Page 2 of Brutal Alpha Bully

Kalen:He said the house is going to be up for grabs if you don’t communicate with him about the will

Kalen:End of the month, X

My thumbs hover over the screen, the phone above my face, blazing into my retinas. I should just block Kalen. If I want to leave Colorado—and Silverville—in the past, I need to cut off the rest of my ties back there.

But Kalen has always been different. Softer. And I’ve protected him—from bullies, from our brothers, from our uncle.Now, I find myself wondering how he’s surviving on his own out there. How he’s still asking and prodding me to come back to town, despite me making it clear that I never will.

When I’d decided to leave, I begged him to come with me. He said he had to stay. That he would wait for me to change my mind and come home.

I’m just about to shove my phone back into my pocket when another text comes through.

Kalen:Looks like the house is going to Declan if you don’t show

Something rises up inside me—the urge to protect. To come back and take care of everything, eliminate problems one at a time. To take the house, take back my father’s legacy. To return to Silverville and try to pull the town out of the hell that it’s descended into.

But I can’t go back. I don’t want to see my brothers and uncle. Don’t want to face the grief over my dead parents.

And more than that, I know that the second I pass by that welcome sign, I’ll be haunted by the mistakes I made as an idiot teenager. The person I hurt most. The town I’ve been trying my hardest to leave behind.

Chapter 2 - Seraphina

The moment I wake up, I recognize the sharp, metallic smell for what it is. Lightning-hot flames lick up the side of the door frame to my room, threatening to engulf the entrance.

For months, I’ve been having nightmares about this exact scenario. Since the new alpha supreme dismantled the warning system, I’ve tossed and turned with anxiety about the fact that the daemonic fire could start at any time, and none of us would have a warning until it was far too late.

Now, it takes a second for my mind to acknowledge that, yes, thisisreal and not just another bad dream. Despite the magical barriers I’ve put up around this property, and despite the numerous bouts of fire we’ve survived up to this point, it’s finally happening.

“Nora!”

Sitting up, I throw the covers off my body, my bare feet slapping against the floor as I race toward her bedroom. A moment before I burst through the door, it flies open to reveal my daughter standing there in an old t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, her blond hair dark with sweat and in her face.

I’m already breathing in the smoke. We both are—I can see it from the shaking way she coughs, the tears in her eyes, the ruddy red of her cheeks. The smoke is thick and black, inky as nighttime.

“Mom,” Nora gasps, “I think it’s daemon fire—”

I’m nodding, hand on her elbow, ushering her away from the door and toward the front of the house. Something in the back of my mind screams at me to turn around, to try to save the house. To do something other than run away.

For the past ten years, every fire has been a daemon fire. At first, they tried to figure it out, tried to put a stop to it. To determine what was causing them in the first place. Then, Declan took over and seemed content to let Silverville burn.

In the hallway, we hurry past every picture,e craft from Nora’s first years of school hanging on the walls. Family heirlooms and all my books. Everything is going to disappear like flash paper in a fire like this.

None of it is as precious to me as the girl stumbling behind me, her fist tight in my shirt. Around us, the supports of the building are already starting to groan, and adrenaline clogs my throat, sour and thick.

Nora coughs again, tripping over a fallen chair and pushing into me, nearly pitching both of us into a crowd of flames in the corner of the room. The daemonic fire burns randomly, moves quickly, eats at the floor, and leaves nothing but silky, fine ash in its wake.

Nora’s coughs fill the air, and I reach back for her, keeping a tight hold on her shirt and looking around desperately, trying to find the best way out of the house.

I have to get us out of here.

Something shudders, alarmingly similar to the sound of the dark laughter. It’s an echoing call you can hear sometimes, swishing through the trees in the endless mountain forests around Silverville. But this time, it’s the sound of the house disintegrating around us, coming down in quick pieces.

“Mom!” Nora screams, pulling me back just in time to keep me from walking under a falling beam. The fire roars around us, and it hits me—my daughter and I are going to die in this house.

I won’t let it happen.

Normally, I would try everything else first. But right now, I have no other choice, and it’s like my body reacts of its own volition, taking action before I can really think about what I’m doing.

Magic flows from the core of me to my fingertips like a dry, sparking sweat, my body producing it at the sign of danger. I summon my mental energy, taking advantage of its presence there, using it to change the world around me.

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