Page 2 of Brutal Alpha Beast
But as he looks up from the telescope, he grins, and I feel light again. “Do you know what it means, Danielle?”
He knows my name. My cheeks flush. How does he know my name?
“Yes, well,” I think for a moment, but my mind turns blank. My stomach feels like soup. “No, actually, I don’t.”
I grin back at him, so enamored with the way his carved face looks beneath the moonlight. I couldn’t care less about what the details of the moon mean.
He shrugs. “It’s fine, we can just make things up. I doubt Miss Montgomery is going to read this stuff anyway.”
He lifts his chin in the direction of our teacher, who is sitting on a camping chair, eating a doughnut and downing a cup of beer.
I laugh. “At least she gets to have some fun. Makes one of us.”
There’s a glint in his eye, “Oh, you mean you’re not having fun attending an after-school activity at nine pm?”
“Oh, not at all. This is totally what I planned for my day.”
We hold each other’s gaze for a second too long, and then Ellis directs the telescope my way.
“Here,” he says. “You observe, I’ll write. It’s only fair that we take it in turns.”
While I pretend to give a damn about the moon, Ellis and I discuss everything, from opinions on how our pack is being run to what our favorite things to eat at the school cafeteria are. Talking to him feels like magic, and the time goes by so quickly. It’s only when his friends call him over to hang out that I realize we’re supposed to be finished.
“Do you want to come with?” He asks.
“No, that’s okay, you go,” I say. “I’ll put the telescope and everything back.”
It’s almost as though I don’t want him to see how much of a loser I am when it comes to being with everyone else, although I’m certain he’s seen it before.
“Okay,” he says, and as he walks off, my stomach sinks.
“But let’s go for a walk sometime after school,” he adds, turning in his tracks. “Only if you want.”
“Yes,” I smile. “I’d like that a lot.”
And just like that, I find my reason not to run away.
Chapter 1 - Danielle
The feeling I get on the morning of me and my sister Monroe’s eighteenth birthday is not what I’d imagined it would be, but then again, what did I expect?
Aside from being secret witches and outcasts in our pack, Monroe and I have a very tragic past. One that has been marked by death.
Our mother was a witch who escaped our father, a very cruel, abusive warlock. When she met our stepdad, a shifter from the pack we live in now, she fell in love. He took her in, offered her and Grams’ protection, and promised that she’d never have to see our father again.
He was right about that. Mom died giving birth to us both, and then our stepdad died shortly after that; some in the pack say it was from heartbreak, but how could they know? No one even knew what my mother was, let alone the intricacies of their relationship.
We’ve been raised by the pack and by Grams, who taught us a lot of what we need to know about being a witch.
But just six months before my eighteenth birthday, Grams passed away, and now, I guess I’m still in shock.
So much death, so much heartbreak.
I was excited to be eighteen before she died, and now, Monroe and I don’t know what to do with ourselves.
Grams would usually bake us a cake, practice magic with us, and take us out to swim by the lake. Those activities now feel like a cruel joke.
Monroe and I have each other, but it's like the blind leading the blind. We have no parental figure to lead us anymore.
