Avoiding Alpha

by Aileen Erin

  Who would’ve thought that the guy I flirted with in a bookstore would one day feel like an essential part of my life?

  I remembered that conversation, talking about favorite songs. It reminded me of something. “Hey, babe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really looking forward to going dancing with you.”

  He rubbed his chin on the top of my head. “What made you think of that?”

  “Do you remember that day in the bookstore?”

  “It wasn’t that long ago, cherie, but you could ask me again in fifty years and I’ll still say yes. I’ll never forget the first conversation I had with my mate.”

  Heat spread through my body. “That was a good day.”

  “It was.” He paused. “You’re feeling awfully sentimental right now.” It was a statement not a question.

  “Yeah. Seeing what happened between Meredith and Donovan got to me.”

  “Ah.” He left it at that, not pressing me for any questions and I really appreciated it.

  “She deserves to be as happy as I am.”

  “She will be.”

  I hoped so. “Donovan really loves her.”

  “If they’re mates, then that’s definitely true.”

  “Right.” I laughed. “At least he won’t have to bite her.”

  He was quiet for a second. “I don’t think it’s been long enough for us to laugh about that.”

  I tightened my hold on him. “Come on. It is kind of funny.”

  He sighed. “If you say so…crazy girl.”

  I pressed a kiss to his neck. “I say so.” As Dastien walked, I had a feeling I was going to regret being carried, but I couldn’t muster the energy to say something.

  Chapter Eight

  I’d never really liked going into school cafeterias. Throughout my life, they’d been a place where I was ridiculed. These days, they weren’t so bad. I’d found my place in the pack, and I had friends and a kick-ass mate. But as Dastien stepped into the crowded cafeteria, I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.

  Being carried was a horrible idea. “Put me down. Now.”

  He tightened his arms around me, cradling me against his chest. “No.”

  Everyone stopped and stared. Not just one or two or twenty people. Everyone. Every single person.

  What was I supposed to do? Apologize for pulling all that power? Make a speech?

  “Say something¸” Dastien whispered into my ear.

  God. This was so not what I wanted to do. “Will you put me down?”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” This wouldn’t be humiliating at all. I cleared my throat. “Hey, everyone. I’m sorry for taking without asking. Meredith’s really sick, and I was trying to hold a connection to Donovan to find out how to break the curse. He’s in the Andes right now, and it took a little bit from each of you to talk to him. So, thank you.”

  People shouted out questions.

  “I wish I had answers for you, but I don’t yet. All of you helped me get closer to finding out how to help Meredith. So, thanks again. And I’m sorry.” I turned to Dastien. “Good enough?”

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him, but he looked around the room and then started walking to where Adrian, Chris and Shannon were sitting. As we wove through the tables, conversations picked up again.

  Dastien set me in a chair. “I’ll be back with food.”

  “Thanks.” Everyone else was already eating. Smells of fajitas and enchiladas made my stomach growl embarrassingly loud. Whoops. I put a hand over my stomach. “I guess I’m hungry.”

  Chris shook his head, and his blond hair fell into his eyes. He slid a small plate with a pile of Mexican rice and refried beans smothered with cheese on it my way. “Start with that.” He handed me a fork.

  I wasn’t about to turn the food away. I gave Chris a nod, and started eating.

  Dastien hadn’t been gone long, but by the time he got back with my tray, I was nearly licking the plate.

  “That was kind of intense,” Adrian said.

  I looked around the table, and they were all staring at me. “What?”

  Dastien took the plate from me and set a tray down. It was piled high with Mexican food. My favorite. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day and never get sick of it. It was like the cafeteria gods had read my mind today.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life,” I said over my mountain of food.

  “I can’t watch this. It’s so…disgusting.” Shannon stood. “I’ll be in Meredith’s room.”

  “What’s her problem? I swear you guys regularly eat way more than this.”

  “Yeah, but usually we take time to do things like breathe and chew,” Adrian said with a chuckle.

  The extreme hunger that I felt sometimes took some getting used to. My stomach had somehow turned into an endless cavern when I became a werewolf. On a normal day, I ate maybe five times as much as I did as a normal human. Or more. Whatever I’d done to talk to Donovan had really worn me out, but the food was helping.

  “Sorry, guys. I’ll try and slow down.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Chris said as balanced his chair on its back legs. “I’m not upset. I’m kind of impressed. You’re tucking it away like a pro.”

  Not even when I was recovering from being bitten by a vampire was I this drained or hungry. Although that was a different kind of drained. Or maybe it was the power that Dastien was feeding into me? He ate one-handed, and his free hand hadn’t left my back. The steady pulse of his alpha power warmed me from the inside like a balm on my tired muscles.

  “Everything okay?” Dastien asked.

  “As long as you don’t count grossing out our friends, then yeah, everything’s fine.” But I was feeling self-conscious about how much I was eating. “Merging witchcraft with what? Discuss options.” I waved my fork at them. “And ignore what’s going on over here.” I waved the fork at myself. I started eating again, but tried to remember to breathe between bites this time.

  “We were talking about that before you got here,” Adrian said. “The only thing that we can come up with is combining types of witchcrafts. Assuming that, we have a few options.”

  I wished they only had one option, but I’d take what I could get. “Tell me.”

  “Basically there are incantations or spells, potions, and curses,” Adrian said. “Although curses are like a subset of spells and incantations, but with a negative connotation. Assuming we rule out the whole curse category—”

  “Wait. Why are we ruling those out?” It seemed like a bad idea to rule anything out at this point, but what did I know? For once, I wished my parents had moved us to Texas sooner, but there was nothing I could do about that.

  “Because curses are dark,” Dastien said. “They’re meant to hurt, and we aren’t going to do anything bad to one of our own.”

  I chewed slowly as I thought. “Agreed. What’s the deal with the incantations and potions?”

  “Well, sometimes they go hand-in-hand,” Adrian said. “Like what your cousins gave us to fight the vampires.”

  They’d given us a bunch of little vials of herby-looking stuff. All I had to do was say the right phrase and chuck one at a vampire. As soon as the glass broke, the potion exploded. They were a pretty neat and had saved our butts. We wouldn’t have made it out alive without the magical assistance.

  “Okay, and what happens when it’s just an incantation,” I said.

  “Sometimes all a witch—” Chris stopped when Adrian cleared his throat. “Fine. Sometimes all a bruja needs to do is say something. Their magic plus their will makes the words true.”

  “And potions are mixtures of magical ingredients that pack a punch,” Adrian said. “They can do any number of things—from make someone fall in love to transform a person from human to mouse—depending on what you mix in them.”

  I took a break from eating. “So we need something like what I used in the cave. We should find
something that mixes a potion and words to set the spell. And it should be one that makes her wolf hit the hay.”

  There were some grumbles around the table.

  “If you guys have a better idea that won’t kill her, then I’m all ears. But remember that we’re only suppressing her wolf to keep her alive until we come up with something better.”

  “That seems really unnatural,” Dastien said.

  “I know.” I took another bite.

  “Are you sure you’re not trying this because of your own issues with changing?” Chris asked

  I dropped my fork with a clatter. “No. I’m not.” At least I didn’t think I was.

  We sat in silence for a bit, each of us eating and letting the cafeteria sounds fill the void.

  After a bit, Adrian spoke up. “Can I see your Book of Shadows?”

  Shit. I’d left my bag in Meredith’s room. “You didn’t happen to grab my bag, did you?”

  Dastien shook his head. “Sorry. It’ll be fine there. No one’s going to mess with your stuff.”

  Those books meant something to my cousins, and they meant something to me. Leaving them laying around felt wrong. “Okay,” I said, shaking it off. “I’ll grab them after.”

  “I think there was something in your family’s Book of Shadows that could work,” Adrian said. “They weren’t specifically for werewolves but they talked about suppressing inner demons.”

  Chris cussed up a storm.

  “I know. I know,” Adrian said. “But to La Alquelarre, our inner wolf could count as a demon.” He paused to let that sink in. He had a point, and I was more than a little ashamed that I looked at my wolf as a kind of demon. It made me feel out of control, which was not a fun feeling. It made me angry and violent. Two things I’d never considered myself before.

  “There are still a bunch of ingredients that we don’t have in storage. I’m not sure where we’d find them,” Adrian said.

  “I could maybe ask my mom. Even if she didn’t really participate in La Alquelarre, my grandmother did. She might know where to find stuff.” I pushed the tray to the center of the table. “I think I’m done. I’m grossing myself out now.”

  “Eating’s part of being a Were,” Dastien said. “Don’t feel bad about it. I ate way more than you did.”

  I glanced over at his tray. He’d cleaned all of his plates. Three big dishes and two small ones.

  “This tray was mine too.” He pointed to another tray full of empty plates.

  “Holy shit, babe.” My cheeks heated. I didn’t want to make them feel bad or anything, and I liked food as much as the next person, but this was insane. “It’s weird, you know? Where does it go?”

  “Quick digestion?” Chris said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go get the books and figure out a game plan and then I’ll call my mom.”

  Adrian nodded. “If we could get everything together by tonight, then we can do a midnight casting. It’s almost the full moon. Could give us an advantage.”

  Sounded legit to me. “Cool. Let’s do this.”

  Chapter Nine

  When we got to the infirmary, Shannon and two girls that I didn’t know were in Meredith’s room. They were lost in discussion as they pawed their way through my books. One of them was pouring over the textbook, while Shannon had my family’s Book of Shadows and the other girl had the blue book.

  So much for no one messing with my stuff. I shot Dastien a look before turning my anger on them. “You went through my bag and grabbed my personal property?” I practically growled.

  They jumped, and dropped the books, keeping their gazes on the ground. Except for Shannon.

  She held onto the book and slowly closed it. She wasn’t strong enough to meet my gaze directly, but she stared at my forehead. “We were working on helping Meredith. What you’re planning is wrong. I can’t let you try to suppress her wolf when she wants out.”

  I tried to push the wolf down, but fur rippled along my forearms. My control today was total shit. “I’m trying to help her, not kill her. Anything else we try will end in a funeral. And I don’t think I gave any of you permission to dig around in my bag.”

  “They were given to a pack member. They’re the pack’s books now,” Shannon said.

  Was she trying to piss me off?

  “Man, that was a dumb thing to say,” Adrian said.

  Chris grunted as the cold fury beat inside me. The fur spread, but I wasn’t ready to change. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let myself change.

  Dastien cleared his throat. “You want to think very carefully about what you say next, Shannon.”

  I took the fallen books from the ground and grabbed the Book of Shadows out of Shannon’s hand. “You two will leave here now and never speak of these books again.” I let my alpha power roll out as I said the words to the two girls.

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said, but they were frozen in place.

  “Go. Now.”

  Dastien held my hand, and I barely hung on to my human form.

  Once they were gone, I turned to Shannon. “What the hell is your problem? I know we don’t get along, but we’re after the same thing.”

  “No. We’re not.” She met my gaze for a split second before looking down. “I know you’ve gotten close with Meredith, but I’ve been friends with her for years. We spent our summers together. I know what this has done to her, and I know that if there was a time to try and fix it, it’s now.”

  “And you’re willing to take that risk?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked down at Meredith’s pale form. She was drugged, and couldn’t speak for herself. Maybe my reasoning was off. Everyone else thought so.

  I couldn’t afford to screw this up. “Guys? I’m a little out of my element here. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. So, let’s vote.”

  “A pack isn’t run by vote, cherie,” Dastien said.

  “Well, this isn’t a pack. This is us being Meredith’s friends.” I turned to Adrian. “What do you think?”

  He looked around the room and then crossed his arms. “Given what we know, I’m with you. Safest option is best.”

  “Chris?”

  He ran his hands through his hair, making his blond waves stand on end. “I hate this. I really hate this.”

  I knew the feeling. There was no doubt that this whole situation was messed up.

  “If we’re going on what we know right now, I think there aren’t any good options,” Chris said.

  Shannon growled in the corner but didn’t speak up.

  “But for the record,” Chris continued. “I want to be on Shannon’s side. I want to find another way besides making a bad situation worse. I just don’t know that there is one.”

  I nodded. “Agreed.” The guys were with me, even if they didn’t want to be. “Dastien?”

  “I agree. It would be good to find a way to get around this, but for now if you can help her in any way, then that would be good.”

  “You’re not helping her,” Shannon yelled. “You’re making her worse. I’ll not be a part of it.” She slammed the door so hard the door splintered around the knob.

  The room was quiet for a second.

  “Well, that was super fun,” I said. I rolled my shoulders back, trying to ease the tension. “Am I doing the right thing?”

  “I think so. Breaking the curse is dangerous. Calming the wolf has worked for years,” Dastien said. “Her parents and three of her brothers won’t get here until tomorrow, but her oldest brother is close. His flight should land in a few hours. We’ll talk it out with him when he gets here. They can try to calm her wolf, too, but I don’t think it’s going to work.” He made a face. “None of them are stronger than me.”

  I glanced down at Meredith. I’d met her brother in the vision. Although the word ‘met’ might’ve been a stretch. “Yeah. I’d feel better if we got the okay from her family before we did anything to her.”

  “We should still get the potion ready,” Adrian said. “If they a
gree, then we’ll be good to go. And if not…it’ll keep us busy while we wait.”

  “Yeah. Let’s go,” Chris said as he gingerly opened the broken door.

  We left the infirmary and walked to the next building over. Classes had all let out by now. Everyone else on campus was eating, studying, or working out.

  The metaphysics lab was at the end of the hall. That way, if someone accidentally blew something up, not as many classrooms would be destroyed. When my lab partner told me that during my second week, I was shocked. What about the students in the classrooms? He told me in a you-gotta-be-kidding-me voice that we were werewolves. Healing wasn’t a problem.

  Still, I hoped we didn’t blow anything up with our attempts at potion making. Healing fast didn’t mean we couldn’t feel pain.

  Adrian opened the door and turned on the lights. The fluorescents flickered a few times before burning at full strength.

  Heavy-duty metal tables took up the room, each one with two stools. It looked like a chemistry classroom from a normal school, complete with beakers and Bunsen burners on every table. The only difference was what actually went into the beakers.

  “Can I see the book?” Adrian asked as he sat at one of the tables.

  I opened up my bag and pulled the little brown book out. “Be careful with it,” I said as I handed it over.

  “Of course.”

  Dastien grabbed the stools from the table behind us. We sat as Adrian placed the book gently on the table. It still had little yellow pieces of paper sticking out from it marking pages.

  “We have three options, but only one really viable spell. At least that’s my opinion.” He opened to the first one. “This is a basic healing spell.” He tapped the page and turned it so that I could read it. Little scribblings filled the margins. It called for dried sage, holy water, and an egg.

  An egg? Brujas were weird.

  I skimmed the description. It was a spell. There were steps to be performed and words to be said, but nothing that required any pre-mixing in the meta lab. As far as things went, this one seemed much easier than I’d thought it’d be. Anyone could do this.