Alpha Wolves – A BBW BWWM Paranormal Romance

“Jessie, child, come away from the window,” said her mother with a click of her tongue. The woman turned to look over at the other worker who was operating the wringer. She gave the big vat full of bed sheets one last stir with the large paddle. “I swear, that child loves the outdoors. She seems fascinated by the forest. I always worry that she’ll just disappear into the trees someday.”

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“Oh Mama, you know I would never leave you,” Jess protested as she straightened out her dress and sprang back to her feet. She gave her a big hug before moving away from the vat again, since she knew she was not allowed to go near them. The owner of the shop was afraid she would burn herself.

“Kitty, do I have to remind you again about your girl?” grumbled Mrs. Coombs as she glanced into the room from her position at the cashier’s desk.

“No, no,” Jess’s mother in a calming tone. “She’ll be good. I promise.”

“She’s eleven years old now, isn’t she?” the woman persisted. “You could just give her a house key”.

“It’s not the girl I don’t trust, Mrs. Coombs,” she reminded her. “You know the kind of people who live in those apartments. All we need is for one of them to find out she’s alone and break in to hurt her. She’s much safer coming here.”

“I can stay home, Mama,” Jess said hopefully. “I would just go straight there, lock the door, and go online.”

“You and your computers,” Kitty scoffed. “I’ll tell you all what, we’ll give it a try sometime next week, see how it goes. What do you say to that?”

“Yes, please!” said Jess excitedly.

And so it was then that Jess began her life. Every night after school, she would return home and alternate between using the internet and gazing out her bedroom window, longing for the day when she could go to all the places she was reading about.

She was about twelve when she first heard strange rumors about a new Paranormal Facility up on the mountain to the west. She knew about the existence of werewolves and vampires, of course, but like most people she’d never seen them. But for some reason, knowing that the new access center existed gave her a sense of excitement that she couldn’t seem to explain.

More and more, she gazed out her window at night in the hopes that some creature would show up in the large, green yard that served as a buffer between the large forest to the west and the four story apartment building in which she lived.

The night that changed her world could have been any night, really, or at least any night that was a bit windy and rainy and threatening a storm. She couldn’t say now if it was fall or winter, near a holiday or not, or even whether or not her mother had returned from work before or after it happened. She only knew that she was online again, reading paranormal news on some obscure site, and she had just finished looking over an article about werewolves which had fascinated her. It left her filled with longing to actually see a werewolf in person.

Something compelled her over to the window that night, just as the lightning flashed. Her eyes fell upon a lone figure standing just outside the forest rim. At first, she thought the man was a native, standing there in a fur coat and carrying a peace pipe. His dark eyes stared up towards the building, scanning, until they lit upon Jess as she stood watching.

She couldn’t think why she made such an interesting focal point, just a young black girl gazing out a window, not unlike the sight he’d see in several of the other windows as well. Yet for some reason their eyes held, and she could not seem to look away.

Then, off in the distance, someone with a boom box exited the building. The mysterious man’s eyes shot sideways, and suddenly all Jess saw was a wolf. It glanced at her one last time, then bolted off between the trees, quickly disappearing from her sight.

It wasn’t until she was sixteen that she realized she could actually make money using the internet. She wanted to help her mother all she could, for she had grown tired from her years of work, and her health seemed to be failing. Jess had wanted so much to be able to finish school and go to college, but now she began to fear that she’d be stuck working at the laundry shop as well. If she could find a way to avoid that fate, she would jump at the chance.

And so she began writing for a news site. At first she was stuck writing about boring topics like product launches and fashion tips, but after a year or so she decided that she would start her own website. She tried various topics, but in the end she hit upon one that worked, and which was very close to her heart. Paranormals. Ever since she’d seen that werewolf, she had been fascinated by their very existence, and it was difficult to find anything overly accurate or informative about them.

Why not create a site all about these misunderstood beings? Why not tell the world at large the information which they seemed to be lacking? And why not find ways to make money from the site while she was at it? After all, there were plenty of other websites that did the same.

And so it was that thetruth885.com was first born. Over the next few years, Jess and her best friend, Trina, went to many of the different sites where news of the paranormals occurred. Vampire attack? Jess and Trina were there, speaking to the victim as well as the local law enforcement. Werewolf sighting? The girls went there to search the area for signs of proof. Hundreds of pictures, stories, and other evidence came across her desk all the time, and Jess absorbed it all, proving or disproving validity whenever she could.

Now, at the age of twenty-four, Jessica Brown and Trina Williams were considered experts in the field. They’d been on news shows, went on a tour to talk at twelve different colleges, and they’d even been invited to speak with the president himself. President Conklin had even made her an “unofficial advisor” to the White House, and she was often emailed with requests for her opinion.

Yet, regardless of how much she knew, and how much she thought she knew, Jess still had never seen another paranormal after the night she’d seen that wolf. She suspected that there was still a great deal she didn’t know about the truth, and she still had never managed to get close to any of the Paranormal Facilities she was certain were there. It was as though having set herself up as someone who knew the truth had, in fact, sent up a red flag that disallowed her from actually finding it.

“Sorry, ma’am, but we have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the White House secretary. “There are no officially mandated facilities for the express purpose of rounding up paranormals and segregating them from the general population. You have been misinformed.”

There were thousands of readers who were just as convinced as Jess that the places existed, officially or not. The facility she had heard of near Yosemite was, of course, well-guarded, and no aerial view could be obtained. Air traffic was diverted completely from the small triangle that never seemed to be mentioned by name. The base at Mount McKinley, up in Alaska, had even been photographed, but no one would ever discuss its purpose.

Much digging had revealed that there were actually several other access points. Hints of a secret facility in the mountains of Colorado, known only as The Agency, seeped into the general knowledge of all those who frequented thetruth885.com’s chatrooms. Rumors of a vast, underground network of caves that spanned the nation were as well known among her readers as Area 51 was to those who sought proof of aliens.

The unexpected death of Jess’s mother was a difficult blow to deal with, but it also prompted her to move into a loft apartment near the base of the Black Hills. The place was somewhat reclusive, yet still close enough in to be useful. It used to be an old warehouse, but the owner had converted it into three living units about twenty years ago.

It was situated quite near the area where she suspected one of the Paranormal Facilities to be. There, she took on other work to supplement her passion for the paranormal, but for the most part she became more intrigued than ever.

She gave Trina a call on a September night to invite her over, hoping she would help her wade through some of the fan mail using the second computer. Her friend arrived with a bottle of wine and a couple of T-shirts they had ordered on a whim about three weeks ago which had finally arrived in the mail.

“Jess? Are you in here?” Trina called as she stepped out of the gate and pulled it shut behind her. The elevator rattled loudly behind her as she moved forward into the huge loft, wading past a few drop cloths her friend had left lying on the floor. “Are you painting again?”

She did not receive any sort of answer, which was not all that unusual for Jess. She tended to bury herself into everything she did, be it painting, photography, or writing a good story. Left undisturbed, the woman was likely to disappear for well over a week at a time.

She found her asleep in a chair that faced her most recent canvas, and turned to see what she’d been working on this time. Another werewolf, she noticed as she looked over the work. This one stood outside the woods, it’s form partially human and partially wolf, staring out of the canvas with eyes that seemed hauntingly real. The work was eerily realistic overall, making Trina shiver and turn away.

“Jess? Wake up, will you?”

Dark eyes fluttered open as she stirred, and she pushed the length of her long, kinky hair out of her face. A blotch of brown paint darkened her already dark skin, and Trina wiped at it with a chuckle. “You’re already chocolate enough, woman. You don’t need any help from this.”

“It’s late enough already,” Jess complained. “I was hoping to get started at least three hours ago.”

“Sorry, my friend, but some of us actually have to work for a living,” Trina excused herself. “I got called in to cover a half-shift for a missing cashier. You’re lucky I didn’t get saddled with the other half of the shift as well.”

“Well, come on, let’s get booted up and see what we’ve got this time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Trina said with a salute as she followed Jess across the room to where a row of three computers stood side by side. She took the seat in front of the one she knew was booted up for her use and moved the mouse, ready to visit the website at the touch of just one button.

There were about three hundred new messages since their last visit about three days ago. Trina sighed as she cracked her knuckles and began to wade through them. At the same time, Jess manned the live chat room to see what people were discussing and put in her opinions, as per usual. The long and somewhat silent afternoon had begun. Jess soaked it all in with a satisfied smile. Trina popped the cork on her bottle and sipped until she was having fun, too.

“We have another message from wolflover400,” she announced as she leaned forward and clicked on the link. Jess stopped what she was doing to roll her chair over to Trina’s position, and the face of a large, black wolf caught the women’s focus for a moment before they began to read.

“Ladies, I know how much you enjoy a bit of danger, but even you would have to admit it would be foolhardy to attend the upcoming event I’ve just learned of,” said the mysterious writer they’d been conversing with for almost a year. “It seems the Agency has sanctioned a big werewolf shindig just outside the complex walls over in the Black Hills. It’s slated for Sunday next, and there’s sure to be a big turnout. At least a hundred wolves will be there. I don’t recommend you go, but then again, I never do. If you get a few photos we’d love to see them on here. Good luck!”

Jess blinked a few times and stared at the screen. Trina downed another glass of wine.

“A hundred werewolves,” Jess said, her eyes still transfixed on the black wolf photo. She didn’t know anything about the person behind the wolf. Not age, nor gender, nor agenda. Nothing. All she knew was that ever since wolflover400 had been giving them werewolf tips, not one of them had been wrong. She and Trina had followed at least a hundred leads to paranormal events all over the countryside thanks to whoever this person was. But never to anything that would involve quite as many as this.

“Do you really think they’d allow that many paranormals to access the surface all at the same time?” Trina scoffed. “That area will have a ton of agents keeping out people like us. They’ll clear out the entire park for something like that. Say there’s an epidemic or something, most likely.”

“We have absolutely got to go,” Jess insisted then. “I mean, think about it? The world is dying for some solid proof about the paranormals and the Agency. If we pull this off, not only could we prove there’s really an access point into the underground in the Black Hills—which we’ve been trying to do for years—but we might even be able to get evidence concerning the Agency while we’re at it. We’d be crazy not to go. You know that.”

“Those agents are likely to be armed to the teeth, keeping those wolves in line,” Trina reminded her. “Armed with weapons they could just as easily aim at both of us.”

“No, Trina, I’m not giving up without a fight this time,” Jess insisted. “We’ve been trying so hard to bust this conspiracy wide open, and I just know this lead goes a long way towards helping us reveal the truth. What’s the point in naming my site the truth if I can’t even give that truth to the people who are paying to read it? If we do this thing, it may very well pay the rent for the next ten years once we hit the talk show syndicate and write up the resulting paper. Just imagine exposing this thing to the whole world!”

“Jess, most of the world doesn’t even want to know about this,” Trina pointed out. “Most of the world is willing to concede that yes, there are paranormals, and somehow they’ve been segregated from the society at large. Most of them are even willing to believe the creatures have been housed underground for the safety of non-paranormals. But if you start talking about a secret government agency bent on caging them in that underground domain, they’ll mostly tune you out as a crackpot. Don’t you see that?”

“Of course, some of them will, just as they have been for years,” Jess conceded. “But that’s why we need to get some substantial proof. Shifter-wolves doing their thing, agents running amok with weapons drawn—anything that could prove what’s really happening.”

“We only have three days to figure out the location of the event, Jess,” Trina pointed out. “Do you really think that’s enough time?”

“All we really need to do is hike into the woods and trek upwards,” Jess scoffed. “If they’re having that big of a party, you can be sure that there’ll be an area sectioned off somewhere. We’ll just need to evade the man long enough to find out where, and then hide out until the fun begins.”

“Good thing we have hiking boots, then, isn’t it?” Trina answered. She was resigned to the fact that Jess would have her way, just as she always did. Besides, if they did manage to pull the thing off, a bit of fame and fortune wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

So, on the following morning, well equipped for their journey and stocked up on the basics, the two women set off on a journey into the mountains in search of a werewolf gala event. They did their best to remain unseen as they trekked out into the forest, heading briskly upwards with their hopes flying high.

Even the birds seemed to be aware of their desire for stealth, for they did not chirp at them as they passed, nor even flutter away. It was almost as though the mountain was welcoming their presence. Their path was sweet and true. Within less than twelve hours, they’d discovered the site, evaded its guards, and established a base of operations inside a small cave at the top of a deep ravine. It was Sunday afternoon. Now all they had to do was lie low and wait.

Several hours had ticked by. The sun was beginning to set. Three big, burly men dressed in khaki appeared just outside of their cave’s entrance.

“You’re certain you saw them, private?” said one of the men to the other. “It doesn’t look like anyone has been here today.”

“Maybe they were just passing through,” said the third man.

“Maybe we’d better make sure,” grumbled the apparent leader. “We don’t want any civilian casualties reaching the news. You know how important it is that we keep this whole operation quiet. Only imagine the chaos if civvies showed up and tried to get in. It could endanger the whole program.”

Trina and Jess exchanged a shocked look as they heard this. By mutual, unspoken consent, they silently moved further back into the cave and hid themselves between some large rocks. Their hearts raced as the man who had been called ‘private’ stepped inside the cave and shined a light around.

“Cave’s all clear, sir,” he reported, and the trio moved on.

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