Page 8 of Ruthless Alpha
She snapped her mouth shut, like she’d said too much. Setting my fork down carefully beside my plate, I prompted,
“Why didn’t he want you?”
Rosie looked surprised by my interest, but she obliged me nonetheless.
“He and my aunt already had a daughter,” she explained, “and my mother’s side of the family—we weren’t popular on Arbor. My father’s family never approved of him accepting my mother as his mate, so I had to earn my keep. I kept the house clean and cooked the meals and—and dealt with my uncle when he was drunk.”
The words sent a chill down my spine.
“Did he…” I didn’t want to ask, but if I was going to spend the day running over to Arbor and killing a man, then I would need to let my Betas know they were on their own for training today.
Luckily, Rosie understood my meaning without my having to form the words. She blushed, shaking her head.
“No. By the time I was old enough for him to uh—to notice things about me, half the hunters had already died down on Lapine, and he said I was worth more to him unspoiled. I didn’t really—I didn’t know what he meant at the time.” That wasn’t much better than what I’d feared, and I had to suppress the growl that threatened to escape. I didn’t want to frighten her, didn’t want her to think I was angry withherfor something her shit-stain of an uncle had done.
“He was always planning to sell you,” I managed to say. It wasn’t enough, but the anger in my bones was roaring to get out, and I didn’t trust myself to continue.
“I think so,” Rosie replied. “Alpha Axton just wouldn’t let him. He said I was too young, that I might still mate with one of the males on the island. But I—I had my first shift at fourteen, and by the time I turned eighteen, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to mate in-Pack. So… here I am.”
She shrugged, as if it was only to be expected. I wanted to push the table away and take her in my arms. I wanted to promise that she was safe now, that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Instead, I said,
“I’m sorry that happened.”
My words were so inadequate, and I cursed myself for not being better, more eloquent. Leo would have known what to say, but I had nothing.
“It’s not your fault,” Rosie said quietly. “It was the witch who ruined everything.”
“What?” I asked. It was a stupid question. I already knew the answer, and I didn’t want to hear it. She might be beautiful, might be meek and hurt, but I’d forgotten one crucial factor: Rosie was an Arbor shifter.
“The Lapine witch,” Rosie said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. As if she weren’t talking about my friend like she was less than dirt. “She was the reason they went to war. They went over to Lapine to rid us of the danger, and she killed them all.”
Chapter 4 - Rosie
“I’m sorry?”
I wasn’t naive enough to miss the change in his voice. That change meant danger. It meant that I’d said something wrong and that I was about to be punished for it. I racked my brain for knowledge of Ensign—were they a witch-loving island? Were they part of the Great Alliance? I didn’t know. It had never mattered before.
“The Lapine witch,” I rushed to explain. She’d turned up on the island one day—I must have been thirteen—and she moved into our cottage that Papa had built on the edge of town. She was pregnant, and at first, I was so happy to know that there’d be other children growing up there, that it wouldn’t just rot away and be forgotten, but she wasn’t what she seemed. “We let her live on our island for almost three years, and then she tried to kill someone.”
I remembered that night like it was yesterday. My uncle and aunt had glared at me as if this wasmyfault. I had trembled with fear, hating that there was a link between that witch and me, no matter how coincidental. I’d managed to keep my head down, to go mostly ignored, but I was so certain that someone would remember what they used to say about Mama’s family, about us. They wouldn’t want to hear that I wasn’t like her, that I wasn’t like any of them.
Xander didn’t know that part, I reminded myself. He didn’t know about the secret I’d buried so deep inside myself that I could barely hear the echoes of it.
“That’s not how I heard it,” he said. His voice was still even, but I could hear the simmering anger beneath it. I wishedhe would just get it over with, wished he would rage and shout and break something like my uncle. I knew how to deal with that.
“And who did you hear it from?” I asked, my voice trembling only slightly. Uncle Stanley had never liked it when I talked back to him. Xander seemed unbothered by it, only fixing me with his abyss of a stare.
“Alyssa,” he said, casually.
Everyone on Arbor had pretended to forget that name. She was only “the witch”or “that witch whore”if you were one of the hunters and you’d been at the moonshine. I was sure her version of events was much different than the one I’d experienced, and from the stormy look on his face, I knew Xander believed her.
“Witches lie,” I said. “They’re unnatural.”
I knew it would be useless.
“Did you ever speak to her?” Xander shot back immediately. His chair legs shrieked against the stone of the kitchen floor, and I flinched as he stood. To my surprise, he only stalked over to the window, holding the edge of the sink in a white-knuckled grip. He wasn’t looking at me when he continued, “Do you know her at all beyond what your Alpha told you and what your backward island taught you that youshouldbelieve about witches?”
“No, but—” I tried to say, but he cut me off.
