Olento Research Series Boxed Set: A Paranormal Science Fiction Thriller Read online

  Praise for Previous Works:

  “There are so many layers, so many twists and turns, betrayals and reveals. Loves and losses. And they are orchestrated beautifully, coming when you least expected and yet in just the right place. Leaving you a little breathless and a lot anxious. There were quite a few moments throughout where I found myself thinking that was not what I was expecting at all. And loving that.”

  -Mike, Amazon

  “The writing in this story was some of the best I've read in a long time because the story was so well-crafted, all the little pieces fitting together perfectly.”

  -The Tale Temptress

  “There are no words. Like literally. NO WORDS.

  This book killed me and then revived me and then killed me some more. But in the end I was born anew, better.”

  -Catalina, Goodreads

  “Love this series! Perfect ending to an incredible series! The author has done this series right.”

  -Kelly at Nerd Girl

  “What has really made these books stand out is how much emotion they evoke from me as a reader, and I love how it comes from a combination of both characters and plot together. Everything is so intricately woven that I have to commend Sarah Noffke on her skills as a writer.”

  -Anna at Enchanted by YA

  One-Twenty-Six Press.

  Alpha Wolf

  Sarah Noffke

  Copyright © 2017 by Sarah Noffke

  All rights reserved

  Copyeditor: Christine LePorte

  Cover Design: Andrei Bat

  All rights reserved. This was self-published by Sarah Noffke under One-Twenty-Six Press. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. If you are seeking permission send inquiry at http: www.sarahnoffke.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Summary: On the night of a new moon, eleven men, possessed by new--and inhuman--powers, break out of their prison and race through the streets of Los Angeles until they disappear one by one into the night.

  Published in the United States by One-Twenty-Six Press

  ASIN: B06X9YTWDD

  For Jeff.

  Because if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have written this.

  If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have done so much.

  Thanks for being my partner in crim—business…I meant business.

  Get your free book here

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  ALPHA WOLF

  Obsidian eyes snapped open to drink in the dark. Outside the lab, everything was black but for a crescent moon that hung in the starry sky.

  “No!” the man who was not quite human growled, pulling his eyes from the window. “Not again!”

  And then the change began.

  Rio held up his hand, and since his night vision had rapidly returned he spied it. The mutation. Sharp fibers slipped through the pores of his hands and arms. Hair as black as his eyes and cutting to the touch stopped growing after two inches. And then the claws pierced the ends of his fingers, but he looked away from them, disgusted by how his hands changed.

  A scream that sounded more like a howl ripped from his mouth, and his canines suddenly tripled in size. Boiling with an anger he once only knew on the force, Rio pulled back his arm and launched it through the concrete wall that had imprisoned him for months now. Before, when he’d assaulted the wall—his only companion in this cell—it just stood untouched. Now his clawed fists rocketed through the one-foot-thick concrete until it was free on the other side. Surprised, he pulled his arm back to peer through the hole, which was the size of a soccer ball.

  Staring at him with glowing gray eyes was the man he’d only spoken to, never seen. For how long had they heard one another howl in misery after the treatments? But now Rio’s neighbor stared back at him, his own changed face drooling with the hunger. The change was always accompanied by the unstoppable hunger. Zephyr’s ravenous expression turned into one of awe for an instant, as though the reality before him momentarily blanketed the quenching desire.

  “Did you just do that?” the man who appeared more like a wolf said. Zephyr’s hair was prematurely silver, his face long and covered in stubble.

  Rio’s way of answering was through proving. Proving that he hadn’t lost his mind. And he needed to know for certain that the wall hadn’t just given way due to his repeated attempts at battering it. He needed to know that it was the strength within him that had created the damage to the wall. Again, he pulled his arm back, like a slingshot about to be unleashed. And then he sped it forward into the wall and through the dense rock. With his hand on the other side he towed it up, tearing the concrete above it in two, making a huge hole with the single movement.

  Howls echoed from the other cells. A result of the change. A result of hearing the destruction happening nearby. With a quick glance over his shoulder, Rio realized that the staff on duty had been alerted to this disturbance. Approaching footsteps echoed off the slab floors.

  “Hurry,” he said, backing up and making way for Zephyr to get through. Since he was smaller in build than Rio, he was easily able to negotiate through the almost man-made hole. And he was the same size he was when not a werewolf. The change made his features sharper, but other than the fangs and claws, his body didn’t drastically change in size. These were subtle werewolves, not giant beasts that had their clothes burst off when mutated. Zephyr’s extra speed while in this state also assisted him in the task of getting through the hole easily.

  “Can you?” Zephyr said, nodding at the row of bars in front of them. The locked gate, which had imprisoned Rio for so long, stood challenging him like always.

  “I can damn near try,” he said, his Spanish accent flaring in his words. As a werewolf, or whatever they’d made him, he was stronger and had better vision, smell, and hearing. He could jump higher and with greater endurance. However, he hadn’t been strong enough before to break through concrete. Something was changing in him. Looking out the metal bars, he saw the hungry, irate eyes of his imprisoned companions of the last few months. Something was changing in all of them, but not the same thing. They were growing in different ways, like a pack with unique capabilities.

  His hands, now covered in fur, wrapped around the bars. Then he made the intention and his muscles followed suit. Rio ripped both his arms toward his chest and the metal squeaked as it bent. The cage door cried its complaints as it was pulled from its hinges. Then it burst completely off and Rio threw it at the poor excuse of a bed he’d been forced to lie in for all these months.

  Zephyr was the first through the open doorway, always the one talking about getting free. And now they were, but the eyes of so many stared back at them, behind their own imprisoned doors.

  “You free them with whatever it is you can now do,” Zephyr yelled. “I’ll find keys.”

  The footsteps of the security guards or scientists or whoever had been approaching had faded. Maybe they were grabbing reinforcements. These men didn’t have time to worry about that. Zephyr knew that they had to get out while they had a chance. And he wouldn’t leave anyone behind.

  Rattling metal and loud explosions of relief were the soundtrack in the background as Zephyr yanked drawer after drawer out of the cabinets
lining the far wall. This was where the scientists always went first before going to release one of the prisoners. And then a clanging sound, one he’d come to associate with the moment before the treatments, met his ears, which were pinned up higher than usual on his head. He grabbed the keys and turned to greet a rough assault. A rent-a-cop stood in front of him, and, almost like he’d been waiting for him to turn around, he rammed the butt of his gun into Zephyr’s face just as he spun for the cages. His jaw split open at once, but that didn’t stop the beast inside of him from tearing forward. He leapt across the short distance, his open mouth seeking the clear exposed skin of the security agent’s throat. And when his teeth sunk through the flesh and tasted the warm blood inside he let out a soft growl. Above him he was conscious that other agents stood watching, unaware how to respond. They had been told not to harm the “experiments” and were obviously unprepared for an emergency like this.

  Around them, men changed by drugs and science were springing from their cages. All of them hungry, but their inhibitions sequestered for the night.

  Then overhead the alarm sounded. The one that would bring more security. More problems.

  “Come on,” Rio yelled through the chaos. “We’ve got to go!”

  Zephyr pulled up from his feast to spy the sight around him. He’d momentarily forgotten where he was, so drunk from the experience his body craved. Warm flesh.

  “Come on,” Rio screamed again, waving Zephyr away from where he was perched, closest to the main doors. Then the man Zephyr didn’t know well, the one who had freed him, slammed both fists through a concrete wall until the night on the other side made its presence known. The men, all changed by the genes from the wolf blood they’d had spliced into their DNA, spilled out into the open air, into the outside where freedom was a real possibility. Zephyr pulled his sleeve across his blood-drenched mouth and sprang forward, making it through the space and out into the night in less time than humanly possible.

  Sirens rang overhead, making the already deranged pack crazy with dread. They couldn’t be captured. They couldn’t go back to that lab.

  “Move,” Zephyr yelled, and it was that one command that sent the pack scurrying in different directions. Each wolf took his own route toward safety. Some scaled the nearby buildings. Some escaped through the adjacent alley. And some ran straight for the streets. All were too fast for the approaching security and none of them would be caught tonight.

  But in the lab, a prisoner stirred from his sleep that felt too real to be a dream. He’d heard commotion, but it made itself a part of the nightmare playing in his head. Now he stared out at the locked gate in front of him and at the empty lab, devoid of the other eleven men he was used to having around him. Like a lone wolf, separated from the pack, Connor had been abandoned.

  Chapter One

  “One never knows what a man can withstand unless put to the test.”

  – Olento Research Employee Manual

  One month later…

  Zephyr only saw the sun on his days off. Since the change he had become nocturnal and therefore had taken the nightshift as a security guard at a twenty-four-hour drugstore. Yes, as a discharged Special Forces captain he could have gotten a job as a private contractor or anything more illustrious than catching college students stealing cheap bottles of vodka. However, he wouldn’t have access to pharmaceuticals in another job. It hadn’t been hard to steal the store manager’s keys and make a copy. He’d accomplished that on his first day, right after his interview. His speed and prowess made him the perfect thief. And his x-ray vision made it so he could find anything he was looking for, even those things hidden.

  Now every night that Zephyr worked he disabled the security cameras while the clerks played poker during the slowest store hour. He just knew there had to be a drug inside the locked pharmacy that would change him back, take the canine out of him. Make the strange dreams stop. But no matter how many pills he swallowed the attacks still came. Every week the change happened. Twelve excruciating hours. For half a day Zephyr was stuck in the form of a man and a wolf. And although he had been fast and agile all the time, he was a blur of movements as a werewolf. He could do things that he’d only seen in movies. He had always associated these ridiculous werewolves with a full moon, but that rule didn’t seem to dictate his change. However, he had been an experiment, just like the other men he’d escaped with. Often he wondered where they’d run away to.

  Zephyr stood in the shadow the neighboring house cast, watching and wishing his x-ray vision worked from this distance. He found that he needed to be ten to fifteen feet from whatever he was trying to see through. This skill had come on when the lucid dreams started. He half expected that he’d have super strength like Rio, but that hadn’t been the case. Instead, he could see through things.

  He smoothed down his black mustache and then the short hair on his chin, wondering what they’d done to him in that lab. He spent every night at the drugstore recalling the memories that were covered in images of syringes and bright overhead lights. And yet, none of the pieces connected. Zephyr didn’t know what had happened, but worst was that he didn’t know what he was anymore. One moment he’d been leaving his parents’ house, strolling to his car, and then he awoke to find himself imprisoned in the cell at the lab. His military training had been more extensive than that of a surgeon. Never had someone snuck up or attacked him without him being aware, but still…

  He shook his head, bringing himself back to reality. It didn’t matter how it happened. Whoever had taken him, changed him, it didn’t matter. Now he had to deal with it. He wasn’t under their thumb anymore. And the changes that happened every week weren’t the greatest stress on his heart. It was the sight he was looking at now. A woman of around sixty smiled as she marched out onto the front porch. She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Hello, world,” he saw her mouth. This was what she did every day upon greeting the rising sun. Then she turned back to the open front door.

  “Are you coming?” she sang to someone inside the house. The woman turned her attention to the purse tucked under her arm and began to rummage through it.

  “You forgot your keys,” Zephyr said under his breath. “They’re on the kitchen counter.” A fond smile slid onto his face cloaked in shadow.

  The woman, who wore a salmon-colored sweater, turned again to the door. “Charlie, I forgot my keys,” she yelled.

  A man with silver hair similar to Zephyr’s which was sprinkled with black still, walked through the door, pulling it shut as he did. He shook the keys in the air, ringing them like a bell. “You know I’ve got them,” the older man said.

  “Oh, what would I do without you?” the woman on the porch said.

  “I don’t know,” he said, handing the keys to his wife. There was a sadness in the man’s eyes when he cast his stare out to the sky and the rising sun. There was a loss in them.

  “Shall we?” he said to the woman beside him.

  She nodded and they continued to the car, to complete their daily errands as they did most days.

  Zephyr pushed the large sunglasses up on his face, also pushing away the yawn. He’d need to sleep now. Now that he’d completed his daily ritual of watching his parents living their lives without him. He could still live his life. He could do so much. However, he couldn’t be in their lives again. He didn’t trust the beast inside of him. This was as close as he’d allow himself to the people he loved.

  Chapter Two

  “We do not help others because it’s honorable. We do it because it’s our responsibility. Seeking honor only leads to ego and that only leads to mistakes.”

  - Lucidite Employee Manual

  Adelaide’s hair couldn’t be described as dark auburn. Or chestnut. Or warm ginger. No, she had loud, orangey-red hair. She favored the shade of her hair, unlike most redheads. It was one of many things she’d inherited from her father, whom she missed increasingly every day. The ache was supposed to go away. The desire to see him walk through the door and te
ll her to “fuck off” was supposed to wane, she thought. But it never did. And more and more, she found she needed his counsel. Ren Lewis was an ornery jerk who gave people life-saving advice while insulting them. He was also British like Adelaide and therefore, in her opinion, a lot better humored than the lame Americans she worked with every day, who usually didn’t get her dry jokes. She’d also inherited her father’s Dream Traveler gift of mind control, which she was better at using than in months prior. And the only thing she didn’t appreciate that she inherited from Ren Lewis was his gift of telepathy linked to touch. It had ruined every single intimate relationship she’d ever had. Knowing what other people think was never a gift.

  The voluminous file of papers stared back at Adelaide, the brackets on the front appearing like little eyes that were scowling at her. She pressed her fingers into her own eyes, feeling the stress burrow deeper in her head, making her jaw tense. When she opened her eyes the wish she’d said in her mind hadn’t come true. The folder still sat in front of her. It hadn’t self-destructed or been stolen by the creature who took her socks.

  “You’re a real worthless piece of shit,” she said to the inanimate object, which made zero reply.

  With a sigh the girl flipped open the folder, her eyes scanning the files she’d studied countless times. She felt that she was the worthless piece of shit, projecting her own feelings on the gigantic file. There were dozens of reports in there, but they didn’t give any clues about where to look next or how to proceed with this case. Her father would have known what to do. Ren Lewis would have flipped through this file and known exactly how to handle the werewolf case.

  But for as similar as she was to her father, she didn’t have his experience. He’d warned her before he died that agents working in the strategic department for the Lucidite Institute needed experience before working high-level cases. However, he had given her the level five werewolf case, telling Adelaide that she was the best one for the job. Maybe he just wanted her dead from a werewolf attack so she could promptly join him in the afterlife. But probably not, she thought. Her father wasn’t the sentimental type. He gave her this case and expected her to solve it. And she had to because failure wasn’t an option.