Page 5 of Cruel Alpha

“It’s okay, Baby,” she cooed, kissing his hair. “Let’s get going, yeah?”

Finally.I breathed a sigh of relief.

“We’ll stick to the forest; it’s a more direct route, and we won’t be so exposed. Shouldn’t take more than two hours,” I said, but Alyssa only glared at me, and when she spoke, that fake cheerfulness was back.

“Did I ask you?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile; it was an animal showing its teeth. I turned away, bracing my hands against a tree trunk and squeezing. The Alyssa in my memories—in my dreams—definitely hadn’t been this aggravating. Could she not see that I only wanted to protect her?

“Let me get this straight,” I growled, my grip on the tree tightening. “I put myself between you and a dozen angry hunters—you’re welcome, by the way—and I’m trying to get you somewhere safe and warm, but you’re gonna get yourself and your kids killed instead. Just because you’re too proud to accept my help.”

Alyssa didn’t respond, and for a brief moment, I thought I had finally gotten through to her. When I turned, though, she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at the kids. She wasn’t looking at anything. Her eyes had gone entirely white, with no hint of iris or pupil, and she stared straight ahead, sightless and still. I’d only ever seen her do this a few times when we were younger, but I recognized it for what it was: a vision.

“Mommy?” The little girl was patting her cheek, trying to get her attention, and I darted forward, lifting her into my arms without thinking. I didn’t know much about magic, but I knew that when a witch was having a vision, you didn’t disturb her. The girl wriggled and protested, and I tightened my grip around her waist as gently as I could. Kids might be small, but they were hell to hold onto. I was just about to lose this particular grapple when Alyssa blinked back into consciousness, gasping.

She took a few seconds to collect herself, breathing low and slow, feeling her surroundings with her free hand and squeezing her son’s leg with the other. Then she frowned.

“Why are you holding Emmy?” she asked. It wasn’t the first thing I expected her to say, and it took me aback for a second.

“Oh—she was trying to wake you up,” I explained.

“Right. Thanks.” She held out an arm to take the kid—Emmy—back, and I released her gladly. She toddled back to her mother, shooting me an irritated look as she snuggled back into Alyssa’s side. That apple clearly didn’t fall far from the tree.

“What did you see?” I asked quietly. For a few long seconds, Alyssa only looked at me, frowning, then she sighed.

“You can take us to Argent.” Something inside me that had been knotted and tense eased ever so slightly. We weren’t in the clear yet, but at least she’d stopped arguing with me before I resorted to throwing her over my shoulder and hauling her over to Argent that way.

“I’m sorry?” I said, partly because I couldn’t quite believe my ears and partly just to be a tool. If the universe or God or whatever it was that powered Alyssa’s magic was intervening just to show her how stupid she was being, I wasn’t about to let her live that down.

“Argent,” she repeated, teeth gritted as if it pained her. “You can take us there.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said, snapping back into action. Now she was co-operating, we needed to get moving. “I’ll head out in front as a wolf; that way, I can do tight circles to watch every angle—”

“Woah. Woah, woah, woah,” she said, holding up a hand. Did she just shush me? Did I let her? “You’re not going anywhere in wolf form. I’ve got two kids and several bags that I can’t exactly carry myself.”

“You don’t need the bags,” I insisted. “Leo will have everything you need.”

“Will he have their favorite plushies and blankets that smell like home?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. “Didn’t think so. I’m taking their diaper bag, if nothing else, that’s got all the essentials, but I can’t carry both of them for—what is it? Seven miles?”

It was closer to eight, and I saw her point. As small as the children were, they weren’t exactly babies; carrying the two of them and a bag would slow Alyssa down considerably.

“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll take the bag and a kid.”

Alyssa’s eyes went hard again for a moment, but I didn’t have time to figure out what I’d done to offend her before she spoke:

“Are you gonna put on pants?” Her voice was accusatory, as if I had chosen to be buck-ass naked in a cold forest in the middle of the night.

“Sure,” I snapped back, “let me just pull a pair out of my ass.”

“There’s some in the trunk you could wear,” Alyssa said, and my hackles rose. Alyssa might think I didn’t care about her, but surely she knew enough basic biology not to tell me she had some other dude’s pants in the back of her car, let alone ask me towearthem. I was about to tell her as much when she continued, “We could probably make a pair of my sweats fit you.”

That flipped the switch inside me entirely. The wolf inside me was chomping at the bit to have her scent all over me, marking me as hers.

“Sure, yeah,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

She took a few seconds to deposit the kids on the front seat of the car and then began to scrabble in the trunk, eventually pulling out a ball of grey jersey material, which she pitched to me underhand. Catching the soft material in one hand, I had to resist the urge to bring it to my nose and inhale. The sweatpants weren’t quite dirty, but they weren’t freshly washed either, and they smelled of her: vanilla and jasmine and bright summer mornings. I’d missed that scent more than I’d allowed myself to acknowledge.

The pants were both too big and too small: the cuffs reached about an inch below my knee, while the waistband wouldn’t even keep the pants on my body if I didn’t hold them up. I might be twice the size of Alyssa, but my hips were narrow, and hers were—I wasn’t going to think about that. I was not going to think about the generous curves of her body and the way they’d felt beneath my fingers the one time I ever got to touch her. I wasnotgoing to pitch a tent in borrowed sweatpants in the middle of Arbor Woods in front of a pair of toddlers.

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