Page 9 of The Alpha Experiment
“Look, is it so fucking awful that I want you to be safe?” He sounded like I’d dragged the words out of him instead of just standing there looking like someone’s pissed-off mom. Then again, my mom had a pretty ferocious arms-crossed glare, and I did kind of look like her, only taller and not pretty. “You’re actually mad at me for giving a shit?”
Well. When he put it that way…but no. “I’m mad at you for thinking the only way you can give a shit is to take over and treat me like I’m helpless.”
“Not helpless!” he protested. I did Colin’s usual eyebrow quirk at him. Sauce for the goose, dammit. He sighed. “Look, being human doesn’t make you helpless. But if someone sticks a handful of claws in my chest, I’ll walk away from it. You wouldn’t. That’s just the facts.”
It was my turn to look away. Yeah, that was a fact. And itstung. “Let’s just go get Fiona, okay? I don’t want to argue about it anymore.” Which kind of meant that I was backing down and losing the argument, but I spent enough time in a spiral over my humanness inside my own head. Hearing how inferior I was from myself was bad enough. Hearing it from Colin, no matter how much he tried to spin it, was more than I could handle.
A short silence fell. “Are you going to pack anything?”
If Colin insisted, I’d end up not having any choice. My dad was an irresistible force. Colin, for all his laid-back attitude, was an immovable object. I’d end up squished in between—and staying with my family whether I liked it or not.
I looked up at him, my fists clenched at my sides. “No. I’m not.” I managed to keep it from coming out as a question.
Colin went over to the little kitchen counter, picking up his machete from where he’d leaned it up. “Okay. I’m ready. I’m taking this, but I’ll leave the beer. We’ll need it to recover from dealing with your parents when we get back.”
The heavy clench in my stomach unraveled. Not all the way, but enough that I didn’t feel like I might throw up or start screaming. Grabbing Colin in a bear hug and holding on tight would be weird, right?
“I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” I said, my voice a little thick.
“What, being hot and brilliant and awesome wasn’t enough?” he drawled.
I took a second to really look at him, like I rarely did. I knew what Colin looked like. He’d been my best friend for seventeen years. I knew everything about Colin.
Or at least, I’d used to. Maybe I didn’t anymore. That thought brought a little tremor with it, so I pushed it away.
I just hadn’t seen him much lately, that was all.
So I looked. Even in the miserable yellowish light of the bare bulb over my kitchen, Colin managed to be—well, hot. And brilliant. And awesome. He wasn’t any taller than me, a point of great smugness for me in my teens. (And now. And forever. Even though I’d longed with every fiber of my being to get even a millimeter taller than him, and never had. We wereexactlythe same height, dammit.) And his backward baseball cap really, really should’ve looked stupid, like it did on every other person, human or not, in the known universe.
But something about his broad shoulders and sharp dark eyes and overall Colin-ness simply made it not matter. I’d gotten used to him. But as I blinked once, it was like he shifted for a second from the guy I’d known all those years to how he’d look as a stranger.
Yeah, Colin was something special. And it didn’t have much to do with being an alpha, even though that certainly added a cherry on top.
Did it make me feel better or worse that I’d never be as awesome as he was, even if I activated every last untranslated werewolf gene in my DNA?
Neither, because he was my best friend. It wasn’t a competition with Colin. It never had been. He loved me for me, and vice versa.
The last of that miserable lump in my gut dissolved away, replaced with the familiar warmth of being near the one person in the world who really, truly got me. And didn’t wish me any different.
“You’re still not taller than me,” I said. “And your hat looks so dumb. Trying to make yourself look taller with ill-chosen headgear? You ever considered a jester hat, with those big bell things on top?”
Colin grinned, his whole face crinkling and lighting up like the sun coming out. “Ha fucking ha. You wish you looked this good in a hat. Now get a move on, dude. Oh, and I’m driving.”
I rolled my eyes and went to get my shoes. Of course he was driving. Alphas could be such a pain in the ass.
***
We didn’t have to carry Fiona out of her dorm kicking and screaming after all.
The nicer part of me, the part that loved my little sister with every cell in my body, put that down to her understanding the gravity of the situation. She was smart and motivated, majoring in physics—a little ironic, considering I’d been the one named after the legendary genius werewolf Sir Isaac, our distant relative according to family legend. We were supposedly descended from one of his sisters, though who knew if that was true.
The less-nice part of me attributed it to Colin being there.
“Hey, bro,” she said as she came out of the lobby of her dorm, bag over her shoulder. She hadn’t changed out of her pajamas, but she’d somehow found the time to put on lip gloss and what looked suspiciously like eyeliner. When she turned to Colin and batted her lashes, I was sure of it. “Hey, Colin.”
I got the first hug, but he got one too. Did she hold on to him a little longer? Ugh. I hated myself sometimes. But she was way too young for him, didn’t she get that?
Even if they’d be the ultimate power couple, two alphas with double the strength and confidence and good looks…double ugh. She was way,waytoo young for him. And also my sister. Wasn’t that against the bro code?
