Page 4 of Cruel Alpha

Breathing hard, I stared down at my hands, scarcely able to believe the power I had summoned; I hadn’t done magic like that in years, not since—I didn’t have time to dwell on that because Emmy and Jack were screaming, and I stumbled back to the mangled car, ripping open the back door to get to them. I unbuckled their car seats with shaking hands, shushing and cooing as I gathered them into my arms and sank to my knees in the wet leaves, peppering their faces with kisses.

“It’s alright now, babies. Mommy’s got you. We’re alright. We’re gonna be alright.”

I could barely believe my own words, yet they were—miraculously—true, at least for now. The shock and exhaustion soon took the twins over once they were cradled in my arms, and they were reduced to wet sniffles as they hid their faces against the skin of my neck.

“We have to go.”

The voice made me jump, but it was so familiar that it sent a shiver down my spine. There was no longer a wolf standing before us, but a man; he was tall and imposing, built from sculpted muscle, with a face that was all angles, from the sharp cut of his jawline to the perfect aquiline nose. His eyes—that icy, almost unnatural blue—flashed in the darkness as he pushed his dripping black hair away from his face. He was also naked, and I tried desperately not to remember the last time I had seen him this way.

“What?” I said. I’d forgotten his words as soon as they left his lips, still not quite able to believe he was real. What was he doing on Arbor in the middle of a thunderstorm anyway?

“We have togo,Alyssa,” he repeated, authority coloring his every syllable. “Come on, get up.”

I didn’t move. The rain continued to pour, but I was already soaked from head to toe, and half of me was afraid that if I moved, I would see a fresh Pack of hunters coming for us out of the dark.

“Mommy,” Jack sniffled against my neck, “Mommy, who’s that?”

His eyes were huge as he stared up at the man before us, and suddenly, I was on the verge of tears. There were a hundred answers I could have given, each one on the tip of my tongue before I said,

“This is Caleb, Honey. He protected us from the mean wolves.”

I didn’t say,He’s the heir to Lapine Pack, where Mommy was born.

I didn’t say,He made high school a living hell.

I didn’t say,He’s my mate, but he doesn’t want me.

I didn’t say,He’s your father.

Chapter 2 - Caleb

Alyssa stared at me, frozen in place, as if she was a rabbit and I was a feral dog. She’d changed so much and so little since I’d last seen her; her dark brown hair still fell in unruly curls over her shoulders, her face was still soft and heart-shaped, her lips still full and pink and tempting, and her scent was still that light and comforting mix of vanilla and jasmine flowers. Her eyes, though—her hazel eyes were harder now. She didn’t fear me as she once had, didn’t gaze up at me with the mixture of apprehension and desire that I’d once found so intoxicating. Alyssa wasn’t a girl anymore; she was a woman, and that woman had far more to fear than me.

Her grip was tight on the two kids in her arms, and I did my best not to look at them; if I thought too hard about someone else kissing her, touching her, knotting her, Iwasgoing to go feral, and that wasn’t what we needed right now. What we needed was for Alyssa to get up andmove.

“We don’t have time for this,” I growled. That got her attention, and her expression shifted from shock to anger. I braced myself to be cussed out, but when she spoke, her voice was sweet and cheerful.

“Gee,” she said. “I’m so sorry for not running to bend to your whim. We’re kind of in shock over here, so if you could give us a gosh darn minute, that would be great!”

She still looked as though she wanted to kill me, but only for as long as she deigned to give me her attention, which was all of about three seconds before she turned back to the toddlers in her arms, cooing and fussing over them. I stood there, naked, staring in disbelief. I wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, and I didn’t think I’d ever beendismissedby anyone but my father. I ought to leave her there, sitting on her ungrateful ass in the mud with her totaled car and her whining brats.

I didn’t, though. I waited, as she had asked, for exactly one minute before I said,

“You’re heading for Argent?” It was a stupid question. This road only led to the Argent Bridge.

“Yes,” she said. The “duh” was implied.

“Good,” I replied. “It’s only about another hour or so on foot through the forest. Follow me.” With any luck, we’d be over the bridge within two hours and at Leo’s door within three. Alyssa would be safe there, and then she could sass me all she wanted. I held out a hand to help her up, but she only looked at it.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” In any other situation, I might have said that was reasonable—I still couldn’t stand to think about how I’d treated her when we were teenagers—but even after everything that had passed between us, she had to know that I wasn’t about to let her get torn to shreds by the Arbor Pack.

“You’re coming with me,” I insisted, infusing my voice with Alpha authority. Alyssa did not look down, did not flinch.

“I am not,” she said, and I pushed down the growl that was growing in my chest. Mostly. I wished I could know what she was thinking, wished I could have even a little insight into what was making her so reluctant to follow me. There were a lot of reasons I regretted not marking her on the night of the party—the night I’d been weak, the night I’d given in to the pull of the bond—but I’d never regretted it more than I did right now. If I’d marked her, claimed her, then I would have been able to feel her emotions through the bond. As it was, all I could feel was the insistent pull of it, the need to have her with me.

“Alyssa—” I began, but she cut me off.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m not a member of Lapine Pack anymore, remember?” She was utterly defiant, even looking up at me from the forest floor, eyes blazing. The primal, animal part of me—theAlphapart—wanted to pin her down and remind her who was in charge, but the human part of me held back. I’d hurt her enough. The moment stretched on, neither of us wanting to back down, until a little hitched breath and a sniffle broke the silence. One of the children was crying, clawing at his mother’s shirt as he hid his face against her chest. Alyssa’s demeanor changed in an instant.

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