Page 31 of Brutal Alpha Beast
“Don’t worry, they’re not poison,” she says. “Just candy I told them about that we get at the coven. They last a long time.”
“They can last for hours!” Ben yells before running back into the sprinklers with the others.
I dip my hands into my pockets. “I didn’t think that they’re poison,” I say.
She re-adjusts her satchel over her shoulder, and I notice that a couple of water drops have caught in her eyelashes and hair.
I fight the passing urge to wipe them away.
“I actually wanted to talk to you about a flower bush I saw at the edge of town. It’s dying, like the trees, in a way that doesn’t make sense.”
She nods. “We can develop more solutions for that. Anything else?”
“Are you in a hurry?” I ask her, slightly irritated.
“I suppose I am,” she tells me, before walking away.
I watch her body swaying as she moves, with unbearable frustration. Why is she being so cold?
As the week progresses, my irritation gives way to a strange longing.
She’s still aloof, but she’s communicating with our pack mates more. She’s friendly-ish with everyone but me. What did I do? Why can’t I talk to her for more than a few seconds, even though, in technical terms, she’s supposed to be my wife.
But she sticks to her word. She helped form the solution to protect our plants as well as our trees.
Then, upon closer observation, I notice something strange.
Why does she seem so familiar with the inner workings of our pack?
Danielle takes shortcuts that only those living in the pack a long time would know about. She seems to know when to avoid certain areas, for example, if they’re host to private leadership-only events—and she knows when to join in the case that there are any pack-wide potlucks.
I’d have told her this information myself if I could get a word in for more than a few seconds.
“How’s Danielle getting along?” Aaron asks me as we take a lap. It’s the end of the week, and while I’m still suspicious of Danielle, there’s no concrete evidence that she’s doing anything for me to be suspicious of.
Maybe she’s just adapted quickly. Perhaps someone else shared the information she knows.
“Fine,” I say. “I think. She keeps to herself, so it’s hard to know.”
Aaron nods, “I get it. If I were in the same position, I’d keep to myself, too.”
I chuckle. “Good thing you’re not. Unless you’d like me to send you to the coven?”
He raises an eyebrow. “I’m not that desperate.”
We continue walking, and I purposefully avoid the area where I saw the decaying bush.
It reminds me of something I don’t yet have a solution to.
“But I’m surprised,” he continues. “At first, I thought she might have come here with malicious intent. Think about it, she has access to stuff a witch could never get access to. I thought she might cast a spell or something, but surely, if she wanted to cause harm, she would have done it by now.”
I think again about how she somehow understands the natural flow of life in the pack.
Aaron’s right, if this were a plan for actual sabotage, she would have done something by now. But it’s possible, I think, that Penelope only agreed to this marriage alliance in the first place because she wanted to plant a spy.
That would explain why she was suspiciously snooping around the night she found my secret spot.
“Yeah, I believe the witches want peace,” I say.
