Page 18 of Brutal Alpha Bully

Quickly, Dallas steps back and shifts, his tail down and his head lowered, though I can sense how his wolf wants to challenge me. He moves to the side, and Farris hefts Tanner up, sliding him over Dallas’s broad shoulders. With one backward glance at me, Farris must only barely keep himself from saying something likeThis isn’t overbefore he, too, shifts, and they disappear into the woods in the direction of town.

Likely to report back to Declan.

There are a lot of questions to answer about this—how did they know Seraphina was going to leave? Were they waiting for her? What was their plan once they had her, and Nora?

But there’s no time to answer them.

Eyes on Seraphina’s body on the ground, I shift back just as Nora kneels down, putting her fingers to her mother’s neck in a move that would make me laugh if I wasn’t so concerned. She doesn’t act like any other kid I’ve met.

As a firefighter, I came across all sorts of kids. Boys and girls her age, sticking things in electrical sockets, falling off the top bunk, starting dumpster fires behind their apartments. Children who seemed to have the single goal of stressing out their parents—and emergency services—as much as possible.

And here she is, doing something as grown-up as checking for her own mother’s pulse.

“She’s alive,” Nora says, and when she looks at me, our eyes meeting perhaps for the first time, I see myself reflected in them.

It hits me with such a shock, such a shove to the chest, that I am genuinely breathless for a moment. My lungs feel flat, useless.

Those blue eyes aremyblue eyes. My father’s blue eyes. The blue eyes that I looked into just a moment ago, when my brothers tucked tails and ran away from me.

As a reflex, I suck in a breath of air and try to catch her scent. And when I do, it smells unfamiliar. Nothing like me. Nothing like anyone in my family, and only very faintly of Seraphina.

Why does that feel so crushing? I’d known from the moment I smelled the girl that she couldn’t belong to me. A scent like mine would be strong in my offspring. That’s how our family has always been.

“It’s because she used too much of her magic,” Nora says cautiously, breaking me out of my thoughts. From the tone of her voice, she’s not sure what my reaction might be to that. Surely she knows that magic isn’t allowed here. That I would never condone her mother using it, especially to the extent she clearly has been.

“We need to cool her off, get her something to eat. Alotto eat.”

“This has happened before?”

Nora stares at me, and it feels as though I can practically see her considering what to say. Whether or not she should admit to her mother’s extreme use of magic in a place where it’s prohibited.

Finally, instead of answering the question, she says, looking down at her mother, “If you won’t help me, I can carry her myself.”

I’m not quite sure that’s true, not with how small Nora is. But based on the sheer determination on her face, she might kill herself trying. I nod, pushing aside my curiosity and the still lingering shock from the color of her eyes, staring right back at me.

“I’ll help you,” I offer.

She nods, and I shift back to my wolf, bowing down so Nora can heft her mother up onto my back, much in the same way Farris did with Tanner. Seraphina is strong, and Nora moves with a surprising strength—even for an alpha child. And a moment later, we are making our way back down the side of the mountain toward my family home.

Questions itch in the back of my throat, trapped by this form I’m in. I want to ask Nora everything—what it’s been like for her growing up. If her mother has used magic like this around her before.

If she knows who her father is.

But I ask nothing. Instead, I walk with her at my side, her hand on her mother but also slightly on me, as the birds start to sing and the night insects buzz around us.

***

Seraphina wakes up intermittently through the next ten hours, only to eat soup from the spoon Nora offers and fall right back into her coma-like sleep.

At first, Nora seems suspicious of the fact that I want to sit with her and her mother. Then, as the hours pass, she seems to relax around me.

Finally, when the sun is high in the sky and my body is starting to grow heavy from lack of sleep the night before, Nora clears her throat, opens her mouth, and begins to talk to me.

“Why did those wolves run away from you?” she asks, turning to look at me. “You weren’t bigger than the large one. At least, not when he shifted.”

I bite my tongue, glance at Seraphina, then shift in my chair. “Size isn’t everything.”

“So you’re a better fighter.”

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