Page 9 of Cruel Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #1)

As I walked, I cataloged the privileges that Ed Graves and his family were about to lose. With Alyssa gone, I’d tried my best to take care of them. Ed got more managerial shifts at the quarry, an honor usually reserved for older men; Pauline and Gracie both worked taking care of the elders, but I kept them on meal prep and delivery rather than bedpans or sponge baths. All that was about to change. If they weren’t going to act like Alyssa’s family, there was no need for me to treat them that way.

Alyssa puffed beside me, walking fast and determined—I didn’t even have to slow down to keep pace with her. Her face was tight with upset, round eyes shiny with unshed tears, and I floundered for something to say to fix it. Over the last few days, it had become clear that Alyssa preferred to be left alone when she was upset, or she preferred me to leave her alone at any rate. I wasn’t stupid: she was only tolerating me now because it meant she could get home quicker.

In my arms, Emmy shifted, pressing her chubby little hand against my face, turning it so I was looking at her. With large, solemn eyes that were so like her mother’s, she said,

“Mommy’s sad.”

Yeah. Yeah, Mommy was sad, and I sure as shit didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know what to say to Emmy either—what the hell did you say to a toddler who was old enough to understand “sad” but not old enough to understand the explanation for it?

“We all get a bit sad sometimes,” I said, letting out a relieved breath when Emmy nodded sagely.

“Chocolate,” she said, as if this was a solution. Maybe for her, it was; she was two, she didn’t have any problems that chocolate couldn’t solve. What a way to live. I made a mental note to order some good chocolate from the mainland anyway because it couldn’t possibly hurt. What kind of chocolate did Alyssa like? I’d order a few different kinds, just to be safe.

We almost made it all the way back to Julia’s, but when the cottage came into view, so did Melanie Simons. Melanie was—well, she was desperate, and I had to admit that I pitied her. After being every guy’s dream mate all through our teen years—blonde and leggy and the center of attention—she’d come out of school mateless. It wasn’t the end of the world; she had a mate out there somewhere, in another Pack on another island, but there were enough stories about what happened to females who went searching on unfamiliar islands that very few ever left their Pack to make the attempt, and fewer still ventured further afield than the neighboring islands.

I’d arranged with Leo on Argent and Ethan on Ferris to give her an escort around those islands, but that search had proven fruitless, though I didn’t know exactly how hard she’d looked on Ferris—the way Ethan told it, she’d spent most of her time there in his bed. Since then, Melanie had seemed content to hang out on Lapine and wait for her mate to come to her, if he ever did. While she waited, though, she seemed determined to give me the same treatment she’d given Ethan.

“Who’s this cutie?” Melanie said, stepping into my path with a wide smile and a bat of her thick eyelashes. She reached for Emmy, but the girl flinched away, glaring.

“This is Emmy; she’s Alyssa’s daughter,” I said, nodding to where Alyssa had frozen on the path ahead of me and was staring blankly back at us. Melanie didn’t follow my gaze. “We’re just heading back to Julia’s.”

“Oh, don’t let me keep you, then,” she said. “I’d love to see you later tonight, though, if you’re not too busy.” Her tone was heavy with suggestion, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alyssa turn sharply and continue walking towards Julia’s. I adjusted my hold on Emmy, who was still glaring at Melanie. I wanted to tell her that I’d found my mate, that I’d never wanted anyone but her, and that her advances made me cringe, but I knew I couldn’t. Alyssa returning to Lapine was one thing, and I couldn’t control how news of that spread, but I would have control over how the Pack discovered the truth about our mating; it wasn’t going to be a scandalous piece of gossip passed from packmate to packmate.

“You know I hear all Pack concerns on Wednesday afternoons,” I told Melanie tightly. Then, just in case: “Unless it’s something sensitive?”

Melanie’s eyes lit up, and I immediately regretted giving her an opening. She stepped into my space, placing her fingertips against my stomach and looking up at me through her lashes.

“Yeah,” she purred. “I think it’s pretty… sensitive.”

I might not be able to tell her the whole truth, but I could put a stop to this. Gripping her wrist in my free hand, firm rather than hard, I pulled her fingers away from my stomach.

“Stop this, Mellie,” I said quietly, infusing my voice with a touch of authority. “I mean it.”

Melanie turned deep pink, and when she bowed her head, I couldn’t tell if it was from obedience or mortification.

“Are we clear?” I said, and she nodded, still not looking me in the eye. I let her go, and she scrambled away from me, tripping over her feet in her haste to be away. I felt bad for her, but now that I had Alyssa back on Lapine, I wasn’t going to let anything—least of all Melanie Simons—get between us.

“Go home!” Emmy demanded, and I was more than happy to oblige. She was growing squirmy in my arms, and I remembered that the last time I’d dropped by Julia’s at this time, the twins had been napping.

Sure enough, when I reached Julia’s, Alyssa and Jack were nowhere to be seen. Julia said nothing, just pointed me upstairs, her expression vaguely reproachful. As I climbed the stairs, Emmy’s head began to loll against my shoulder, and I felt a strange warmth wash over me as I looked down at her mop of wild dark curls and her flushed baby cheeks. Whoever her father was, he was an idiot to abandon something so precious.

The warmth was quickly dispelled when I reached Alyssa’s bedroom. Jack was already out cold in the big bed, splayed in the center like a little starfish, his mother running a shaky hand through his hair. She froze when I entered, saying nothing as she plucked a sleepy Emmy from my arms, removing her coat and shoes with practiced ease before laying her down gently next to Jack. Watching their routine felt intimate: a privilege and an intrusion at once. Alyssa clearly felt it was the latter because she glared up at me from where she was crouched beside the bed. I didn’t need the bond to feel the anger coming off her in waves, and I tilted my head, telling her to follow me out into the hall. She turned away from me, pretending not to notice I was there. God, but she was stubborn. That was fine; I could be stubborn, too.

I waited and waited and waited. It was nice, actually, taking the time to admire her profile: the cute slope of her nose, the softness around her jawline, the curls that had escaped from her ponytail to tumble around her face. Alyssa’s hands began to fiddle with the edge of the bedspread, her posture growing more and more tense until finally, she stood all at once, storming past me and out of the room into the hallway, her arms crossed.

“What do you want?” she asked once the door was shut behind me. Neither her voice nor her expression showed any hint of the rage that had been so obvious only a few moments ago; it was as if a mask had come down over her face, shielding her true emotions.

“To know what I did wrong.” As far as I was concerned, I’d done nothing to warrant this amount of ire—not in the last couple of hours, anyway. Alyssa rolled her eyes, turning away to head down the stairs.

“You’re being weird,” I said as I followed her, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I was probably failing, but Alyssa only rolled her eyes.

“I tell you that I just saw my family for the first time in three years, and they barely care that I'm alive, but I must be upset because of something you did,” she said. “Sure.”

It was obvious that she was lying. Her flippancy was too perfect, like she’d studied how to seem careless. Still, it was a good enough act that I couldn’t quite see past it, and I found myself wishing once again for the emotional transparency that came with a claimed and marked mate.

“No, that’s not it.” I insisted as we emerged back into the living space. Julia, sprawled on the couch, sat up and started to say something, but Alyssa got there first.

“Isn’t it?” she said. She was smiling—more like grimacing—and her voice was edged with irony. “Please tell me more about my own feelings, oh powerful and insightful Alpha.”

If she wasn’t going to admit it, then I was going to have to be the one to bring it up.

“You didn’t like that I was talking to Mellie,” I said, and the fake smile dropped from her face. There was an endless, cavernous pause, like the silence before a shootout.

“Wow, would you look at the time,” said Julia. “I’ve got somewhere to be all of a sudden.”

Neither of us spared her a look as she swept her coat from its hook and all but sprinted out of the house, leaving nothing but a cold breeze and the sound of the door slamming in her wake. Alyssa didn’t even flinch.

“You can talk to Mellie as much as you like,” she said, her voice icy. “I don’t care.”

“Oh really?” I stepped forward into her space, looking down at her. “Seemed like you cared a little bit.”

“And what gave you that idea?” she asked. She sounded almost bored , while I was getting more and more frustrated. If she just told me what I’d done, I would fix it—or at least try.

“You didn’t want to hang around,” I told her, which was a kind way of putting it. She’d all but stormed off in a huff.

“The twins needed putting down for their nap,” Alyssa said, as though it wasn’t a transparent excuse. “ You might not need to prioritize their well-being, but—”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “You were jealous as hell.” Fuck—the more unaffected she pretended to be, the angrier I got. In return, my anger only seemed to feed her indifference.

“That’s quite the ego you’ve got there,” she said like I was some—some schoolboy trying to impress her.

“I’m your mate,” I growled, the truth of the words hitting me with an unexpected force. Suddenly, I wanted to reach for her, to crush her against my body, to kiss her plush lips, to mark her neck and her breasts and belly with my teeth, to show her she was mine and that I’d never paid an ounce of attention to any other woman.

The words clearly had an effect on her, too, because her defensive posture had dropped. All of a sudden, she looked so fucking vulnerable, and when she spoke, her voice was soft and cracking.

“You know, that’s the first time you’ve ever admitted that out loud.”

“Alyssa, I—” I started to say, but that awful, careless mask slipped back into place before I could get any more words out.

“You do whatever you want with Melanie Simons,” she said with a shrug. “We don’t owe each other anything.”

God, but I hated that mask. I hated the way she leaned against the back of the couch like we were talking about the weather, I hated the flatness of her voice, I hated the utter blankness of her expression and the shutters that had gone down behind her eyes.

“Clearly,” I snarled, and I knew I was going to regret what came out of my mouth next, but I was too angry and too set on cracking that awful fucking mask. “You’re the one who let some worthless dog knock you up, after all.”

The words hung in the air between us, poisoning every breath we took in the silence that followed. I wanted to grab them, to stuff them back into the dark, twisted, jealous pit of my mind where they belonged, but there was no unsaying them now. The worst part was it didn’t even work. Alyssa only smiled a tense, fake smile and said,

“You’ve got me there. I really did.”