Page 11 of Brutal Alpha Bully

The interesting thing about Xeran is that he has always smelled a little smoky, a little charred, just like this place. But more like the sweet, puckered exterior of a marshmallow thrust directly into a campfire. Something delicious and dark, all at once.

“Get in the truck,” Xeran orders, not looking at me as he opens the door to the vehicle and swings his arm around, gesturing for me to get inside.

It only takes a second for me to do what he says—my body, after all, is already responding to his orders. Something in the DNA of my cells that wants to obey.

And besides, if my options are Xeran or Declan, there’s only one real choice.

I climb into the truck carefully, using my bound wrists to anchor on the leather and hoist myself inside. His truck smells like leather, cedar, and clean clothes. I’m breathing hard when I scoot over the bench, flip my hair out of my face, and look up just in time to hear Xeran speak.

“I’m only here to deal with the house,” he says, that low tenor mirrored among his brothers’ voices, but none of theirs quite so low as his. “Not interested in a challenge, Declan. But ride up on me like that again? I’ll rip you to pieces.”

A shiver rolls over my skin at the weight of those words and the expressions crossing over their faces. Declan, despite clearly attempting to hide it, looks like he might be sick.

Then, as though he’s just said hi to a friend in a grocery store, Xeran turns and hoists himself into the truck, which rocks with the addition of his weight. Without looking at me, he puts the truck into drive and says, “Put on your seat belt.”

I do what he says—not because I have to, but because I always stress the importance of seat belts to Nora, and I’d be a hypocrite not to wear one now.

Xeran pulls out of the gas station without giving his brothers or uncle a chance to leave first, so they’re caught in the dust of his tires as they stand, staring after us. I swallow, glancing at him. I catch the strong profile of his jaw and throat, then look back out the windshield.

A moment later, I find that I’m able to speak. “You can drop me off just up here.”

For the first time since I was yanked out of that SUV, Xeran looks at me, eyebrows raised like he’s amused by what I’ve said.

“No.”

A beat passes, and my indignation takes over my surprise and natural instinct to be quiet around him. “No?”

He glances at me again, flips on his turn signal, and says, “No.”

“Well, I’m not coming with you!”

“Yes, you are.”

“Are—are youkidnappingme?”

I’d always known Xeran was an asshole, but I thought he was different than the others here. Declan and his gang have been backsliding into old pack ideologies—treating the omegas as property, shirking tradition.

Maybe Xeran isn’t different. Maybe he’s just been gone for long enough that I managed to forget what he’s really like.

“No,” he says low and rough, like he can’t be bothered to clear his throat. Or maybe it wouldn’t matter if he did. Maybeit’s permanently like that from all the time he spent around fires when he was a kid. “You have somewhere else to go, Seraphina?”

The sound of my name on his lips makes a full-body shudder roll through me, and it takes a second for me to compose myself again. I hate this stupid body, the pull it feels to him, the automatic way I yearn to do everything he says.

“I alreadytoldyou,” I growl, hands tightening to fists. “You can drop me—”

“I’m not letting you out of this goddamn truck, and that’sfinal.”

His words are biting, and he stares resolutely through the windshield. I shake with frustration and, annoyingly, something else. I want to reach out and push him, hit him, take his jaw into my hands like I did once. Cradle him there, run my hands through his hair, feel the soft pressure of his body against mine.

My mind flashes back to what Xeran’s uncle and brothers were saying in the SUV. That they could offer me up as a plaything for Xeran. That it might subdue him enough to keep him from trying to mess with them.

It was fate that my brother snatched me when he did. Declan is still pissed about the way I spoke to him in front of that council, and he jumped at the chance to make me pay for it.

But Declan clearly doesn’t know his nephew that well.

If his assumption was that Xeran wouldhave his way with me, then he’s wrong. First, Xeran isn’t some Neanderthal alpha from the Appalachians who believes a woman is his property.

And second, even if he was, he’d have no interest in touching me, even just for some fun.

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