Page 9 of Alpha Exile

The back of my mind is quiet and lonely, and all around me, my world has turned into nothing but despair.

I came here with a target in mind. I'd just gotten the knife, and I had a goal: Delphine. But when I arrived, I discovered nothing but chaos and destruction. There isn't even a trail for me to follow to get my mates back.

So I find myself standing at the edge of a dozen branching paths, not knowing which way to go.

With a bruised and beaten heart pumping blood through my body.

"You're needed at the urgent care center," I hear Niall say. I turn my head idly to find him speaking, not to me, but to Kerry, who looks worn down and done in. "The warriors are badly wounded. Doctor Beaumont is on call, and she's brought in anyone in Juniper or the surrounding area who can help, but they could use a witch right now."

"Healing magic has never been my strong suit," Kerry protests. "I can draw on my own strength and vitality, but strengthening others is difficult. Besides... I'm needed here."

I clear my throat, ash and soot coating my mouth. "You should go." My voice comes out a soft croak, so I raise my chin and force a little strength into it. "I'll be fine here."

"Are you sure?" She raises a brow, looking around her at the charred remains of my father's house. "I don't want to leave you alone."

"I won't be alone." I mean Cat, but when I glance around, I don't find her. So I motion towards Niall instead. "Besides, there's nothing left for you to do here."

Kerry stares at me for a long moment, then says, "I'll check to see if they have anything for me. But I'm just popping over and back—I won't linger. I used most of my magic putting out the fire. And besides, wounds have never been my strong suit. I weave together shields and barriers, not flesh and blood."

Her words remind me that today, she was supposed to start teaching me more of the basics of weaving magic. It's her speciality, and was my mother's as well, though apparently she specialized more in the healing aspects, while her sister is adept at holding temporal barriers together. But the magic lessons feel far away and unimportant—they didn't help me protect the one thing that really matters.

They can't bring my mates back.

But the dagger in my hand can.

And something else. Something I was thinking about, while standing on the front porch of my late father's charred house. The reason my left hand is covered in soot—I'd grabbed the porch railing, discovered it was still hot, and let it go. There was something inside that I wanted.

While I was trying to figure out if the porch was even safe to stand on—one of the boards was charred through—the pain of it all stunned me once again. I found myself staring at the burned boards and remembering the moment I fell through, when Roarke and Finn caught me.

Then my eyes landed on the windows, and more pain blossomed.

The windows had rotting frames when I moved in, their peeling paint untended to as the blood rot of the vampires leeched strength from everything, including the alpha of the pack. Lance and Roarke put new frames in as part of the repair, and at some point, they and all the guys carved their initials into the wood.

Those initials are taunting me now, the reminders of each of them left in their handwriting. KS, RB, LC, and FB. Bastian's are carved later, on the other side of the wood, a shy small print: BC.

Kieran Salt, Roarke Bell, Lance Clay, Finn Barber, and Bastian Carver.

I loved them, I've lost them, and the pain of it all was so overwhelming for a moment that I forgot what I'd meant to do.

Now I remember. I was going to check inside the house to see if anything was salvageable. Though the second level of the house was burned pretty badly, Kerry was able to hold much of the fire back with her magic. Swathes of untouched wood stretch through the house.

Stepping towards the open front door, I marvel at how untouched it is, then slowly make my way inside.

"Are you sure that you should do that?" Niall's voice drifts inside, his concern for me like a shadow of the love I once felt from my father. "I know that Kerry saved most of the second level, but that doesn't mean it's safe."

"I have nothing left to lose," I call out to him, the poignancy of it causing a dark laugh to bubble up in my throat. I swallow it down, wanting to appear sane, at least a little bit. "Besides, there are important things in here. Some research and... other things."

I'd wanted to grab some of my father's things that I stored in the basement. I remember that now that I'm inside, staring at the door in the side of the staircase. A creeping, crawling sensation shudders across my skin when I think of going down into that dark, damp, bug-filled place, but it's where I put all his files and folders about the curse.

That whole time, he looked for an alternate way to lift it. Something that wouldn't require bringing his exiled daughter back into the pack to do the job. I'd thought once that he hated me, but now I have to wonder. Some part of me still desperately wants to believe that he was trying to protect me when he sent me away—even though I don't know how much that's true.

The basement can't hurt me more than I am already, so I go down into it, flicking on the overhead light. It doesn't work, which reminds me that the fire brigade shut the power off since they soaked the house with so much water. So I grab a flashlight off the shelf by the door and flick it on, shining a light down the stairs.

That leaves both my hands full—one with the light, the other with the dagger. Clumsily, I rip off part of my jacket, tearing it with the dagger's edge, and wrap it around the blade. Then I tie it to my thigh, making a mental note to get arealsheath for it. Maybe there will be one in the basement, among my father's hunting things. He always insisted on having a knife with him when he went after prey; whether in human form or wolf form, a clean kill was his goal with every hunt.

It smells damp and mildewy down here, but that's nothing new. Surprisingly, it's fairly untouched by the fire. I guess it never got the chance to burn its way down here.

That means that the papers in the boxes I put on the shelf against the far wall are untouched. Grabbing them, I haul them out one by one and put them in the bed of Niall's truck, letting him join me as a quiet presence by my side. He doesn't say anything—he seems to sense that I don't want him to.

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