Feral (The Wrong Alpha 2)

Chapter 1

There was a beast in their basement.

Jules Blake had learned about it completely by accident. He had been looking for his kitten Sheba, and after fruitlessly searching the entire house, Jules had decided to check out the basement no one ever used. His hopes hadn’t been high—the basement was so cold, dark, and damp that even his not-very-bright kitten should have been smarter than to go there—but when Jules got downstairs, he was surprised to find security guards at the door. Armed security guards.

There were suspicious noises coming from behind the door. Growls? Had someone just screamed? The guards’ eyes were wary and troubled, their hands close to their holsters. It was beyond strange, considering that the basement door was massive. Nothing should be able to break through that door. Why were the guards so twitchy, then?

“What’s going on?” Jules asked, taking a step closer.

The guards blocked his way.

“Stay away from the basement, kid,” one of them said. “Your uncle’s orders.”

“Not a kid,” Jules said, scowling—he was nineteen; an adult!—but of course the guard didn’t take him seriously.

“Shoo,” he said, giving him an amused smile before turning away, silently dismissing him.

That was the thing: no one ever took Jules seriously. For that matter, no one had ever paid him much attention. He just wasn’t remarkable in any way. He wasn’t the eldest and strongest child: that was his half-brother Anthony. He wasn’t the youngest or the smartest: that was the seventeen-year-old Eric. He wasn’t the beautiful one: that would be Liam, with his gorgeous golden hair and golden-brown eyes.

He was just Jules: the ordinary, boring Julian Blake. The unremarkable child. The one people barely looked at before shifting their eyes to his brothers. It wasn’t that he was ugly or anything. He was just… mundane compared to his siblings. Nothing special. His brown eyes and brown hair were not terrible, Jules supposed, and his skin was nice, but that was it. He was hardly the type of omega who turned people’s heads when he walked down the street.

It was fine. Jules was perfectly content being the plain one, even if he sometimes felt like a piece of furniture when Liam was in the room. It was okay. It wasn’t Liam’s fault that he was so gorgeous. Besides, pretty much everyone looked like furniture when Liam was around; Jules wasn’t special in that regard.

Anyway. The point was, he was the Blake sibling people always remembered as an afterthought. Jules was pretty sure the security guard had already forgotten that he’d just seen him.

Jules scowled at the man’s wide back before staring at the basement door, his curiosity piqued.

He really, really wanted to know what they were guarding. Just one little peek. Surely there was no harm in it?

All right, maybe there would be some harm in it—if his uncle found out, his reaction wouldn’t be pretty. Wayne Blake was anything but lenient. If Uncle Wayne wanted them to stay away from the basement, being his nephew wouldn’t save Jules from punishment.

Unless he didn’t get caught.

***

It had taken Jules days of careful observation before he learned when the guards changed shifts. The guards always seemed more lax and easily distracted when their shift neared its end. He’d also learned that the basement locked from the outside and, to Jules’s relief, thanks to the lock type, it wouldn’t be noticeable when the door wasn’t locked.

After some strategic maneuvering, which might or might not have involved bribing Liam to bat his eyelashes at the guards and request their help (Liam’s pretty face could be so useful sometimes), Jules sneaked into the basement, his heart beating wildly with excitement, nerves, and anxiety.

He had half-expected the basement to be dark and creepy, with some dangerous beast locked up in a cage or something.

But the basement wasn’t dark.

It was fully illuminated. In fact, it seemed to have been transformed into… some kind of lab?

Jules looked around with a frown, utterly confused. His uncle was a businessman, not a scientist of any kind.

Slowly, he moved deeper into the large room, looking around warily. But there was no beast anywhere. He didn’t understand. Then what had been making such a ruckus? Was that not—

Something growled, and Jules came to an abrupt halt, his head whipping toward the sound.

He stared.

There was a naked man strapped down to a metal table.

That was his first impression. It was a wrong one. Because it was no man. It was a Xeus alpha. A Xeus alpha in shifted form.

Moistening his dry lips with his tongue, Jules walked closer, curious despite himself. He’d never seen a shifted Xeus. Heck, he’d never really been allowed to go anywhere near Xeus alphas, period. Filth, Uncle Wayne had called them. Abominations. Omegas from good families like ours stay away from those animals.

Jules had never had a reason to doubt his uncle’s words. He’d never spoken to a Xeus in the nineteen years of his life, so his uncle was surely more informed than him on the subject—Jules had never even left the family estate. His mother had been old-fashioned that way: unmated omegas were not to leave their childhood homes until they were presented to high society. Jules had been supposed to be presented last year, but then his mother died and…