The Code Of The Alpha

I looked over at the alarm clock, noticing that it was around six in the morning, too early for vacation. I laid there for a while longer and begged my brain to turn off so I could go back to sleep but it never did.

Sighing in annoyance, I rolled out of the bed.

I showered before brushing my hair and my teeth, hoping all the while that Mady would wake up. When I exited the bathroom and saw that she was still sound asleep in her bed, I was slightly jealous that she had yet to be woken up by the sunlight that was peeking through the curtains.

I was in desperate need of caffeine and I decided that I couldn’t wait on her to wake up. I grabbed my sketchbook and pencil bag and walked towards the door.

Quietly, I left our room and wandered into the elevator. Riding ball the way down to the lobby, I found the hotel’s coffee shop and grabbed a seat.

I don’t know how long I was there, but I drank almost two cups of tea and nearly finished a sketch of the Vegas skyline before I began to get jittery.

I walked around the hotel for a while and found myself wondering into the casino. The neon lights and greedy machines had yet to turn on for the day and the room was nearly empty except for a cleaning crew and a man who stood behind the bar cleaning drinking glasses.

He looked up and caught sight of me, immediately waving me off.

“We’re closed!” he yelled.

I mumbled out an apology before turning to leave. I walked back to the elevators, deciding it was time to go back to the room.

Just as I hit the button to call for an elevator, I looked up to see Mady walking off one quickly, looking panicked.

She sighed when she saw me.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” she asked, her tone furious.

“You didn’t let me know you were leaving or where you were going and you left your phone in the room. What if something had happened to you?”

I laughed as I looked at her wild expression.

“Good morning to you, too,” I said. “Remind me though, what was that you said last night about me being a grown woman?”

She rolled her eyes and turned to get back on the elevator. When we got back to the room, I waited for her to change and get ready before the two of us went back out to explore for the rest of the day.

“Dad said he wants us to meet them in the lobby around six after their meetings are over so we can all go to dinner together,” Mady said, reading the text her father sent her.

I nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

We left the hotel and walked out onto the sidewalk. The charm and appeal of flashing lights had long since escaped the city now that the sun was shining directly above us. However, the streets were just as crowded as they had been the night before.

Since we were only a few minutes away from the Strip, we decided to head that way and decide what to do when we got there.

“There’s an aquarium in Mandalay Bay,” I said as we walked up the sidewalk next to the resort.

“We could do that?”

“Sure,” Mady agreed.

We walked inside and got lost in the maze of people for a few minutes. Once we had finally gathered our bearings, we found the aquarium and paid for our tickets.

Even though I was happy to be there, I couldn’t help an unsettling feeling that I had as we walked under the tunnel of fish.

Mady didn’t seem to notice, going on about the different species of rays and sharks that were swimming above us. I began to look through my purse, wondering if I had forgotten something.

“Are you okay?” She asked me, stopping in the middle of a sentence about bull sharks being able to survive in freshwater.

“I have a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

Her eyebrows furrowed as she pulled me out of the way of thetour group that was passing by.

“What do you mean? Do you feel sick?”

I shook my head. “Not exactly, more like I’ve forgotten something.”

Mady thought hard for a moment before she spoke.

“I mean, you did forget your toothpaste at home.” I shook my head again.

“Did you get your card back from the guy who we bought the tickets from?”

I nodded.

“Did you make sure that you didn’t leave your phone in the hotel room?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

“I’ve already thought of all of that.” She hummed.

“Did you leave your keycard at the hotel?”

I couldn’t remember.

“Maybe that’s it,” I said, sighing.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Mady said. “I brought mine so we aren’t locked out.”

As we continued our stroll through the aquarium, I came to the conclusion that the feeling in my stomach wasn’t there because I left my keycard in the hotel room. The feeling slowly came to hover over me like a rain cloud and I couldn’t shake the feeling

that something was about to happen.

We finished our tour of the aquarium and walked back out into the main lobby.

“Want to grab some lunch while we’re here?” Mady asked.

“Maybe you’re just hungry?”

I nodded, still trying to shake the unexplainable feeling. “Oh look,” Mady said, nodding over my shoulder. “We should walk through the casino.”

I turned to see the casino’s flashing lights that loomed over the entrance.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“Sure.” I said, turning to walk in that direction.

As we walked in, I noticed the number of people walking in was far greater than the number of those who were leaving.

Once inside, the music and lights were enough to distract anyone from their problems. The sensory overload I experienced was almost enough to make

me forget about the weird feeling I had walking in.

Maybe that was the appeal.

As we walked around, I noticed all the girls in short, shimmery dresses and men in cheap, ill-fitting suits. Scattered around were also people who were clearly tourists with lanyards hanging around their necks and ‘I heart Vegas’ t-shirts.

Mady and I stopped at the end of a long row of slot machines that were dinging and flashing lights in their user’s faces.

“Wanna play?” Mady asked me.

I shook my head. “I don’t have enough money to be feeding it so freely into those machines.

Mady laughed, nodding her head in agreement.

“Well,” she said. “We came, we saw and we conquered. Wanna go get lunch?”

I nodded as I turned to follow her out.

As I did so, a loud crash echoed throughout the room followed by the sound of screaming.

Mady and I both turned around to see a crowd of people rushing towards us. Her and I both exchanged a look of surprise before we turned to make a dash for the exit.

As we got closer, I noticed the men who stood at the entrance, blocking anyone from coming in or going out.

“What the hell is going on?” I heard Mady mutter under her breath.

Repetitive sounds of crashing and mechanical failure began to echo around the room, although I couldn’t determine which direction it was coming from. Over the sound of the machines whirring and people screaming, I noticed that the music, which had been playing when we walked in, had stopped.

People were now piling forward, trying their hardest to leave and escape.

“There has to be more than one way out,” I said to Mady. “Start looking for a fire escape.”

Her and I pushed our way back through the crowd, our eyes straining to find a red-glowing exit sign along the walls around us.

As we passed those who were still running up to the entrance, I caught parts of their frenzied conversations:

“They’re looking for someone…”

“I think it’s the feds.”

“Did you see that guy? He threw the roulette wheel into the blackjack table!”

Mady and I exchanged looks as we both heard what the last woman saidHad Bruce Banner lost his bets and turned into the Hulk?

Mady and I stood out from the crowds because of the direction that we were walking. If we were trying to be inconspicuous, we were failing miserably.

“Look!” she said, pointing to an exit near the back of the room.

“There’s a door.”

I nodded and began to follow her as she ran towards it.

“Wait, Mady!”

I grabbed her by the back of her shirt and yanked her

backwards so that she was standing next to me, behind a slot machine.

At the moment we were hidden, a group of three men walked past.

“He said the scent was coming from here,” one of them said. “No one leaves until we find her.”

I looked at Mady only to see she was already looking at me.

“He said ‘scent’,” she noted quietly. “They aren’t feds.”

I shook my head, still trying to make sense of it.

“He also said ‘she’.” I whispered.

“Who on earth could they be looking for?” I just shrugged, feeling uneasy about it all.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Mady nodded in agreement as we came out of our hiding place.

Ducking down so no one could see us, we quickly ran between slot machines and card tables, trying our hardest to make it to the exit door before someone saw us. Just as we were a few feet away, Mady’s phone began to ring I felt my heart stop as I turned to see she was frantically searching for it in her purse.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered.

“Who keeps their ringer on?!” I asked incredulously.

I looked over her shoulder to see that a few heads had turned. We had been spotted. “Forget about it,” I said quickly.

I turned around and ran as hard as I could towards the exit door, a fire alarm blaring as I pushed it open.

Nearly blinded by the sunlight as I realized we were outside, it took me a few moments to figure out where I was going next.

Mady was close behind me as I took off running into the street. I could hear the men yelling behind us, telling us to stop.

“We need to lose them!” Mady yelled.

Well, duh, I thought.

“Find a pool or a fountain.” I told her as we rounded a corner. I thought that maybe the water would help cover our scent for long enough to throw the men off our trail.

“We need to get to the front of the hotel.” I said, remembering the fountain that I saw there earlier that morning. Hoping the crowd of people was an adequate temporary cover for us, I began to start to run in the direction I thought would lead us to the front as Mady followed.

She had finally fished her phone out of her purse and she groaned.

“It was my dad,” she said, holding the phone up to her ear to call him back.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Now is not the time to return missed calls.”

Once we were in front of the hotel. I turned to see that the men who were following us couldn’t find where we had gone.

Likely, our scent had been slightly covered by the crowd of people around us. They were looking around quickly and I knew it wouldn’t be long before they caught it again.

“Dad!” Mady yelled into the phone. “We need you to come and get us.”

Her breathing was short and panicked as she argued with him, telling him that she had no time to explain. She looked around as she tried to figure out where we were exactly.

“Mady! Over here.”

I waved her over to the bushes, palm trees and other foliage that surrounded the large fountain. We ducked under the cover of the leaves, receiving weird looks from everyone around us. Thankfully, we seemed to be hidden from the sight of the men

who had been following us.

I tugged her along, pulling her over to the fountain.

“We’re at the fountain in front of Mandalay Bay,” she said.

“Pick us up here.”I pointed to the fountain as a confused look crossed her face.

“Wait, what happened?” she asked, putting her finger to her other ear so she could hear her father better.

I frantically pointed to the fountain as she tried to figure out exactly what she was hearing.

“Your scent,” I told her. “They’re going to find us.”

She swatted my hand away as I tried to pull her forward. I looked behind us to see that our pursuers were standing right in front of us, the only thing separating us was the bushes.

Turning around, I gave Mady a quick shove and watched as she toppled over into the fountain.

I quickly followed, making sure to completely submerse myself under the water.

Thankfully, Mady was smart enough not to scream at me as she resurfaced. She only glared and began to shake the water from her phone. I motioned for her to get down as I watched the shadows that still lingered in front of the plants that acted as our cover.

Several agonizing moments went by as we waited for the men to leave. When they finally did, I let out a long sigh of relief.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He wasn’t done talking before you decided to send me swimming,” she said. “But something happened in their meeting this morning.”

“You didn’t hear what it was?”

She shook her head. “I’m hoping that he heard where I told him we were,” she said.

“I have a feeling that we should be more scared of hotel security than we should those men who were following us.” I nodded, realizing that the two of us were going to jail if we were caught in the fountain.

We climbed out and cautiously made our way out of the bushes, the both of us soaking wet with our clothes clinging to us.

I tried to ignore the judgmental gazes that we received as I looked around for my father’s truck.

A few minutes went by before the truck rolled around the corner, pulling into the fire lane. My father had barely put the car into park before Mady and I were climbing into the back seat.

“Are you okay?” both fathers asked simultaneously.

Mady and I nodded.

As we began to drive away, I looked for the right words to say. My nerves were shot.

“We got chased out of the casino,” Mady said, still breathing heavy. “I think I need an inhaler.

“Who were you chased by?” her father asked with a serious expression.

She just shook her head. “I don’t know who they were. I thought they were security guards at first

My eyebrows furrowed as I heard her say the words ‘security guards’.”

“Wait, I recognized one of them.” I said.

“He was standing outside our hotel last night when we got back from dinner. I thought he was part of a security detail.”

“He likely was,” Mr. Reid said. “He was probably with another Alpha that we were supposed to be meeting with.”

“Who is it?” Mady asked.

My father sighed. “Luca Ronan.”

I felt my evebrows furrow. “Who is that? I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’s an Alpha of a few packs up north in Montana.”

“A few packs? He has more than one?” Mady asked.

“Well, technically just one now” her dad replied. “He has continually garnered more territory the longer he’s been Alpha.

“More territory?” I asked. “I thought there were guidelines that the Alphas followed that only allowed a certain population of each pack.”

“That’s what our meetings have been about this year,” my dad replied. “He’s not very cooperative and doesn’t seem to understand that he’s in violation of so many codes by continually taking over more and more territory.”

“And that’s not to mention the number of Alphas, Betas and their families he’s killed to get to where he is today,” Mady’s dad added.

“Killed?” Mady asked, eyebrows raised.

“Slaughtered,” my father replied.

“In their own homes.”

“He hasn’t shown up to the last few meetings,” Mady’s dad said.

“We finally convinced him to attend this one. We didn’t realize he was even here until this morning.”

“I don’t understand,” Mady said. “Who was he looking for? Why would his security guards be chasing us?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” my dad said. “We’re leaving and going home. I’m not staying here any longer.”

“Well we have to go back to the hotel, right?” I asked nervously.

“All of our things are there.”

My dad shook his head. “No, we’re leaving everything. The less he has to track the two of you, the better.”

“But, Dad, my sketchbook…”

“Is just a hundred pages of bound paper,” he said. “I’ll buy you another one if that’s what it takes.”

I looked at Mady who frowned. She was the only one who understood what that sketchbook meant to me. I’d had it since high school. I didn’t say anything else as I leaned my wet head against the window and watched as the city whirled past us.

Although I was happy to be safe, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had left something far more valuable than luggage in Las Vegas.