Page 38 of Brutal Alpha

I wanted to stop talking about this. I wanted to go back in time to before Julia had magic and before I’d ever touched her.

“That’s a nice theory, but you don’t know it’s the answer,” I insisted.

“You don’t know it isn’t,” Xander shot back. He was a stubborn bastard, just like me, and he wasn’t going to let this go,no matter how much I needed him to. I tried once more, unable to keep the crack from my voice.

“You can’t just—this is mating we’re talking about. It’s serious.”

“I am taking it seriously.” Xander wasn’t backing down, but his demeanor had softened. He smiled as he continued, “I don’t want you to miss out on a life with an incredible mate just because you’re being a stubborn idiot.”

“Maybe I don’t want a life with a mate, no matter how incredible she is.” The words were out before I could even process them, and Xander was leaning forward again, fixing me with his impossibly black stare.

“Alright, now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Why?”

“I’ve already got a whole island to worry about. I don’t need a mate and young to worry about on top of it. I don’t need anything else to feel responsible for.” The words were familiar, I’d thought them to myself so many times over the years, but in that moment they felt more like an unconscious reflex.

“Every Alpha’s got a whole island to deal with,” Xander countered. “You’re not special.”

He was right, but only to a certain extent. Unlike him, I’d been forced into my position of responsibility far before I was ready for it. I might have been seventeen when my father died, but the disease that took him out had been weakening him for years. I’d never had anything resembling a childhood, never had any rebellious adolescence, never had the chance to know myself outside of being Alpha.

It was a lonely existence, but I liked it that way. Better to be alone than to have someone else who always needed something from me. I hadn’t had enough whiskey to admit thatto Xander, though, so I sat silently until he sighed, knocking back the last of his drink.

“You want my advice?”

“Not really, but you’re going to give it to me anyway.”

“You bet I am,” he said. “Look, I can’t say whether Julia’s your mate, but I can say that the pair of you have always had very weird, intense energy about each other. Hearing that you’re mates would be the least surprising news ever. If you’re just commitment-phobic, then pull your head out of your ass, dude. Julia deserves better than to be messed around with. Either give her a real chance or stop fucking her.”

That hadn’t been what I expected him to say, but it was what I needed to hear. If I truly wanted to improve my relationship with Julia, I had to stop acting like I had a claim to her. We might be married, but we both knew how little that really meant. I had no right to object to Cody, to her wearing Leo’s clothes, or to Xander putting an arm around her waist to help her when she was exhausted.

Julia might not be my mate, but I could no longer pretend I didn’t care about her.

“You’re right,” I told him. This time, there was no smirk, no smug expression. Xander looked deadly serious as he met my eye and said,

“Damn straight I am.”

Chapter 17 - Julia

“Concentrate.”

“I am concentrating.”

“Concentrate harder.”

That was easy for Eve to say. As excited as I was about the opportunity to hone my skills, I was more than a little distracted by the impending disaster growing in my womb. The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became. I’d let him knot me twice, and while that didn’t guarantee pregnancy, it made it a distinct possibility. I guess I’d just assumed my body was under so much other stress that a child wouldn’t take. What I hadn’t considered was that he or she might be as stubborn as their parents.

What was I going to do with a baby? What was I going to tell Caleb? What was I going to tell Ethan? Was he going to think I’d done this on purpose, that I’d failed to convince him to be my mate, and so now I was trapping him with a child? Was I about to start a conflict between two islands who’d been allied for centuries, just because I couldn’t keep my legs shut?

“You’re not concentrating.”

She had me there. I shook the nagging thoughts away and tried my best to concentrate on the long shadow of a chair that Eve had planted in the middle of Xander’s yard. Despite the fact that few shifters would dare to come onto the Alpha’s property, Ethan was lurking by the back door, keeping watch. Would he want to see the baby when it was born? Would our child split time between Ferris and Lapine, or just stay with me, waiting for their father to pay a cursory visit?

No. I wasn’t thinking about that. I was concentrating on the shadow of the chair. Eve had said that re-shaping shadows was all well and good, but the most powerful Shadow Witches could actually make them corporeal, could pour power into a tendril of shadow until it was hard as a rock or sharp as a knife. If I could do that, I’d be nobody’s burden.

Eve had promised that the technique wasn’t all that different from what I was doing already, only that instead of pulling and pushing the shadows within the space, I was pouring my power into them, like filling a balloon up with air.

That might sound simple enough, but in practice, it was difficult as all hell. We’d already been out in the yard for almost two hours, and I didn’t feel any closer to making anything corporeal. The shadow of the chair remained stubbornly intangible, consenting only to wiggle and stretch on my command. I didn’t know how to fill something up with my power. I couldn’t even say what my power was.

I had told Eve this numerous times, but she insisted it was only due to my inexperience. One day, she promised, I would be able to feel my power the same way I felt my limbs. She was probably right, but admitting that meant I needed to work harder, and right now, I was feeling pretty worked out.

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