Page 44 of Brutal Alpha Bully

I feel like I should say something about making sure she’s safe, that she’s not keeping a secret from her mother that might harm her, but I can’t find the words before Nora speaks again.

“I can do it, too.”

“Do what?” I blink, watching her, wondering if this is about her first shift—but why would she keep that from her mother? Usually, it’s something worth celebrating.

She pauses, and I feel her anxiety radiating from her, her nervousness at telling me this. Then she raises her chin, meets my eye, and says, “I can do magic. Like my mom.”

Something happens inside me—something like dread, like worry, like denial. I grew up believing that magic was wrong in every way. That it was people harnessing the natural energy of the world and twisting it into unnatural shapes for their own sick pleasure. That anyone with the ability to move and shape that magic was inclined toward malice, and those who used it were actively evil.

And here’s this girl, who I think might belong to me, sitting across from me sweetly, her hands trembling as she tells me this fact about herself.

“Are you… sure?” I finally manage to say, clearing my throat and laying my hands on the table. “Because you wouldn’t really know until—”

Keeping her eyes on mine, Nora moves. Not side to side but directly up, her body lifting from the chair as though someone has just grabbed her and lifted her up. And she hasn’t even moved her hands—no flick of the wrist or visible casting, like with Phina. I stare at Nora, my mouth going dry at the reality of what that means.

She can cast without any external sign of it at all.

Lowering back down into her seat, Nora says, “I haven’t told her because I think it would break her heart. She hates magic. And everyone around us—they were always mean to her because of it.”

Hypocritically, my wolf wants to rip apart the people who dared to be mean to Phina, to hurt her. Even as I have to acknowledge that, at one point, I was one of those people. At one point, I was one of the people who hurt her the most.

As we play, I find my gaze wandering back to Nora, watching as she considers the board and celebrates each time Imake the move she thought I would. I watch her think as she worries her bottom lip.

And I find myself wondering if a girl like her—so young, and still so hurt by the world—could possibly be naturally oriented toward malice. Is it fair to assume that someone is evil just because of an ability they’re born with?

I find myself thinking of the humans and how they assume things of shifters—if they believe in them at all—simply because of the ways we can change our bodies. Is it not the same ignorance to be against magic for no other reason than it being different?

When the bathroom door opens and Phina emerges, wearing a pair of soft pajamas and smiling at us, Nora looks at me, panic flitting over her face.

Subtly, I nod to her. I’ll keep her secret.

Even if I still have no idea how I feel about it.

Chapter 22 - Seraphina

Saturday morning, I wake up in Xeran’s arms, having snuck into his room through the adjoining door the night before. He’d turned over and pulled me in as his little spoon.

Then, as our bodies started to move together, he held his hand over my mouth to keep me quiet, pulling aside my pajama bottoms and pressing our hips together until we were both breathing hard. I fell asleep content, with his knot still emptying inside me.

After getting out of bed, taking another quick shower, and waking Nora from a deep sleep, we head out into the city. Xeran takes us to the zoo in the morning, then to the aquarium when it gets too warm to walk around outside. After Xeran buys her a stuffed shark and promises to bring her back for the all-out shark exhibit later this year, we leave the aquarium and head a little outside of downtown to a candy shop. There, we attend a dessert workshop where they use liquid nitrogen on ice cream. Nora is fascinated the entire time, asking questions and trying samples of the products.

When we’re done, we walk around downtown until we find the big blue bear from the pictures.

“I think I love Denver,” Nora says when she’s working on her second ice cream of the day. We’re leaving an ice cream shop shaped like a giant milk jug.

I wrap my arm around her, pulling her to my side. “Well, I think you just really like sugar, huh?”

She grins, and I think about how Xeran offered his flash-frozen ice cream to her, apparently not concerned with her getting a crazy sugar high.

He’s still not concerned with it, judging from the amount of candy clinking around inside the bag at his elbow. Anything she wanted from the candy shop, she got to have.

Also at the candy shop, Xeran stopped to chat with a shifter from the local pack, smiling and shaking his hand before we left. I found myself thinking,Of course he’s stopping to talk to another shifter, an ally. That’s what the alpha supreme does.

Then I remembered that Xeran is not the alpha supreme of Silverville. And he doesn’t want to be. As far as I know, he’s still planning on going back to Illinois.

Even though he wants to see where this goes with me.

What does that mean? Other than us finding a way to be together most nights? Other than the fact that I told him about what happened back in high school, and he apologized for the way he treated me back then?

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