Page 2 of Cruel Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #1)

Three Years Later

I should have known it wouldn’t be different. I should have known it would take more than a bridge to separate me from what I was: an outcast, an embarrassment, an abomination. Now, here I was in my beat-up Toyota, my foot on the gas, praying that it would live to see me over another bridge. Rain was lashing at the windows, obscuring my already limited view of the dark road, and I wanted to laugh—if I wasn’t so utterly terrified—at the fact that my soundtrack to all of it was Baby Shark .

In the backseat, my twins were clapping their little hands clumsily together, singing along tunelessly, mercifully oblivious to the danger that the three of us were in.

“MOMMY SHARK!” they screamed in unison, indicating that it was my turn to sing along.

“Do do, do do do do,” I sang obediently, hoping that they didn’t pick up on the tremble in my voice. Emmy squealed with joy, and Jack kicked his little feet, heels bumping against the plastic of his car seat. Despite everything that had happened in the last two and a half years, I could not imagine life without them. They were perfect, even if the circumstances surrounding their birth were not, and I would cross a hundred bridges in the dark and the rain and pursued by angry wolves if it meant I could keep them safe.

I checked my mirrors, not knowing whether I wanted to see a flash of movement in the dark trees that lined the road or not. I saw nothing, but whether that was due to the darkness or because I had really given my pursuers the slip, I couldn’t tell, and the uncertainty made me nervous.

It had been stupid—so incredibly, astronomically stupid—to think that my children and I could have found a safe haven on Arbor. I had told myself that, since Arbor was a magic-fearing island, no one from home would think to look for me there; I had thought that since my own magic was weak and easily controlled, the Arbor Pack wouldn’t look at me twice. I had found an abandoned cottage on the edge of town and set up shop as a masseuse there, and if the relief I brought to the Pack’s aching muscles was more from my magic than any real skill with my hands, no one needed to know. I had thought I could make, if not an entirely happy life, then at least a stable one. I had thought wrong.

My magic might have been weak, might have been growing weaker with every month spent away from my home and my Pack and him , but my children’s was not. If I had known how much power they were hiding, I would never have allowed them in the room with me while I saw clients from the town. I would never have chosen Arbor as our haven at all. Lapine might have disliked witches, but they begrudgingly allowed them to pass through, accepted their healing and their help with a look of suspicion in their eyes. Arbor, on the other hand, would kill any witch found on their land, never mind her intentions. All it had taken was one incident, one man with a persistently stiff neck who tickled Emmy in a way she didn’t like, and we were lost. He’d been shocked by the pulse that sent him flying across our modest living room, and that was the only thing that saved us. It had given me time to get my hand over his hate-filled eyes and channel all the meager magic I had in me. He’d slumped back against the wall, unconscious, and I had packed my children into the back of my car.

He would have awoken hours ago, would have run back to town and alerted the hunters I knew were now hot on our tail. So close to our goal, I wondered again whether I should have killed him. The Arbor Pack would have found his body quickly when he didn’t return to town, tracing his scent to the ramshackle cottage I had just begun to call home, but those few extra hours might have made all the difference. The roads on Arbor were small and winding, and travel by car was far slower than a wolf could run through the dense forests; even with a head start, they were likely to catch up with us sooner rather than later, but if I could only get over the bridge and onto Argent, I’d be off their territory and out of their jurisdiction.

A howl—not from behind me, but from the forest to our left—told me that time had almost run out. Pressing my foot harder on the gas, I prayed that I wasn’t putting us in even more danger than we were already in; the conditions on the road were awful, and I didn’t want to outrun the Arbor Pack only to skid off the road in the wet and the dark and kill us all anyway. Today had been packed with awful choices, and I was done fretting about making them.

Another howl. This time, Jack howled in answer, and I tried my best to smile.

“That’s great, little guy. You’re gonna be a big, strong wolf when you grow up, huh?”

Jack howled again in response, and Emmy leaned forward to push her face up against the window, desperate to see out. Her chunky little hands left streaks on the glass, and she smacked the window as she cried,

“Mommy! Mommy, wolf!”

My heart sank.

“Come away from the window, Sweetie,” I said, but Emmy paid me no mind. She slapped the window again, repeating her excited exclamation. Jack strained in his own seat, beginning to whine; he wanted to see the wolf too, and a tantrum was on its way if he didn’t get to see what his sister had.

“Wolf!” shouted Emmy again, just as a chorus of fresh howling broke out from the darkness. This time, they came from everywhere, and my knuckles went white against the steering wheel.

“Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” Emmy repeated, loud and shrill. Her brother began to wail, kicking out this time in frustration, and the howls were growing closer. The rain was lashing against the windscreen, and Baby fucking Shark was still on a loop.

Something huge—all teeth and fur and rage—slammed into the side of the car. Tires screeched as I fruitlessly slammed on the brakes, and everything became a blur. We were going to die. We were going to die on this good-for-nothing island, and no one would think twice about it. Memories flashed through my mind as the car spun madly off the road: the sound of whispers behind hands and barely muffled laughter, the mocking edge of his smile, the euphoria of his touch, the ripping, tearing pain of rejection, of abandonment, of giving birth alone in a half-ruined cottage a hundred miles from home, the warmth of sticky skin against mine, and the miracle of warbling twin cries.

Crying. Someone was crying. I blinked hard once, twice, and the world came back into focus. The car had stopped—had been stopped in its tracks by a half-fallen tree. Smoke was pouring from the engine, crumpled against the trunk, but I was alive. My children were alive, screaming their lungs out in their car seats, and I had never been so relieved to hear that ear-splitting sound. Turning sharply to look into the backseat, my head pounded, my vision blurred. I blinked again, trying to clear my vision; we didn’t have time for this. We were only alive for as long as it took the Arbor wolves to follow the car into the forest. Seconds, if anything. My wolf had been weak all my life and was only growing weaker; she wouldn’t last against a Pack’s trained hunters. My magic was hardly better, but with the adrenaline pounding through me it might be enough to at least scare them off awhile. It might give us time to run.

“Stay there, babies, okay?” I said, as if they could do anything else. “Mommy’s gonna—it’s gonna be okay. I love you.”

Shouldering open the car door, I braced myself for the pain I knew was coming. The howls that had rung through the forest had transformed into a chorus of growling, audible even above the rain. Inhaling deeply, I pulled at what little of my magic I could grasp and stared out into the darkness.

What I saw made my heart stop. It wasn’t the dozen pairs of flashing eyes that stared at me from between the trees or the hundreds of sharp white teeth; it was the wolf who stood between us and them. His hackles were up, daring the smaller wolves to try anything, and I immediately knew they wouldn’t. He was an Alpha, and they knew better than to try him: not only would they lose, but attacking the Alpha of another island would mean war.

The Alpha was enormous, at least a head taller than me, and would have been utterly black but for the stripe of silver-white that ran down his back. I recognized him instantly, my magic surging to my fingers as my heart tripped over my stomach and my knees made a valiant attempt to buckle. He didn’t acknowledge my presence but took a step forward toward the Arbor hunters, letting out a low, warning growl. One of them—the largest, as far as I could see—tensed as if ready to pounce, and I let my magic fly.

Fire, white and hot and crackling, sprang up in a wide arc between us and the Arbor wolves, and they cringed back, yelping as they tripped over their paws to retreat into the darkness of the forest. I watched them go, shocked and relieved and half convinced I was dreaming. As their howls grew distant, I told myself that if I turned to look at the wolf still standing sentinel at my side, he would be gone. It didn’t matter that I could feel a long-forgotten thrum in my chest, smell the scent of charcoal and pine in the air. He was only ever a hallucination, a product of my panic-addled mind, conjured to make me feel safe.

Breathing hard, I stared down at my hands, scarcely able to believe the power I had summoned; I hadn’t done magic like that in years, not since—I didn’t have time to dwell on that because Emmy and Jack were screaming, and I stumbled back to the mangled car, ripping open the back door to get to them. I unbuckled their car seats with shaking hands, shushing and cooing as I gathered them into my arms and sank to my knees in the wet leaves, peppering their faces with kisses.

“It’s alright now, babies. Mommy’s got you. We’re alright. We’re gonna be alright.”

I could barely believe my own words, yet they were—miraculously—true, at least for now. The shock and exhaustion soon took the twins over once they were cradled in my arms, and they were reduced to wet sniffles as they hid their faces against the skin of my neck.

“We have to go.”

The voice made me jump, but it was so familiar that it sent a shiver down my spine. There was no longer a wolf standing before us, but a man; he was tall and imposing, built from sculpted muscle, with a face that was all angles, from the sharp cut of his jawline to the perfect aquiline nose. His eyes—that icy, almost unnatural blue—flashed in the darkness as he pushed his dripping black hair away from his face. He was also naked, and I tried desperately not to remember the last time I had seen him this way.

“What?” I said. I’d forgotten his words as soon as they left his lips, still not quite able to believe he was real. What was he doing on Arbor in the middle of a thunderstorm anyway?

“We have to go, Alyssa,” he repeated, authority coloring his every syllable. “Come on, get up.”

I didn’t move. The rain continued to pour, but I was already soaked from head to toe, and half of me was afraid that if I moved, I would see a fresh Pack of hunters coming for us out of the dark.

“Mommy,” Jack sniffled against my neck, “Mommy, who’s that?”

His eyes were huge as he stared up at the man before us, and suddenly, I was on the verge of tears. There were a hundred answers I could have given, each one on the tip of my tongue before I said,

“This is Caleb, Honey. He protected us from the mean wolves.”

I didn’t say, He’s the heir to Lapine Pack, where Mommy was born.

I didn’t say, He made high school a living hell.

I didn’t say, He’s my mate, but he doesn’t want me.

I didn’t say, He’s your father.