Page 2 of Cruel Alpha Beast (Roseville Alphas #1)

Five Years Later

“Ten…nine…eight…” I count down slowly, my fingers woven together over my eyes.

Three sets of feet pitter-patter on the wooden floor of our house. Peeking through the space between my fingers, I can vaguely see the shapes of Danielle and Monroe ushering the small girl toward the nearest curtain.

“Mommy’s never going to find us,” the girl says in what she thinks is a whisper.

Monroe gently shushes her. “We have to be very quiet, Shea.”

“…Three…two…one,” I finish. “Ready or not, here I come!”

I lower my hands from my face and find the living room the same as it always is. There’s a cushy couch sitting across from the old stone fireplace, an armchair covered in a hand-knitted blanket, and old pictures on the wall of Danielle and Monroe’s grandparents in their youth.

Their maternal grandmother was the first to come to the coven ages ago, after their grandfather died prematurely, or so they told me.

The twins’ mother was born here, eventually venturing out to find love.

She found their father, but both Danielle and Monroe kept their mouths shut regarding what happened with him.

“You’re my best friend, Lacey, but there are some secrets that need to be kept,” Danielle once told me. And I never asked again.

My eyes drift from the pictures to the window on the same wall. The sun shines brightly through the gaps left uncovered by the bulging curtain. I could end this game immediately, or I could play along for my beloved daughter’s sake.

“Hmm.” I grab my opposite elbow with one hand, then use the other to grasp my chin between my finger and thumb. “Now, where could they be?”

A bout of giggles erupts from the lumps in the curtain. “ Shh, she’s going to find us !” Danielle hisses playfully.

“Are they under the couch?” I ask, leaning over to peek at the dust bunnies and stray toys beneath. “Nope. No one is under here.”

I make a big production out of traveling around the living room, vocalizing my every move as I peer into every nook and cranny, especially the ones not even my tiny daughter could possibly make it through. Shea laughs harder and harder, and even Danielle and Monroe can’t help but join in.

“Well, they’re definitely not in this shoe.” I sigh and lower the sneaker from my eye, dropping it on the mat at my feet. “I’ve looked everywhere . I have no idea where they are! Guess I need to go find another daughter.”

Shea bursts through the curtain and waves her arms. “We’re here, Mommy!”

“What?” I gasp, clapping my hands to my cheeks. “Were you guys there the whole time?”

“I didn’t think you would ever find us,” Danielle says sarcastically as she follows Shea out.

Monroe pulls the curtain back, struggling to stand after crouching for so long. “I might need to ask Penelope for a healing potion after this. Playing with Shea is no joke. My body may never be the same.”

My four-year-old daughter runs into my arms, letting me pick her up and place her on my hip. She nestles into my shoulder and wraps her arms around my neck.

“What do you say? Time for lunch?” I ask her.

“No, Mommy, you didn’t hide yet!” Shea protests.

She wiggles her way out of my grasp just as soon as she gets into it and stands against the wall, covering her entire face. “One, two, three, six, eleven, eleven, eight…”

“We gotta work on her numbers,” I mutter, unable to hide my grin.

Monroe hides under a coat on the rack by the door, her legs comically visible. Danielle and I tiptoe behind the couch and lean against its back as Shea continues to count.

“…Eleventy-two, eleventy-three…”

Danielle snickers. “Why is she so obsessed with the number eleven?”

I shrug back, but the blood in my veins thickens before I can respond.

I fall against the back of the couch as darkness clouds my vision.

Instead of the living room, I can only see moving images of a riverbed drying, its muddy floor hardening.

Then, the images shift. I watch as a wildflower decays before my eyes.

But nothing hits me harder than what I see next. It’s people fighting. People I recognize. My old pack, punching and kicking, some even shifting and gnashing teeth. The sky turns red over their heads, and beneath their feet, blood spills.

My heart is still pounding when the visions fade, and the black clouds disappear. Crouching over me is a young woman with honey-colored hair falling over her shoulder. Her moss-green eyes stare at me, wide and glassy. Her lips move, but a ringing pierces through my ears, and I can’t hear her.

I breathe in ragged gasps of air, still coming down from the vision. Sense is washing through slowly, and soon I recognize that the woman grabbing my shoulders is Danielle, and she’s saying my name.

“Lacey! Lacey, are you okay? I’m right here. You’re safe,” she says.

All I can do is nod my head at first. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I tell her. “I just had—”

“Mommy?”

A young girl with long chestnut brown hair steps into view, peering at me over Danielle’s shoulder.

Her head cocks to the side, hazel eyes watching me with fear in them.

It breaks my heart. As a mother, all I want to do is shield my daughter from fear and danger, and here I am, scaring her with my visions of a terrifying future.

“Mommy’s okay,” I say quickly. “Everything’s fine, baby.”

I catch Monroe on Danielle’s other side, watching with her arms folded across her chest. I meet her twin’s eyes once again and heave a deep sigh.

“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” Danielle says quietly.

I nod as subtly as I can. “Bad one, too.”

Danielle purses her lips tightly, if only to stop herself from making a big deal out of this and scaring Shea even more.

“I’ll tell you later,” I promise.

Danielle nods back. She exchanges glances with Monroe for a second, then reaches forward to grab my hand and help me back to my feet.

***

I sit on the porch of the twins’ house, drinking a cool glass of water as I enjoy the summer night air. I gaze out at the coven’s compound out here in the woods, watching the fireflies illuminate the surrounding bushes and trees.

The screen door closes with a loud snap as Danielle joins me. She plops down in the wicker chair at my side and takes a deep breath. I can feel her eyes as she turns to look at me. I know we need to talk about all of the things I saw, but I just want to enjoy this summer night a little bit longer.

As if sensing this, Danielle gives me a moment to take in the smell of the fragrant flowers and the sound of buzzing wings, and bullfrogs croaking in the distance. One last taste of normalcy before reality hits and life changes forever.

“Monroe is watching Shea,” Danielle finally reports. “Now, we’ll have enough time to talk.”

I nod my head in response. “I had a vision earlier.”

Danielle watches me carefully as I explain every gruesome image that had floated through my mind earlier. Having spent every day with her for the last five years, I can read her face as easily as I can read a book. She’s trying to stay calm, but her eyes widen with every word I say.

“Wow,” she sighs after I finish.

“I know,” I murmur back.

Danielle sits up straighter in the wicker chair. “I mean, it could all be symbolic. Remember when you had that vision of Monroe getting caught in the maze, but it was really just about her feeling stuck in her magical studies?”

“I do,” I admit. “But there was something about this that was so… It was so visceral. Nothing about it felt symbolic. It was real .”

Danielle sucks her bottom lip in as she considers the implications of my vision. “You don’t think… You don’t think it could be a blight on the valley, do you?”

“It’s all I’ve been thinking,” I admit in a wobbly voice. I look down at my knees, my breath hitching in my throat. “I hope we’re wrong, but I don’t know what else it could be.”

Shaking her head, Danielle eventually throws her hands up. “Me either.”

“Greg is still there,” I continue. “Shea’s father is still there. I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to either of them.”

Danielle cocks her head with a wistful smile. “Sometimes I forget that Shea wasn’t just manifested from all the good in the world…”

“She might as well have been,” I say.

“In all the years I’ve known you, I don’t think we’ve ever really talked about her father,” Danielle points out.

My gut twists at the thought of Sawyer. “There’s not much to talk about,” I tell her. “He’s a fucking asshole, and he hurt me more than anyone ever has before.”

Danielle looks at me expectantly, but has enough grace not to ask me for more information. She merely reaches over and pats my arm. “I’m sorry, Lace.”

“No matter how I feel about him, he’s still Shea’s father.

Without him, I wouldn’t have her, and I don’t even want to think about life without that sweet little girl.

” I shrug my shoulders and take a deep breath.

“I’ve always hoped that one day I could introduce her to him, too.

You know she’s asked about meeting him bef—”

I slump back into my own chair, feeling like an elephant is sitting on my chest. The familiar dark clouds flood my line of sight. Another vision. These ones are bloodier than the others before.

A violent scrap of shifters again. Claws and fangs break skin and carve through fur. The paved streets pool with a sickening amount of blood and gore, teeth, and tufts of skin. A teacher I once had falls to the ground, her cloudy eyes staring out at nothing.

Like a movie scene, the vision zooms in on Miss Theresa’s face.

I see black spots creeping up her neck and her arms. She looks ragged, and not because of the skirmish surrounding her.

She’s been sick for some time. And the deeper I look in the vision, I can see that others have been plagued with the same thing.

My body shakes, and the clouds disperse.

Once again, today, I’m roused from a vision by Danielle.

Only this time, she looks even more concerned than she did earlier.

Her hands clasp my arms so tightly that her knuckles have turned white.

She keeps shaking as I blink the darkness away completely and come back into myself.

“Lacey, Lacey !” she hisses. “What’s going on?”

“I have to call Greg,” I gasp out. “I need to call him right now.”

As soon as she releases me, I lean over to grab my phone from the small patio table at my side.

Despite my fingers quivering, I’m able to find my brother’s contact information and make the call, but it goes straight to voicemail.

My stomach fills with dread as soon as I hear the robotic voice telling me he missed my call.

“Fuck,” I mutter to myself. “He hasn’t picked up any of my calls in days. Usually, it rings a lot, but this time it didn’t.”

Danielle runs a hand through her long hair, pacing back and forth on the porch. “This can’t be good.”

I shake my head and get out of the chair. “I have to go back. I have to warn my old pack in person. Something terrible is going to happen.”

“Wait,” Danielle interrupts. “Why are you doing this? I thought you said your old pack was awful to you.”

“They were, but I have to do it. For Greg.” An image of Sawyer’s shirtless body over mine on the edge of the lake infiltrates my mind, thickening my throat. “For him .”