Page 25 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

Life on Ferris was everything I hoped it would be.

The people were warm and welcoming, if a little too curious about where I’d come from and why I was there, but Julia fended off any over-eager questions with ease as she showed me around the town.

We visited the laundry and the commissary, and the little school, looking for any gaps that I could fill.

In the end, I’d asked to help in the large central kitchen, where they prepared meals for the Elders without families to support them.

Ethan might have insisted that I didn’t have to pick up a job right away—I was sure Xander had told him at least a little about my upbringing—but I didn’t know what I would do with myself otherwise.

Julia had offered to help me hone my magic, but she was busy herself for most of the day, and Ethan already seemed uncomfortable with the amount of work she was doing in her third trimester.

It was hard to be around them most of the time.

They were easy with each other in a way that made me ache with longing for my own mate.

None of Ferris’s loveliness stopped me from missing Xander.

He’d promised to return, but he hadn’t said when.

In a week? A month? It was torture not knowing when I would next feel his strong arms around me or smell his woodsmoke and pepper scent.

A little of it had lingered in my cottage for the first few days I had stayed on Ferris, but soon it had faded into memory.

It was better this way, I reminded myself.

If I had stayed on Ensign, we would not have had the happy mating that Julia and Ethan shared.

There would be no passing each other in town and exchanging a sweet kiss, no joking among friends, no happy toddler running ahead of us wherever we went.

If I had stayed on Ensign, there would have only been tension and claustrophobia, and relentless fear.

On Ferris, I had space to breathe. Every afternoon, once the meals were prepared and plated and ready to be taken over to the Elders, I walked out of town and into the forest. In the fall, everything was cast in warm gold, red, and orange, with crunchy leaves blanketing the ground beneath my feet.

Next time Xander visited—soon, it would have to be soon—I would take him out here and show him all the little rabbit warrens and birds’ nests I’d found.

Two weeks after I’d arrived on Ferris, the day was particularly beautiful, and I’d practically raced out of the kitchen when I was dismissed, waving an absent goodbye to the other women.

The ground was hard beneath my feet as I took my first steps into the trees—the frost would be starting soon, gilding the trees with silver—and the air was cold and sharp in my lungs.

The smell of the forest soothed me: rich soil and leaves and—something sour.

Something familiar and stomach-churning.

Stale sawdust, alcohol, and old tobacco.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

I whirled around. He couldn’t be here—there was no reason for him to be here—yet my uncle sat on a tree stump with his legs spread as if he owned the forest, as if it was perfectly reasonable for him to show up in my new life.

My body seized with fear, but I refused to be cowed by his presence. If I could survive months on Ensign, I could deal with Stanley. Now that I’d spent some time among real fighters, I could see him for what he was: a small man with no power.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I told him coolly.

Stanley smiled back at me, showing all his browning teeth.

“We might not be allowed to trade on Ferris anymore, but there are no rules against walking over their land,” he said. “I’m just on a little trip to Tritica.”

I’d never made the journey myself, but from the maps of the archipelago I’d seen, crossing Ferris was not the most efficient path from Arbor to Tritica.

“Go on, then,” I said, but he made no move to leave, only leaned back against a tree, looking me up and down.

“Well, now I’m curious,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I sold you to the Alpha of Ensign, not Ferris. He gets bored with you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“C’mon, Rosie. Don’t hold out on me. Phil saw the pair of you crossing over Argent a couple of days ago. Said the Alpha crossed back alone.”

My blood ran cold.

“What does it matter to you?” I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the path I had come down. If I were fast, I might be able to make it back to town first. He might be taller than me, and a male, but I’d heard him wheezing up the stairs every night for ten years.

“Your cousin’s mated,” he said. It wasn’t what I’d expected, but I didn’t let it take me off guard. I took a step back.

“Good for her.”

“Whatever,” Stanley shrugged. “It’s just your aunt and me now, and she can’t cook for shit.

” It had been a common complaint in the house until I was old enough to start doing the cooking.

I never figured out if my aunt was grateful for the peace a good meal brought or resentful that I escaped the vitriol she’d endured.

I took another step back as he continued,

“So I was thinking that if your Alpha doesn’t want you anymore, well…”

My stomach turned over, my heart pounding against my ribs.

“I think you should leave. I’m expected back in town,” I told him, praying that if I acted like I was important to people here, he might think twice about whatever he was about to do.

It didn’t work. Stanley’s face screwed up in disgust.

“Oh, she got uppity in the Alpha’s house,” he spat. “You too good for us now?”

“I was always too good for you,” I blurted before I could stop myself. For a second, it felt incredible—it felt true —until I realized what a mistake I’d made.

“Ungrateful bitch,” he snarled, lurching forward as I turned to run.

I called my wolf, but before I could shift, his hand was in my hair, and I was being dragged backward.

I filled my lungs, trying to scream, but then he tugged me hard, and there was a flash of pain at my temple, and everything went black.

When I regained consciousness, the world was hazy.

I recognized my surroundings, but it didn’t make sense for me to be there.

I knew the scent of the thin pillow beneath my head and the color of the ratty blanket that covered me, but it was all wrong .

I was supposed to be on Ensign—no, I was supposed to be on Ferris —but this was the cabin I knew from my adolescence.

I’d left Arbor, hadn’t I? Or was that all a dream? Had I never been sold off by my uncle at all, never met Xander, or fallen in love with him? Did he even exist at all?

I winced as I sat up, my head throbbing. When I raised my hand to touch the tender spot on the side of my head, I felt blood crusted into my hair, and it all came rushing back to me. The woods. My uncle. My heart sank.

I bolted upright, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, but as I tried to rise, the world blurred and spun, and my legs went out from beneath me. I crumpled to the ground, flinging my hands out just in time to stop myself getting a fresh head wound on the corner of the dresser.

I stayed down for a few minutes, breathing carefully and evenly while the room stopped spinning. This time, I pulled myself up slowly, giving my body time to adjust to the change. I was a little woozy, but I stayed standing, and then I reached for the door.

I pulled the handle. Nothing.

I tried again.

Again.

Again.

It was locked. I was trapped. Panicked and desperate, I tugged at the handle with all my might, but it was stuck fast. I tugged at it again, the panic growing, but my second attempt was just as fruitless as my first. With an anguished scream, I threw my weight against the door, but Arbor wood was strong, and I found myself back on the floor, my vision blurring and spinning.

“Good morning to you, too,” said a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

It was as if a decade of pent-up hatred hit me all at once, and I could only scream again, smacking the door with my palms.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” said my uncle, as if I were a toddler having a tantrum. “You can stay in there until you’ve remembered your place.”

I could hear him laughing all the way down the hall, and I banged my fists against the door once more for good measure, with furious tears springing to my eyes. I had left my mate for the sake of freedom, and all it had led to was a worse imprisonment.

There was no point in trying to get up or move over to the bed again. I didn’t want to be comfortable. I would never let my uncle use me again, and if that meant I starved to death in this room, so be it.

I sat for what must have been hours, my head pressed against the door, my stomach growling, my mouth dry, only vaguely registering the change in the light that indicated the passing of the day.

I tried again and again to reach for my magic, but each time I tried, the dizziness would return, and the pain in my head.

I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t connect with my own body to find where my power resided.

Perhaps I was simply powerless without the sword to help me, but I wasn’t going to give up. I was going to get out.

Sunlight was starting to fade by the time I felt it, that tight little ball inside me, trembling with power.

Carefully, so carefully, I drew it up, up, up until I could feel the buzzing of it in my fingers.

But now what did I do? I could hardly blast the door off its hinges—I didn’t think it was that kind of power—but if the golden thread I’d conjured as a child had been solid enough to cage the butterfly, it might be strong enough to pick a lock.

I couldn’t help the soft gasp that escaped me as that golden thread of light burst from my fingers, responding to my every thought as if it was part of me—because it was, it had always been part of me.

The door was held closed with nothing but a deadbolt, so it was easy for the light to wrap around the handle of the bolt and draw it back.

I was free. Wrenching open the door, I dashed down the stairs as quickly as my still-aching body would allow, my heart thundering in my chest. It was only when I reached the bottom of the stairs that I realized I wasn’t alone in the house after all.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

My aunt Moira was sitting in her rocking chair, knitting in her lap. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t catch me if I went straight for the door, so I did. It was locked.

“There are dishes in the sink that need washing,” she said evenly.

“Not my problem,” I retorted. I didn’t dare risk the same trick I’d pulled off on the door upstairs, but there had to be a spare key somewhere.

“You might have forgotten your place while you were whoring yourself on Ensign,” snapped my aunt, “but here you do not talk back to me.”

My aunt had a fresh bruise on her cheekbone and a look of disdain in her eyes. I knew she was cruel to me because my uncle was cruel to her, but that didn’t make it any better. I’d taken her cruelty for the last ten years, and I wasn’t going to take it any longer.

“Where’s Stanley?” I asked, opening various drawers to rifle through their contents.

“Where do you think?” she shot back.

“Right.” He’d be out at one of his awful friends’ cabins, drinking liquor brewed in someone’s bathtub. When he came home, he’d be stinking drunk, and it was up to fate whether that put him in a good mood or a bad one.

“He’ll be back any minute now,” Moira added casually. “He wants steak and potatoes for dinner.”

She gave me a significant look, and I stared back at her, utterly disbelieving.

“I’m leaving,” I told her, in case it wasn’t clear enough.

“Sure, me too,” she scoffed, her attention back on her knitting. “Everything’s in the cold box. Get to it.”

I remained standing stubbornly where I was. Moira might not be as aggressive as my uncle, but I could feel her irritation growing with every stitch and pearl.

“I said get to it,” she repeated, trying and failing to sound unbothered by my new rebelliousness.

“No,” I said. The me who existed just a few months ago could never have fathomed saying no to anyone in this house, but now it tripped easily across my tongue. Moira’s needles stopped, her knuckles white where she gripped them.

“You’ll be the one who gets the beating when he comes home,” she warned, but we both knew that was only half true. Stanley’s bad moods meant that everyone suffered, regardless of who initially set him off.

“I’m sorry, Moira,” I said softly. Her eyes narrowed.

“What?”

“I’m sorry your life is awful. I’m sorry your mate is drunk and mean, and violent.

I’m sorry you don’t feel like you can leave.

I wish there was something I could do for you, but I’m going now.

” I wasn’t generous enough to offer to take her with me.

She might have been Stanley’s victim, but she was my tormentor, too.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Moira insisted, but she no longer looked certain of it.

“You don’t own me. I’m an adult now.”

“You’re a stupid child.”

There was no point in arguing with her, no point in telling her I was mated, that I was leaving for her benefit, because if Xander found out I’d been abducted, he’d tear Arbor apart to find me. Moira would only tell me I was lying, that I’d never be worth that much to anyone.

“Fine,” I said, “but I’m still leaving.”

My head was throbbing, but that was a problem for later. For now, all that mattered was getting out of here. Moira wouldn’t stop me—at least I didn’t think she would—and if I could shift and get a head start on Stanley, I’d be back on Ferris by morning.

I made a decision. If I were leaving Arbor anyway, leaving for good, they could know exactly who I was.

I was done being afraid. I closed my eyes, like Eve had taught me, looking inside myself again.

It got easier each time to find the pool of power, to tease it out until I could feel that energy buzzing in my hand.

I heard but barely registered my aunt’s gasp as that thin string of light danced from my fingers and into the keyhole, shifting and shimmering until we heard the soft click of the lock’s release.

After that, it was chaos. Moira was already screaming as I wrenched open the door and bolted out into the street.

If I hadn’t run right into my uncle, my escape might have been simple, but nothing had ever been simple for me.

I shifted just in time to avoid his grasp, but even as my wolf sprinted down the road, toward a bridge—any bridge—I could feel him hot on my tail.