Chapter 92

Wednesday Late — September 25

After the men had sat idly chatting in the living room for a time, Fred, realizing that the Sheriff and Jeff might need to talk, cleared his throat. "Jeff, would you mind if I used your exercise equipment? Carla's stuff isn't nearly as extensive as yours."

"Sure. Go ahead. You know where it is and you also know that you don't have to ask," Jeff replied, locking eyes with Fred for a moment, knowing what Fred was doing.

After Fred had left, Jeff looked over at Tate, who looked embarrassed. "I suppose something has happened? That was an awful sick look on your face when you walked in here."

"I guess your friend picked up on it, too. I..."

"Forget it. Fred doesn't mind."

Quinton sighed, finally remembering the piece of cake before him. Taking up his fork, he took a bite while wondering whether he should confide in this man whom he didn't know very well. Somehow, though, he felt as if he had known Jeff all his life, and ... trusted him. He had always had the ability to tell when someone was lying to him, and with that went the sure knowledge whether to trust someone or not.

"Jeff, this is personal, and well, I guess I don't really have anyone who is close enough to me to share this with. But truth be told, I'm in a mess, I guess you could say. I suspect that Virginia and Elizabeth are telling Diana right now. Probably came for advice, and I guess if I had been thinking, I would have realized it before we got out of the house. She first said she wanted to go for a drive, but then told me she wanted to come up here..."

When Tate trailed off, Jeff reached over and put a hand on Quinton's shoulder for a second. "If it will do any good to talk, I promise you that no one will ever hear what you tell me unless you give the okay."

Tate sighed, feeling the intensity of Jeff's comment. Then after a moment, "Well, here it is..."

When Quinton finished, he took the last bite of his cake, sitting the plate back on the coffee table. "Kinda fucked up, huh?"

Jeff stood up to get the coffee carafe from the serving cart. Leaning over, he warmed their coffee, then locked eyes with Tate. "Alpha males tend to cause problems with the female population around them," he said mysteriously before putting the carafe back on the cart and reseating himself near the Sheriff.

"It took me a while to understand this, and I had a whole lot more information to work with than you do. We need to pick up our conversation where we left off this morning about Alpha Males."

"Jeff, what has that got to do with my problem?"

"Well, as they say, maybe everything; maybe nothing."

When Tate didn't respond, Jeff grinned. "Sorry. That was in poor taste."

Tate took a sip of his refreshed coffee. "I guess I'm not very good company..."

Jeff ignored the comment. "First off: I can't tell you where much of this information comes from, but a lot of it seems to fit, and Diana swears by most of it."

The Sheriff started to say something, when Jeff quickly went on. "Just listen, please. This is going to take a while. When I'm done, I'll answer any of your questions that I can, with the one caveat that I just mentioned."

"Well, I don't exactly have anything better to do," Tate tried to joke. Soon, he was caught up in a tale stranger than anything he had ever heard before.

Later, Tate stood looking out the big window overlooking the lighted grounds of the retreat. Without turning back toward Jeff who still remained seated a few feet away, "You can't really believe this ... If you would just tell me where it all came from, I might be able to give it more credibility."

"You're an Alpha. No doubt about it. I can feel it. Diana can feel it. And beyond that, I ... uh, have another way to be absolutely certain of it," Jeff said, referring to Little One telling him that Quinton was an Alpha.

Tate glanced at Jeff for a moment, then turned back to stare out the window. "There's nothing special about me. Never has been."

"Well, there's one thing that you told me that surely is special," Jeff replied, then quickly went on before the Sheriff could say anything. "You can tell when someone is lying to you. Turns out that Frank, Bill, Dave, Fred and I all have that ability, or a variation of it. Fred was a police detective for many years. A homicide detective who even other agencies knew about and asked his advice and assistance on many cases. After he retired, he made a lot of money from insurance companies recovering stolen property that no one else seemed to be able to recover. Valuable property, and he was paid a percentage of its worth. A detective has an edge when he instantly knows when someone isn't telling the truth. You've been one. I'm preaching to the choir."

Jeff pushed his recliner back more, relaxing and trying to send those feelings to Tate. "Then there's Dave, who always seems to hire the right people. Evie says it's uncanny. Oh, and he seems to be able to pick up land deals that no one else realizes. Frank, in his own way, does this as well. I walked into his office with an invention to tell him about. He believed me. He knew. He picked Dave and Evie to build this place, and they didn't even bid. They just made a deal with him, and he knew that they weren't going to mess over him.

"I don't know as much about Bill. But I can feel that he's an Alpha. He left his daughter with us — well, with Dave, Evie and us. His wife left him and he didn't have a good place to leave Linda while he was flying. He knows we'll take care of her, and indeed, he's going to let her marry Dave — be Dave's second wife. And right now, you know I'm telling the truth. You can feel it, can't you?"

Tate turned back from the window and plopped down in a seat facing Jeff. "Yeah, I can feel it. But there's something about being able to tell if someone is telling the truth. I've had nuts tell me things; how they've killed the president, the queen of England, weird stuff ... and they believed it, so it didn't come across as a lie. If someone is convinced that what they are saying is the truth, then it seems like the truth to me..."

" ... And if I believe the things that I've just told you, then you detect my feelings, thus not being able to distinguish truth from untruth, so to speak?"

"Yeah, that's about it. Sorry Jeff, I didn't mean that to be as harsh as the way you put it. I'm still a bit ... leery to believe everything you say, and I don't mean any offense with that. It's just too..." Tate cleared his throat and crossed his legs. "But how can this invention of yours bring out all these changes in me? The things that have atrophied or lain dormant in me?"

"I didn't say it was my invention. You assumed that from the beginning. My invention was, in general, an advanced form of radar. Actually, it doesn't use radar as you would understand it, but that's beside the point right now."

"So something else made Elizabeth better? Made Virginia and I feel like a million dollars?"

"I'm not giving any hints. If you feel better by thinking it's an invention, then maybe you need to stick with that thought. But you're going to continue with this feeling of well-being. Your body hasn't completed all its changes, yet. This ... process is faster now than it was a month or two ago. It ... understands the, uh, body better now; is able to accomplish more, quicker. You're going to start looking younger. Virginia and Elizabeth will probably show it more than you will. And trust me, your Alpha tendencies have already been enhanced and they will continue to grow."

Tate raised an eyebrow, but didn't respond.

"I'm not sure about this, but the age regression seems to show up more with women than men. I think it has something to do with mental attitude, but I'm certainly not sure."

"Mental attitude?"

"Well, I'm calling it that, but it probably isn't everything. Look at Diana. She looks twenty or so, yet I probably look thirty. I don't really want to look twenty. I strongly suspect that you don't either."

Tate chuckled. "Well, as good as it sounds, I can't imagine being Sheriff at twenty. Might bring up a few questions."

"But I feel twenty," Jeff interjected. "And Diana wants to look twenty, I think. Helen and Laura are looking younger every day, but I have no idea where they will bottom out, but Diana hasn't changed in a while, so I think she's where she wants to be."

"Jeff, you talk as if this is absolute fact. It's a lot to swallow, even though I know that you think you're telling the truth."

"There's something else that I mentioned, but I need to reiterate. You're going to start producing pheromones — probably have started already. You're also going to have to learn to control them. I had some embarrassing moments before my women realized what was going on and got on my ass to control them. I was having waitresses coming onto me..."

"Hey, you're a nice looking guy. Heck, even I have a woman make a pass at me every now and then, especially if I'm in uniform."

"It's more than that. And you've always been an Alpha, so to some degree, you've always been able to attract females, whether you wanted to or not. But it's going to get worse, or better, whichever way you consider it. But, trust me, this is going to be an embarrassment shortly if you don't learn to control it. They will start to come sit in your lap — total strangers."

Tate looked at Jeff for a moment, then his face changed to a big grin. "If that is so, then my jealous wife is going to have kittens," he laughed.

Jeff didn't respond as Quinton expected, but instead, "She might not. If she turns out to be your Queen Bitch, as I suspect has already begun to happen, she might just fool you. She might even encourage it. But I doubt if it will happen overnight. She'll probably start to feel the — urges, to use an incomplete concept — but she's going to have problems with the logical part of her mind as well. Your pheromones, and I suspect, something that we have that is mental, will tend to push her in the direction of a Queen Bitch. Diana waffled with jealousy for a while, but something happened. Hell, I think if it were entirely up to her, I would have twenty wives. It adds to the Queen Bitch's ... prestige, to again use a word that is only close to the concept, as I understand it. Don't get me wrong. She loves her sister-wives. But it is more than love; there is a connection there that's almost scary."

"Not my wife," Tate emphatically said. "Not with her jealousy." Then after thinking a minute, "Okay, if this ... process — whatever it is — has changed me so that I've started spewing pheromones, then why aren't your wives wanting to sit in my lap, as you put it?"

"That's a good point. Happens that those pheromones don't affect another Alpha's women — at least not much. But you have to be damned careful with women in enclosed places whether they're married or not — unless they belong to an Alpha. Some are affected more than others, but all not belonging to an Alpha are affected. If you start responding to them and thinking sexual thoughts, you're going to be in trouble."

Quinton grinned at Jeff. "This is a totally weird conversation — the whole thing. So how do I learn to control the pheromones?"

"Damned if I know," Jeff just had to say.

As Quinton opened his mouth to object, he realized that Jeff was messing with him. "Okay, you almost got me. So assuming that this does happen to me — and right now it seems farfetched — what do I do?"

Jeff grinned at the Sheriff. "I wasn't completely kidding you. I can only tell you that when you see the women starting to respond, to concentrate on them being less interested, and just acting normally. Try to ignore their beauty, or whatever attracts you to them. I finally hit the right, uh, sequence. Once I had done it, it wasn't nearly as hard next time. Now, I do it almost unconsciously. You can turn it back on just as easily."

Tate leaned back, realizing that he was in a much better mood than he had been when he first walked into the living room. Still more than just a bit skeptical, he asked, "So tell me again how you know I'm and Alpha Male. This 'feel' that you talk about..."

"Yeah, I can feel an Alpha, although faintly before the ... procedure. After that, the Alpha is much more noticeable. One reason that I know that you're putting out more pheromones is that I can smell them."

"So, you're saying I need a bath," Tate kidded.

Jeff chuckled a little. "Laugh now, but soon you're going to find out what a sense of smell really is. Mine is still increasing, but if we're in the same room, I'm beginning to be able to detect if a woman has had sex recently. If I'm in a smaller enclosed space with them, such as a small conference room, I can tell if they're on their period."

"Yuck," Tate grimaced. "I think I could do without that."

"Not as bad as you would think, at least if she has bathed regularly. But I'm beginning to be able to tell if an Alpha has walked into the room with me, and I can usually tell who it is without looking. It's an odd smell — subtle. And it's far different than a woman's, even a woman who is sexually excited. And, oh yeah, once you start having sex with your own women, they'll begin to put out more of their own special pheromones. But I'm pretty sure that only Alphas can detect them. I wasn't able to detect them at first, but as my abilities increased, I've begun to realize that I can detect the women's pheromones as well."

"Jeff, I can feel that you believe what you say, but still, this is ... way out."

"Think about what we've talked about. You've always been an Alpha, but now with the procedure, your abilities have been enhanced, or at least, have started to be enhanced. I think that Virginia is beginning to become a Queen Bitch. She came up here to talk to Diana, and she brought Elizabeth with her. She's had five years to think about Elizabeth not having a man, and since Elizabeth hasn't dated in that period of time, it's logical that Virginia has figured it out to some degree, at least. You three are too close for Virginia not to have noticed that you and Elizabeth love each other.

"Virginia wouldn't accept that either because it's just not done. Our society frowns upon a man having more than one woman. So, all three of you have been fighting against the concept. It was a done deal. Just couldn't happen — against society's mores. But now that your Alpha abilities have suddenly increased, Virginia is being bombarded with new feelings. She knew deep down what should happen. Now the Queen Bitch is starting to come out in her, partly because of your new pheromones and partly because of the, ah ... procedure. Her body is starting to function like a Queen Bitch; she's reacting like one to, and she's also reacting to her Alpha's cues. Here is a female that he loves — an unattached female — so her new Queen Bitch tendencies are telling her what to do.