Page 2 of Ruthless Alpha Beast

A task! A way to be useful! I’ve got this.

Danielle and Monroe are twin witches, close friends of Lacey, and now my friends, too. Danielle is married to Ellis, the Alpha of one of the neighboring packs. They’re such good people.

“Do you have their numbers?” Sawyer asks.

“Yes,” I say. “I definitely have Danielle’s and Monroe’s on our group chat, but I think she might have changed hers recently. I’ll text her. Where are you all heading back from anyway?”

Sawyer’s now my friend, a lot of the shifters in this pack are now my friends, but as a true loner without any biological family left, I’ll never not be awkward.

Conversation just isn’t something that comes easily to me, although I wish it were. Maybe if I had been born supernatural, it would.

“Just a hunt,” he says, then his expression changes. “And a general check-up.”

I nod. “Is everything okay?”

Lacey explained a little about the situation in the forest, how an old witch’s curse keeps threatening to destroy the land. She doesn’t like to talk about it too much, though, and I understand it’s something the Alphas have control over.

I think.

“Yes, don’t worry, Tara,” he says. “Just standard surveillance.”

“Tara, I still have your book,” Peter, a young shifter around the age of twenty, says. “I know I keep forgetting, but I’m going to leave it by your cabin tonight, I promise.”

I think the book I lent Peter was some sort of fantasy, detective thriller—I don’t remember, I’ve lent out so many books at this point. Even though they have a library in the pack, they don’t have what I have.

My book supply is unparalleled, even among overachieving shifters.

“Keep it!” I say. “I’ve read that one too many times anyway.”

“Really?” he says, enthusiastically, and then cools his reaction as he glances around at his packmates. “I mean, thank you. That’s super cool.”

“It’s no problem.”

We exchange a few more words before the group heads back toward the pack.

“Remember, Tara,” Sawyer calls. “Stay on the path!”

“Oh, I will!”

I really will. I hover my hand back over my phone as a precaution.

But as I continue to walk through the shrubbery-lined path, gazing out at the majestic mountains, taking in the melodic sounds of the birds, I forget to be anxious.

A deep wave of euphoria floods through me.

Years ago, if you’d have told me I’d be living in a world surrounded by shifters, magic, and witches, I wouldn’t have believed you. Part of me always knew that there was stuff like this out there, but I never thought I’d be someone to have access to it, let alone live among it.

I’m not special.

As much as I’ve always dreamed of being like one of the heroines in my books, caught up in a whirlwind romance, saving the world, casting spells—that kind of life just wasn’t made for someone like me.

And that’s okay. It truly is. If this is the closest I’ll ever get to my fantasies, I’m completely cool with that. All I am is grateful to be accepted into such a wonderful new home.

I continue to walk in silence, savoring the warmth of the sun on the back of my neck and the gentle breeze that lightly tickles the soft fabric of my T-shirt.

That reminds me,suncream.

I fish my way through my satchel to find the little bottle I know I’ve bought with me. It’s definitely here somewhere. I’d never go for a walk without my water or my suncream.