Page 1 of Ruthless Alpha
Prologue - Rosie
The sun was as round, bright, and yellow as a lemon. Mama had said not to look straight at it because it would hurt my eyes, but how could something so warm and lovely ever hurt me? Mama was warm and lovely, and she’d never hurt me; her body was as soft as a pillow, and she smelled like lavender, fresh bread, and home.
That afternoon, she was sitting on the back porch, watching me make crowns, necklaces, and bracelets from the daisies that dotted the grass. I was already wearing one chain proudly around my neck, and now all my concentration was on making a second one for Mama. By the end of the afternoon, I promised myself she would look like a human Queen from a book of fairytales, crowned with flowers. When Papa got home from the sawmill, he’d sweep her up in his arms and dance her around the kitchen; she would laugh, and I would laugh, and dinner would burn, but none of us would mind.
It would be quicker if I had a friend to help me, but I was used to playing alone. When I was little, other children had tried to play with me, but their mamas had whisked them away, whispering unfamiliar words and fixing me with hard, angry stares. I hadn’t understood then. I’d only been three. Now, though, at six, I knew things about the world. I knew that other shifters in our Pack thought my family was strange, that my Papa was crazy for accepting my Mama as his mate. There was something wrong with her blood, they said, when they thought I couldn’t hear. Her grandmother, or her great-grandmother, or her great-great-great-grandmother had been one ofthem.I didn’t know what one ofthemwas, but I knew that the other members of our Pack thought it was bad, and so they kept their distance from us.
Usually, I didn’t mind it much. It was nice to have our little cottage removed from the rest of the town. Papa had built it all himself after he and Mama mated, and it was perfect for us. Away from the bustle of town, our backyard stretched all the way out to the forest, and it was there my true friends lived. The birds, who woke me so politely in the morning with their songs, the hares with their twitchy noses, and the foxes brave enough to come close to the house. One day, I would play with those foxes in my wolf form. I hoped my coat would be as pretty and orange as theirs was when I came of shifting age.
Birds and hares and foxes didn’t have fingers, though, and so they couldn’t help me make daisy chains for Mama. A few grackles watched me from a nearby tree, and I’d made out a hare twitching his little nose in our blackberry bush, but their companionship was all they could offer that afternoon. I would have to work diligently if I wanted to have Mama’s jewelry ready by the time Papa came home.
It was difficult to concentrate, though, when the world around me was so beautiful. I wanted to keep my gaze down, fixed on the daisies and their delicate stems, but the island was so pretty in the afternoon sun. Papa always said that Arbor was the most beautiful island on the archipelago, and I didn’t need to see the other Nightfire islands to know that it was true. Nothing compares to the lush green of our grass or the rainbow of colors in our wildflowers. In the late afternoon sunshine, everything was washed with a warm yellow light, and I couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else in the whole world.
Just as I made a fresh effort to attend to my work, a fluttering movement caught my eye—a butterfly, its wings iridescent blue and purple, had come to land on Mama’s rosebush. It perched there for a moment, slowly opening and closing those magic-colored wings, before it took off again,meandering through the air like a scrap of paper. I held out my palm, hoping that it might smell the pollen on my hands and land there, letting me look a little longer, but it only fluttered on past.
I wasn’t offended. I was sure he had important butterfly business to be about, but I so wanted to look at him more closely, to see the intricacies of the patterns on his wings. If I could see them more clearly, perhaps I could draw them with my small collection of crayons. It was unfair, after all, that I should make Mama so much jewelry without making something for Papa, too. He always said I was an excellent artist.
I reached out again, a little daisy in the center of my palm, hoping that its petals would entice him. He paid me no mind, though, continuing his unpredictable path through the air. I held my hand out further, stretching my arm as far as it would go andwillingthe butterfly closer. In the afternoon sun, my hand seemed to glow with a golden light. Surely it looked enough like a flower for the butterfly to land on it, to let me study its wings for just a few seconds.
As if responding to my own desire, the light around my hand changed and coalesced into a thin thread, snaking forward through the air and wrapping itself around the butterfly. It wasn’t tight—I didn’t want to hurt the butterfly—but the light wound itself around the fluttering insect again and again until it was caged in a shining golden orb. I watched in wonder: had I really done that? Had I created that pretty light with the power to bend my surroundings to my will?
The orb floated closer to me, and I cupped it in my hand, thrilled to inspect the butterfly’s kaleidoscope of colors, but the sound of my name made me pause.
“Rosie?” Mama’s voice sounded different, cracking and trembling. Was she afraid I had hurt the butterfly?
“Look, Mama! He’s not hurt!” I spun around to show her the golden orb following me. It was so pretty, and the butterfly inside was still flapping its little wings, happy, healthy, and unharmed.
Mama was staring at me, her mouth open in horror, her eyes wide and filled with tears.
“It’s okay, Mama!” I promised her. “Look!”
I willed the orb to disappear, and it melted into the air as if it had never existed. The butterfly fluttered away, coming to rest on the abelia bush, but it didn’t change the stricken expression on Mama’s face. I started to shake, my own eyes filling with tears. What was she so upset about? Had I done something wrong? Why wouldn’t she speak to me?
“Mama?” I asked, my voice trembling. “Mama, what’s wrong?”
A fat tear escaped, rolling down my cheek, and Mama snapped out of her horrified trance, falling to her knees in front of me. She grabbed both my arms—not hard, but harder than I was used to—and said,
“Don’t ever do that again, Rosie. Do you hear me? You can’t ever do that again.”
I still didn’t understand. What had I done wrong? I hated it when she was angry with me, no matter how rarely that occurred.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I hiccupped, tears falling faster and faster down my face. “It didn’t hurt him, I swear.”
“I know, I know, but never do that again, okay, baby?” she insisted. Her fingers dug into the flesh of my arms, and I winced. “You have to promise.”
“You’re hurting me,” I protested, and she dropped my arms immediately, rubbing them gently with the palms of her hands as her own tears began to fall. I hated the sight of it. Her pretty eyes were all red, and her lip was trembling.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said. “I’m sorry, but you have to promise.”
“Why?”
Other adults got mad when I asked that question, but Mamaneverdid. She always answered my questions with a smile and let me ask why as many times as I wanted.
“Because—because the people who live on this island—our Pack—they don’t think it’s a good thing. They think it’s a really scary thing, and if they found out you can do things like that, we wouldn’t be allowed to live here anymore,” she explained.
“But why?” I asked again. I couldn’t understand it. My little orb hadn’t hurt the butterfly; it hadn’t done anything bad. It wasn’t scary at all: it was beautiful, just like everything else on our island. The people might not always be nice, but they knew the difference between a flower that could poison you and one that was just pretty.
“I’ll explain when you’re older,” Mama told me. It was my least favorite answer in the whole world, and she’d never used it on me before. I hated it: it made my tummy feel twisty and bad, but I wanted her to stop crying, wanted her to smile again, so I let it go. “You have to promise me, Rosie. Never use your magic again, and never mention it to anyone.”
