Page 7 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

“I’m sorry?”

I wasn’t naive enough to miss the change in his voice.

That change meant danger. It meant that I’d said something wrong and that I was about to be punished for it.

I racked my brain for knowledge of Ensign—were they a witch-loving island?

Were they part of the Great Alliance? I didn’t know. It had never mattered before.

“The Lapine witch,” I rushed to explain.

She’d turned up on the island one day—I must have been thirteen—and she moved into our cottage that Papa had built on the edge of town.

She was pregnant, and at first, I was so happy to know that there’d be other children growing up there, that it wouldn’t just rot away and be forgotten, but she wasn’t what she seemed.

“We let her live on our island for almost three years, and then she tried to kill someone.”

I remembered that night like it was yesterday.

My uncle and aunt had glared at me as if this was my fault.

I had trembled with fear, hating that there was a link between that witch and me, no matter how coincidental.

I’d managed to keep my head down, to go mostly ignored, but I was so certain that someone would remember what they used to say about Mama’s family, about us.

They wouldn’t want to hear that I wasn’t like her, that I wasn’t like any of them.

Xander didn’t know that part, I reminded myself. He didn’t know about the secret I’d buried so deep inside myself that I could barely hear the echoes of it.

“That’s not how I heard it,” he said. His voice was still even, but I could hear the simmering anger beneath it. I wished he would just get it over with, wished he would rage and shout and break something like my uncle. I knew how to deal with that.

“And who did you hear it from?” I asked, my voice trembling only slightly. Uncle Stanley had never liked it when I talked back to him. Xander seemed unbothered by it, only fixing me with his abyss of a stare.

“Alyssa,” he said, casually.

Everyone on Arbor had pretended to forget that name.

She was only “the witch” or “that witch whore” if you were one of the hunters and you’d been at the moonshine.

I was sure her version of events was much different than the one I’d experienced, and from the stormy look on his face, I knew Xander believed her.

“Witches lie,” I said. “They’re unnatural.”

I knew it would be useless.

“Did you ever speak to her?” Xander shot back immediately.

His chair legs shrieked against the stone of the kitchen floor, and I flinched as he stood.

To my surprise, he only stalked over to the window, holding the edge of the sink in a white-knuckled grip.

He wasn’t looking at me when he continued, “Do you know her at all beyond what your Alpha told you and what your backward island taught you that you should believe about witches?”

“No, but—” I tried to say, but he cut me off.

“Your Pack told you she just attacked some guy out of the blue? They told you they were fighting some noble battle to make sure that threat was taken out? It’s bullshit. I was there.”

“What?”

“I was on Lapine when Arbor attacked. I was waiting for your coward of an Alpha to make his move on a young mother and her pair of fucking toddlers, ” he spat.

“Slade didn’t want to neutralize any threat.

She was no threat to him or you or any other member of your Pack.

He was only ever pissed that he’d let a witch live under his nose for three years without sniffing her out. ”

He said the name of our late Alpha like he was dirt, like he was worthless.

Arbor wasn’t perfect, I knew that better than anyone, but we weren’t the cold-blooded murderers he made us out to be.

Alpha Slade had been trying to protect us; we all knew that.

Power corrupted witches—they went insane with it, and they’d hurt anyone who got in their way.

The only good witch was a dead witch: I’d heard that phrase more times than I could count.

But she did have little children. That much was true. They were only a few years younger than I was when I discovered my own powers. Mama had known that Alpha Slade wouldn’t spare me when I was six, and I doubted he would have any more sympathy for those two little toddlers.

“It’s not true—” I tried to argue, to convince myself as much as him, but he cut me off again, utterly uninterested in anything I had to say.

“It is true,” he insisted. “Alys might have taken out a couple of those hunters, but not all of them. Probably not as many as I did.”

My blood ran cold. Not only was this man the Alpha of the most feared Pack on the archipelago, but he’d personally sunk his teeth into the males of my Pack, into the hunters who’d been trying to keep us safe.

“Not, not as many—” I echoed, my voice barely more than a breath. Either he didn’t hear me, or he didn’t care, because he continued:

“You don’t know shit about witches, Rosie. Did you ever even meet Alyssa?”

His eyes flashed with victory, but I had a card he hadn’t expected.

“No, but I met another one,” I told him. “She looked scary with that white eye, but I thought—I thought she was nice, I even pitied her. Then she took out a dozen of our hunters. She ripped their guts out and left them to rot. Is she your friend, too?”

This time, Xander shook his head, and for a moment, I was relieved. Then he said,

“She’s like a sister to me.”

That couldn’t be true. Ensign shifters might be more brutal, more bloodthirsty, but even they couldn’t look at what that witch had done to our hunters and still call her family.

I had seen the bodies when they were brought home, seen the hollowness of their stomachs where organs had once resided, and the unnaturally clean cuts that bisected their torsos.

It had been a stark reminder of why we feared magic the way we did.

Even in my most helpless moments, I had never wished for power like that. I knew, just as my mother had, that such a thing would eat me alive the same way it had eaten the Lapine witches. Unlike them, I had refused to let it.

“She murdered —” I began, but Xander snarled back at me.

“Shut up.” His voice was low, rumbling, and dangerous as he loomed over me, and it was clear whatever hold he had over his temper was fraying fast. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he continued.

“You don’t know that those hunters were trying to kill Julia for the crime of escaping their little trafficking operation.

You don’t know that she was pregnant when they attacked her.

Look at me right now and tell me that if you had the kind of power she has, you wouldn’t use it to save yourself and your unborn child? ”

I didn’t want to hear it. I knew that what our island was doing to females was wrong, I knew that, but we hadn’t had any other option.

We were starving and desperate, and no matter how defiant Julia had been when she faced off against Alpha Axton, she’d been gentle with me as I washed her up, getting her ready for sale.

Would a woman like that really kill for no reason?

I shook my head, trying to shake the thoughts away. I couldn’t think like that. I couldn’t allow myself to soften.

I remembered the night that my uncle had come home reeking of whiskey, frustrated by the fights he’d failed to start with his drinking buddies.

I remembered the dull, hot pain of his knuckles making contact with my cheekbone, the sharp crack of my rib breaking, the brief panic as his hand constricted around my throat, and I saw stars before my aunt pulled him off me, not out of concern for me, but because killing me would have consequences.

For those brief seconds, I had thought of my mother.

I had thought of the panic in her eyes, of the frenzied insistence in her voice when she’d begged me to never do that again, okay baby?

You have to promise me. I had wondered if she’d be proud of me for keeping that promise when I joined her in death.

My voice was steady and certain when I met the gaze of the man who owned me.

“Never,” I said. “I would never use it.”

I braced myself for a blow, but it never came.

“Then you’re stupid as well as hateful,” he snapped. “I’m late for training. Don’t leave this house.”

“Yes, Alpha,” I said, bowing my head. At least it was over. Relief flooded through me as he stalked toward the door, but he paused at the threshold, one huge hand gripping the frame.

“And keep your goddamn opinions about witches to yourself in the future, you got that?” he said, without turning back to face me. “Or you can go sleep in the dormitories with the other females.”

He didn’t need to tell me that—I’d be keeping quiet from now on.

“Yes, Alpha,” I repeated. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, his every muscle tense, and then he was gone. I heard the front door slam, and I was alone.

For a few moments, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

The argument had been intense, but there was no broken glass to sweep up, no shelves or tables to set back in order.

The room looked as if nothing had happened at all, as if Xander had simply finished his breakfast and wandered off to training with a smile.

That might have been exactly what happened if only I hadn’t said anything about the witch.

Stupid, it was so stupid. I should have known he was part of the Alliance; I should have remembered that Ensign was a witch-loving island.

I should have known, and I should have kept my mouth shut.

I gathered up the few dishes with trembling hands, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Without anything being broken, without the sharp sting of a palm against my cheek, how did I know it was over?

The air was still crackling with leftover tension, and I kept expecting to hear the door burst open, to feel a hand on the back of my neck, but it never came.

It was only the repetitive motion of scrubbing the dishes that soothed me, and by the time I finished, every pot and every dish was cleaner than when I took them out of the cupboard.

The morning had been so quiet, then. So peaceful.

For a moment, it had even seemed like Xander cared about me, like a life with him might not be as awful as I’d feared.

Maybe it was for the best that I’d spoken up. When he was kind, it was far too easy to forget that he’d bought me like property, that he was no better than any of the humans who had attended Axton’s auctions, no better than my uncle, who had seen me as an asset rather than a person.

If he was no better than any of them, then he could be placated the same way.

My uncle wasn’t a complicated man. A clean house and a good dinner could make him forget all the reasons he’d been screaming at us over breakfast. Xander’s kitchen might not be full of baking supplies, but he had enough in his pantry for some sugar cookies.

If I was proud of anything, it was the power my sugar cookies had to bring even the most ornery male back under control.

There was another option, of course. One that wasn’t food or housekeeping or speaking sweetly and softly.

That wasn’t an option I was ready to think about, no matter how effective it might be, no matter how much the thought of it made me throb between my thighs; despite what he’d said the previous evening, I’d noticed the way he looked at me.

And what would he buy me for if he didn’t want that?

I pushed the thought away. For now, I could make do with the skills I had.

A thoughtfully packed lunch and a little package of sugar cookies would seem like an apology without my having to give one.

I would bring it to him in the training building.

I would look demure, pliant, and sorry. I would manage him the same way I’d been managing my uncle for the last ten years.

Perhaps it was all an illusion, but I felt my composure return as I set out my ingredients and my utensils. It would all be fine, I told myself as I poured flour and sugar into the mixing bowl. I was in control. I knew how to survive.