just brick walls and trash. Not the place that I would have hoped to make my final stand, but it would have to do.
    I leaned back against the brick wall and let out a long sigh, eying the two vampires slowly making their way towards me.
    "That's right little wolf," one of them murmured in a soothing voice, "it's all over. Nowhere to go."
    I pulled my hunting knife from the sheath on my back and held it at my side, letting them see it. I would go down fighting.
    The vampire that had been talking laughed, "what are you going to do with that little wolf?"
    I pushed myself off the brick wall and shrugged.
    "No little wolf," the vampire said, "you've got us all wrong. We don't want to kill you."
    "Oh no," the other vampire said, "were not going to kill you at all."
    "We're just going to let you turn on the full moon and skin you," the first vampire said. "You'll survive. Probably. The werewolves we've skinned before were all alive when we let them go, weren't they?"
    The other vampire nodded, "all alive. We run a humane operation, strictly catch and release."
    "That's right," the first vampire said, smiling, "so you see there's no need for the knife."
    "Fuck you," I said, and gripped the knife that much harder.
    They came at me then, fast, but not so fast that I didn't get one good slice in at the lead vampire, leaving a long cut across the palm of his hand before he wrenched the knife from my grip and pinned me up against the brick wall with a hand around my neck.
    "Fucking bitch cut me!" the vampire holding my neck said, showing the other vampire his bleeding hand.
    "I did more than that," I said, "there was werewolf blood on that knife. You'll be dead by the end of the next full moon." It wasn't true, but he couldn't know that.
    He threw me down on the wet pavement and started to frantically wipe the blood off of his hand. I tried to get to my feet and make a run for it but the other vampire saw me and kicked my feet out from under me, and I fell back to the wet pavement.
    "Filthy fucking dog!" The vampire I had cut kicked me in the ribs a few times and as much as I wanted to scream in pain I laughed at him instead.
    "You think it's funny?"
    I swallowed down my pain and nodded, "I think it's hilarious."
    He kicked me a few more times in the ribs and I