Page 9 of Ruthless Alpha
“Your Pack told you she just attacked some guy out of the blue? They told you they were fighting some noble battle to make sure thatthreatwas taken out? It’s bullshit. I was there.”
“What?”
“I was on Lapine when Arbor attacked. I was waiting for your coward of an Alpha to make his move on a young motherand her pair of fuckingtoddlers,” he spat. “Slade didn’t want to neutralize any threat. She was no threat to him or you or any other member of your Pack. He was only ever pissed that he’d let awitchlive under his nose for three years without sniffing her out.”
He said the name of our late Alpha like he was dirt, like he was worthless. Arbor wasn’t perfect, I knew that better than anyone, but we weren’t the cold-blooded murderers he made us out to be. Alpha Slade had been trying to protect us; we all knew that. Power corrupted witches—they went insane with it, and they’d hurt anyone who got in their way. The only good witch was a dead witch: I’d heard that phrase more times than I could count.
But shedidhave little children. That much was true. They were only a few years younger than I was when I discovered my own powers. Mama had known that Alpha Slade wouldn’t spare me when I was six, and I doubted he would have any more sympathy for those two little toddlers.
“It’s not true—” I tried to argue, to convince myself as much as him, but he cut me off again, utterly uninterested in anything I had to say.
“It is true,” he insisted. “Alys might have taken out a couple of those hunters, but not all of them. Probably not as many as I did.”
My blood ran cold. Not only was this man the Alpha of the most feared Pack on the archipelago, but he’d personally sunk his teeth into the males of my Pack, into the hunters who’d been trying to keep us safe.
“Not, not as many—” I echoed, my voice barely more than a breath. Either he didn’t hear me, or he didn’t care, because he continued:
“You don’t know shit about witches, Rosie. Did you ever even meet Alyssa?”
His eyes flashed with victory, but I had a card he hadn’t expected.
“No, but I met another one,” I told him. “She looked scary with that white eye, but I thought—I thought she wasnice,I even pitied her. Then she took out a dozen of our hunters. She ripped their guts out and left them to rot. Issheyour friend, too?”
This time, Xander shook his head, and for a moment, I was relieved. Then he said,
“She’s like a sister to me.”
That couldn’t be true. Ensign shifters might be more brutal, more bloodthirsty, but even they couldn’t look at what that witch had done to our hunters and still call her family. I had seen the bodies when they were brought home, seen the hollowness of their stomachs where organs had once resided, and the unnaturally clean cuts that bisected their torsos. It had been a stark reminder ofwhywe feared magic the way we did.
Even in my most helpless moments, I had never wished for power like that. I knew, just as my mother had, that such a thing would eat me alive the same way it had eaten the Lapine witches. Unlike them, I had refused to let it.
“Shemurdered—” I began, but Xander snarled back at me.
“Shut up.” His voice was low, rumbling, and dangerous as he loomed over me, and it was clear whatever hold he had over his temper was fraying fast. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he continued. “You don’t know that those hunters were trying to kill Julia for the crime of escaping their little trafficking operation. You don’t know that she was pregnant when theyattacked her. Look at me right now and tell me that if you had the kind of power she has, you wouldn’t use it to save yourself and your unborn child?”
I didn’t want to hear it. I knew that what our island was doing to females was wrong, I knew that, but we hadn’t had any other option. We were starving and desperate, and no matter how defiant Julia had been when she faced off against Alpha Axton, she’d been gentle with me as I washed her up, getting her ready for sale. Would a woman like that really kill for no reason?
I shook my head, trying to shake the thoughts away. Icouldn’tthink like that. I couldn’t allow myself to soften.
I remembered the night that my uncle had come home reeking of whiskey, frustrated by the fights he’d failed to start with his drinking buddies. I remembered the dull, hot pain of his knuckles making contact with my cheekbone, the sharp crack of my rib breaking, the brief panic as his hand constricted around my throat, and I saw stars before my aunt pulled him off me, not out of concern for me, but because killing me would have consequences.
For those brief seconds, I had thought of my mother. I had thought of the panic in her eyes, of the frenzied insistence in her voice when she’d begged me tonever do that again, okay baby? You have to promise me.I had wondered if she’d be proud of me for keeping that promise when I joined her in death.
My voice was steady and certain when I met the gaze of the man who owned me.
“Never,” I said. “I would never use it.”
I braced myself for a blow, but it never came.
“Then you’re stupid as well as hateful,” he snapped. “I’m late for training. Don’t leave this house.”
“Yes, Alpha,” I said, bowing my head. At least it was over. Relief flooded through me as he stalked toward the door, but he paused at the threshold, one huge hand gripping the frame.
“And keep your goddamn opinions about witches to yourself in the future, you got that?” he said, without turning back to face me. “Or you can go sleep in the dormitories with the other females.”
He didn’t need to tell me that—I’d be keeping quiet from now on.
“Yes, Alpha,” I repeated. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, his every muscle tense, and then he was gone. I heard the front door slam, and I was alone.
