Page 11 of Brutal Alpha Beast (Roseville Alphas #2)

They can’t know that we’re here. That’s all that rings through my mind. It’s daytime, and I’m walking through the valley with someone. I’m not sure who. I can’t see who it is, who she is. I think it’s a she, although I’m not one hundred percent sure.

“Just a little further!” I tell my companion. Whoever it is, it’s tired and wants to stop.

“Come on, don’t be lazy, I tease.”

We’re very close, and making jokes is how we usually communicate. I don’t feel this comfortable with anyone else.

The sun beats down on us. It looks perfect in a clear, cloudless blue sky. Usually, we’d wait until a little later to sneak away, but we’re feeling reckless today.

Who are we hiding from?

I wake with a start. Danielle is asleep beside me, and man, I want her so much. The moonlight streams down perfectly on her calmly resting body—her eyelashes delicately mask her eyelids, she looks like a Goddess. Now that I've tasted her once, I want more.

But that dream, what was that?

It was real. It wasn’t anything like a dream, but more a memory, a flashback, although it was of a circumstance I’ve never been in before.

I could tell that I was younger and in school, but why would I be hiding from anyone at that age? I can’t think of a time that I’ve snuck out like that, especially not with anyone else.

As hard as I try to visualize that person beside me, or deduce who exactly we were hiding from, it doesn’t come. Maybe it was a dream. The most real dream I’ve ever had.

After an hour or so of tossing and turning, another one comes again.

Someone’s in a lake. I’ve been to this lake so many times with my friends, but it’s the first time I’m going with this person. It’s midnight, and the dark water ripples like a velvet curtain beneath the moon.

I want to see the person who’s in the lake, more than I’m seeing them now, and I’m judging myself for that thought.

So I say. “I’ll just stay and watch for now, you enjoy!”

I pretend the water’s too cold, but there’s nothing I want more than to get in.

I keep turning my head to find the person, but every time I do, they disappear, just out of my sightline.

I see trees, the ledge that I’m on, the water, the moon—it’s as if their spirit is still here, but physically they’re gone.

When I wake up, I’m more tired than I was when I went to sleep. The night was filled with strange, frustrating dreams that felt like memories, and my desire for Danielle, which in no way had worn off.

How could it when she lay so close to me? Her glossy curls spread across the floor, her perfectly curved hips only inches away from the side of my torso.

She slept in the same space I put her in before we kissed, with her head at the same level as mine.

It seems risky, but I wouldn’t have kissed her if I didn’t know, as an undeniable fact, that she wanted me to.

But she wasn’t ready for the intensity of it, and I respect that. Hell, I’m not ready for the consequences of my attraction to her either; I just know that it’s there, and I’m a wolf. I’m not accustomed to pushing those things down.

Danielle is already up, standing with her back to me as she gazes out at the forest.

I can see myself wrapping my arms around her from behind, letting her perky little ass rest against my groin...

“You’re up,” she says without turning around.

I stretch out my arms as I slowly sit up. This has to be the worst sleep I’ve ever gotten on the forest floor. Usually, I like it. It resonates with a deep part of my wolf, and I feel soothed by the connection to nature.

Something went wrong.

“Barely,” I mutter, looking around. “But at least we made it through the night.”

She stays silent, but I notice the slightest twitch in her back. I was talking about the shadow monsters, but perhaps she thought I was talking about something else.

Something she’s not ready to discuss.

I’m not in the business of pushing people, though. I regret how we’ve bickered—I’m sure Danielle has discovered things about our pack by being observant. I think she’s good at that.

“We should probably get going,” she says, turning to face me.

Those eyes.

I consider wrapping my arms around her again.

“We don’t know that something won’t find us, and I can only imagine how worried people must be at the pack.”

Note to self: always bring your phone with you.

I usually don’t like carrying it around too much; I feel like the electromagnetic waves are somehow blocking my wolf. I don’t know. Sawyer laughed at me when I said it. Aaron says that I’m old-fashioned and that the pack needs to embrace technology for survival.

I see his point. Maybe if I had been able to text or call him, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Danielle and I start walking again. It’s a peaceful morning; the birds' chirping sounds are melodic, the sun streams through the canopy of green branches, and there are deer visible in the distance through the trees.

But there’s a tension that hangs over us.

She keeps her distance—if she didn’t, it feels as though we could very easily slip into each other’s arms and kiss again.

“Do you recognize anything?” She asks.

My main superpower when it comes to finding things, as with any wolf, is my sense of smell. When an area of forestland looks the same as any other, that’s all I have to decipher where we’re going.

All I smell now is the wildlife, the drying forest from yesterday’s rain, and, unfortunately, Danielle.

Ever since we kissed, and I got a closer whiff, my senses have become so much more attuned to her. I know her smell more intimately; it’s intoxicating and distracting. But hey, at least if she gets lost out here, I know that I’d definitely be able to find her.

“I don’t recognize any scents,” I say. “If we get close enough to the pack, I’d be able to follow a trail of its scent—unfortunately, I can only pick it up within a certain range. Once we’re in that range, I’ll know where to go.”

Danielle nods.

“You have an idea?”

She smiles a little. “How can you tell?”

I think I know you better than you think. The thought comes from a place I neither recognize nor understand.

“I can cast a spell on you to widen that range, I think. I’m not sure what size radius your scenting ability will expand to, but it’ll definitely be more.”

I consider it.

“That’s pretty cool.”

Danielle blushes a little and looks away. “Yeah, I mean, we’ll see. Since it’s a spell on you, it’ll be more subtle. If we have any enemies looking for magic nearby, it’ll be harder to detect.”

We both stop, and I step closer toward her. That intuitive desire to touch her comes again. I can tell she’s feeling something similar, too.

“Let’s try it,” I say.

Danielle casts the spell, and at first, I feel nothing; then it hits me. It’s one of the most amazing sensations I’ve ever felt.

I feel my sensing capabilities expanding, and it’s not just my sense of smell but my vision and hearing, too.

I know the forest more clearly. It’s like the feeling you get after a cold once your sinuses have cleared—I’m so aware, so in touch.

I can hear her heart beating, the rise in her blood pressure. But I’m getting distracted. I direct my attention away from Danielle and focus on finding my pack’s scent.

“Got anything?” She asks, cautiously.

I nod. “I scent it,” I say. “We need to go East. Just this way.”

Danielle obliges, and I don’t tell her how amazing her spell feels. She must know.

“You think you can make this thing permanent?” I ask her after a little while.

She scoffs. “I think that’s a question for Penelope.”

It suddenly dawns on me that there are infinite potential benefits of us teaming up with the witches, ones that we’ve hardly even begun to explore. If we can just learn to communicate a little better, there’s nothing we can’t do.

As we navigate closer and closer to the scent, I notice something worrying.

Large patches of dead forest land. The patches are sporadic, spread out, but I’m noticing more and more along the path of our pack’s scent.

“You see that too?” I ask Danielle.

She bites her lip, her eyes flooded with the same panic I’m feeling. “Yes,” she says. “This is pretty bad.”

“Worse than I thought.”

***

Once we’re back in the pack, we’re greeted immediately by my men.

I’m waiting for Aaron to say, 'See, this is why I told you to always bring your phone.' But he doesn’t. They’re all waiting for an explanation, and I’ve almost forgotten about the whole reason why we were stranded out in the forest in the first place.

The shadow monsters.

I’ve been fixated on the dead forest land for a while now.

“Aaron,” I instruct. “Gather the elders and the council. We need to have a meeting right away.”

He nods, and everyone dissipates.

Danielle begins to walk off, but I stop her.

“Wait,” I say. “You should come with too. If you want. I think your insight will be valuable.”

She looks startled at first, her pale lips opening and closing in an undeniably cute way. I know what those lips taste like. I know how they feel. I can’t shake them out of my damn mind.

“Okay,” she nods. “Yeah. Sure.”

Once we gather around the table in our meeting room, it’s obvious that the elders and my Betas can sense the tense air. They murmur to each other quietly, muttering theories to one another, serious and confused frowns sweeping across each of their faces.

I wish I still had the enhanced sensing capabilities that Danielle temporarily gave me. Man, that thing was so powerful.

As I stand, the room falls silent. Everyone turns to face me, but the only person I truly register is Danielle.

“I know you’ve all been worried about where we’ve been, and noted, Aaron, I’ll be sure, next time, to bring my phone.”

I smile a little, but I don’t wait for the joke to land because I realize that it’s not the right place or time.

I go on to tell them about the shadow monsters, how we accidentally got lost, and how, with Danielle's help, we made our way home. Danielle deserves praise for her help; I’m still in awe of what she did.

I tell them about the dead forest land, to which I receive even more murmurs and shock.

“So what does this mean?” A beta asks. “Do we need to apply more solution?”

I sigh. “Yes, but I think we need to do more. The situation is worse than we thought. We need a better plan, one that attacks the root of the problem rather than just covering it up.”

“But we’ve tried,” another voice says.

“We need to try harder.”

“How are we supposed to defeat these monsters?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

I hate that I don’t have a definitive answer for them, but all I know is that danger is looming, and we need to work smarter and faster. We need to start investigating more.

“We should set up meetings,” Aaron says. “With the witches and with Sawyer’s pack. There must be something we can do to figure out what’s going on with the land. Or a source we can find that’ll tell us more about how to defeat the shadow monsters.”

I nod. “We need to keep thinking, with each other, and when we’re alone.

I’ve called this meeting to spark the discussion, to raise the urgency, but we can’t panic.

Aaron will coordinate meetings, we’ll double up on guards, and we’ll figure out what we can do with magic to protect ourselves more.

I don’t know why the shadow monsters didn’t come for the rest of the pack yesterday, but we need to make sure that we’re prepared for them if they come again. ”

The rest of the meeting continues with more brainstorming. Danielle stays pretty silent, even when the discussion of magic comes up.

I get it. She’s not used to being in a shifter council meeting, and she probably doesn’t know what she’s allowed to share.

After the meeting is adjourned, I let everyone leave first, then sit back and contemplate in my chair.

There’s gotta be something I’m not thinking of.

I feel like I’m failing, but failing, I know, is always on the verge of finding something…

Danielle has gotten up from her chair, and I watch as she walks through the hall. Her footsteps echo, her body sways.

I trace her movement instinctively with my eyes, and then suddenly, she stops.

Danielle is standing before an ancient tapestry; she raises her hand and rests it on the wall by the tapestry’s side.

She looks as though she’s transfixed.

“What is it?” I ask.

But she doesn’t respond.