Page 26 of Brutal Alpha Bully

And that day, when I was still reeling from another interaction with him, a voice rang out from the end of the hallway, sharp and sure, laughing.

“I saw that,” she said, sauntering down the hallway, a lollipop dangling from the corner of her mouth as she looked me up and down. Her short, choppy hair was dyed several shades of blue, starting with the darkest shade at her roots, then fading out toward the tips. She wore shorts that were far too short for school. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t been dress-coded yet, forced to put on a pair of baggy sweatpants over the top of them.

My blood turned to ice at what she said. I saw that.

She saw me and Xeran. What did that mean? What would she do about it?

I answered, like some sort of mob boss, “No, you didn’t see anything.”

“Relax,” she laughed, coming closer to me and popping the sucker from her mouth. “I’m not going to tell on you, Phina.”

Then she reached up and twirled a lock of my hair around her finger, almost absent-mindedly. Like it was her own hair and not mine that she slid between her thumb and pointer finger.

It was the most surreal moment of my life—a total stranger touching me, and yet, I couldn’t pull away. She smelled like strawberries and something bubbly, acidic. Champagne?

“You can’t tell on me because I didn’t do anything wrong,” I protested a little breathlessly, eyes skipping back and forth between hers. She was the first person I ever met with blue eyes so pale that they were practically gray, basically silver.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure doing magic is against the rules.”

Her voice was so soft, it was like she was humming instead of talking. She had seen that. Xeran—who hated magic like his father and grandfather—hadn’t even noticed my little trick. But this girl did.

“Do we have a class together?” I asked, ducking out from under her arm and trying to get my beating heart under control. “Or did we?”

“Sure,” she said, brow wrinkling as she shook her head, a little laugh rising up out of her. “Are you kidding, Phina? Wait—what, you forgot my name or something?”

Her easygoing attitude made me feel like an idiot. If she went to the school—if she lived in Silverville—that meant that I’d known her basically all my life. Unless she’d moved in recently.

But she knew my name. And I didn’t know hers.

Before I could ask, she said, “I’m starting a little club. Wanna check it out?”

Then I was following her down the hallway, turning into a little back room—more closet than room, actually—and finding Aurela Cambias, of all people, sitting at the table. Lachlan’s twin sister.

She looked up, her eyes widening when she saw me. Likely, she was under the same instructions from her parents as Xeran. Stay the hell away from the Winwards.

But instead of scoffing or telling me to get out, her eyes went to the girl with the blue hair next to me, already pulling out two more chairs at the table.

“You were telling the truth,” Aurela said, looking dumbfounded.

The girl nodded and laughed, throwing her arm around my neck merrily. “Yes,” she said. “I always tell the truth, so you can trust me. This club is going to be lit.”

For the rest of the night, I dream about that first club meeting, the three of us cautiously casting little spells together, the spark of the moment too infectious to not let it touch us. It was the first time in my life that practicing magic felt like flexing a muscle, rather than shoving my foot into a too-small shoe.

And the next morning, when I wake up and open the door to our bedroom, I nearly trip over a little pile of stuff in the hallway.

Xeran is gone—I can feel it in the cool breeze of the hallway, in the way that his scent only lingers instead of pulsing. He’s either training with the guys or off fighting another fire.

“Woah,” Nora says, appearing next to me, leaning down and picking up the books without another thought. I see the firstone in her hand—something weighty, a paranormal science book about daemonic fire.

It’s what the two of them were talking about last night. I’d heard her asking him questions about fighting fires before I cut them off. They had a discussion about it, and Xeran went out of his way to bring Nora books on the subject. When I turn and look at her, I see the admiration growing in her eyes.

“This is sick,” she says, turning one of the books over in her hand. Then her gaze skitters up to me for the first time, as though remembering I exist. “Can I read these, Mom?”

I have never told her she couldn’t read a book before. Now, I stand in the doorway, desperately wanting to tell her to drop it like a dog holding rotten meat in its maw.

But the book itself isn’t bad. It’s what it symbolizes, what it shows about Xeran. His thoughtfulness. It’s the exact kind of thing he used to do back in high school, leaving a single flower on my windowsill in the middle of the night. Little acts I could never prove came from him, but I knew were from him all the same.

But what good are the little acts without being there? Without staying? What good is any of this with the weight of our history between us?

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