Stealing the Alpha’s Heart

I sighed, recognizing that something else was going on behind the scenes. “Did you find out something bad?”

“It’s not good,” Theo answered tersely. “Can you just go back to the shop?”

“After I get food.” I could hear his irritation through the line, and although I felt bad about it, this damsel wasn’t gonna be distressing in her tower. “What happened? Are more shifters missing?”

“Yes. They seem to be attacked similarly to how you were.”

“Damn, that witch really gets around.”

“It’s a different witch.”

I paused at that, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk. “’Scuse me?”

“It was a different witch,” he repeated, and it was like every word drummed deeper into my adrenal gland.

“Are you certain?”

“Different face shape. Different hair color and style. Yeah, different witch.”

“F**k.” The others all finally noticed I stopped and looked back at me with curiosity. Well, they were just going to have to wait for some answers because my mind was quickly recalculating everything with the new info I’d been given. “This means we need my plan more than ever.”

“It means your plan is more dangerous than ever. We should call it off!”

“No, Theo. I’m not going to go in circles about this. You’re gonna have to trust me and my brother’s judgement.”

“I’m going to be his beta. I’m sure that if I insisted, he would call it off.”

I felt my temper rise, hotter than the hell of Hades, but I fought to keep my tone civil. “You can, and yeah, he probably would. But then I’ll know that you’d rather go around me and pull rank rather than trusting me as a partner.” I knew my tone was sharp and full of venom, but I didn’t care. Theo had done a lot of right by me since the bite, but I would not tolerate someone trying to pull rank on me. Especially since I was certain my plan would work. “Is that really what you want to do, Theo?”

He didn’t answer for a long, long moment, and my heart was thundering in my chest. “No,” he said finally, and I swore my knees might collapse right out from under me. “But we need to have a discussion when we get home.”

“We certainly do,” I agreed. “I’ll see you then.”

I hung up, thoroughly done with the conversation. Looking away from my phone, I saw that everyone in my little entourage was staring at me somewhat awkwardly, some looking intensely curious and some looking like they wished they could be anywhere else.

“Let’s go get a f*****g sandwich,” I growled, stalking forward.

I didn’t know if I was wearing my emotions on my sleeve, or if everyone’s tense expressions tipped the employees off that I wasn’t having a good day, but when I finally unwrapped my sandwich when we were back at the shop, I realized that they had given me double cheese and double meat for free. Well, at least that was nice.

I tore into my lunch with gusto, partially because I was hungry and partially because I was spitting mad. I was sure that everyone noticed, but no one said anything.

When we finished, I looked at Lyssa, who had a grim expression on her face.

“Hey,” I said, wiping my mouth, “Lyssa, I want to take inventory in the back and I need your opinion on a couple of things. Come to the back with me?”

“Sure,” she said, standing up.

“As for you boys, you can either return to your boring old guard positions or keep on folding stuff. Y’all are champs.”

With that, Lyssa and I hurried to the back on our own. I quickly updated her on everything Theo had told me, which she listened to with that same serious expression.

“I feel like I’m more trouble than I’m worth,” she murmured, looking down at her hands like they had the answer written across them.

“Don’t say that,” I urged, gripping those hands so she would look up at me. “You are worth all of this and more. You aren’t the issue—these assholes and whatever they want is!”

“You’re right, you’re right,” she murmured, heaving a sigh. “I’m sorry for making it about me.”

“Hey, that’s alright. I just wanted your opinion on whether it’s stupid for me to be mad or not at Theo for trying to go around me.”

“Yes and no,” Lyssa said, telling it straight like she always did. I appreciated that she wasn’t an a*s-kisser who would just say what she thought I wanted to hear. She had a pretty strong moral code that I could rely on. “Theo shouldn’t be making carte blanche decisions for you. Goodness knows I fought Mahlan on that kind of thing. The two of you should be a team.”

I agreed with her wholeheartedly on that, and it made me feel better that she thought the same as me.

“But”—there was always a but, wasn’t there?—“he isn’t wrong that you need to be careful, and that perhaps you’ve been a little blinded by your need for vengeance as fast as possible.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say I was fueled by vengeance.”

“I would,” Lyssa continued. “And I get it, I do. But look, you and Theo got pushed into a situation that’s pretty close to what I went through. If you want to survive it, both of you will need to learn how to forgive a mate for making a decision that’s fueled by both love and the bonding hormones flowing through you, even when that decision is annoying, bothersome, or even wrong.”

“Easier said than done,” I grumbled, although I could feel that what Lyssa was saying was true.

But the biggest issue was that I didn’t love Theo. Sure, I cared for him a great deal, and I was definitely attracted to him, but there wasn’t love yet. I hoped there would be one day, but considering the circumstances of our bond, it wasn’t something I would feel right out of the gate.

Then again, hadn’t Theo basically confessed to already being in love with me? The revelation had been shocking, that was for certain, but it had to be so difficult to be in love and mated to a woman who was chasing after someone else.

Messy, messy, messy. And it was all because of the witches.

“Look, I know my desire for justice may seem like it’s a little over the top, but this whole thing is personal for me. They tried to hurt you. They tried to take me, and they destroyed part of my shop, something I’ve put b***d, sweat, and tears into. And it’s not just me. They’re taking other wolves and doing who knows what with them. Even that girl you rescued was terrified out of her mind. Has she been able to say a single thing since?”

Lyssa shook her head. “Not really. She’s being cared for right now, but there’s still a lot of trauma she’s processing. Whoever held her captive…actually, I don’t want to get into it. Let’s just say they weren’t nice.”

“See what I mean? These people won’t stop until we make them, so if I have to let myself get taken in order to bring an end to all this, I will!”

“But why does it have to be you?” Lyssa objected, sounding so upset that it stopped me in my growing furor.

Suddenly, I saw the whole situation through her eyes. A young girl who’d just stepped into adulthood and found out that she was a part of a magical race, who found a home and family after so many years of being othered. And all of it was being attacked right in front of her, while her friend seemingly wanted to go on some sort of suicide mission to get back at the bad guys.

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay. I don’t get why they chose me, but we gotta take advantage while we can. I’m sure our plan will work. Especially if Samson puts a tracking spell on me.”

“I…I just need you to be careful. I can’t lose you, you understand?”

“Don’t worry, you won’t.” I hugged her again before parting, taking a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go back to the front of the store before the boys destroy it.”

“Sounds good,” she said uncertainly. “I hope you’re not just saying what I want to hear so I don’t tattle on you to Mahlan.”

“No, Lyssa. I promise to always be honest with you except when it comes to birthday presents and other surprises.”

That seemed to break her growing dread and she let out a little laugh. “Fair enough. But does that mean you’re hiding a surprise from me now?”

“I plead the fifth!” I called singsongingly as I rushed out front.

“Oh no, you don’t! Come here and spill the beans!”

“I’ll never surrender!”

It was just what we needed to reset the mood, and the rest of the afternoon went by much better. However, good things could only last for so long, and I knew that I was going to need to talk to Theo once Mahlan dropped him off.

And of course, the alpha was right on time to pick up his mate. My brother was one punctual shifter, that was for sure.

Lyssa and I said our goodbyes, then Theo walked with me to where I parked my car in the back. He didn’t say much, but jeez, the storm he was projecting certainly said a lot.

“Would you like to grab something to eat somewhere?” he asked as we both got in, surprising me.

“Oh sure, where were you thinking?”

“A new dim sum place opened a bit away from our office. Want to try there?”

I smiled softly, appreciating the gesture. Mahlan had never been head over heels for sushi, dim sum, and hot pot like I was, so I had no doubt Theo had noticed that and stored it in his brain to surprise me someday. He really had all the capacity to be a great mate.

It was a shame how everything had turned out.

“Yeah, that sounds great!”

“I’ll put it into your car’s GPS,” he said, leaning forward to interact with my dash. A few moments later, I was following the path it set out for us. Rush-hour traffic wasn’t exactly the greatest, but we managed to catch mostly greens and arrive just as my stomach was growling.

“You sure you have time for this?” I asked as I parked. Between his patrols and work, I was surprised he even had time to think.

“It’s worth it to make time.”

He said it so bluntly, like a throwaway statement, but his words stuck with me. I knew how seriously Theo took his position, how much he cared about our pack. The thought he’d rank me as important enough to put those things to the side was a pretty heady one.

I didn’t comment on it, mostly because I didn’t want to make him self-conscious or discourage him from feeling that way, so instead we just went in.

We were seated relatively quickly, but I waited until after our first round of food before getting down to business.

“Do you have any update on things?” I braced myself for him to tell me that he’d gone to Mahlan and everything was off. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was important to be realistic about things.

“We have Samson looking for signatures right now to see if he can find anything that puts us closer to figuring this out,” he said, not mentioning Mahlan at all. That was certainly interesting. “There’s still just so much we don’t know.”

Huh. Nothing about canceling my plan. Maybe I should cut Theo some slack. He was certainly trying hard enough.

“Maybe we should call a family meeting tonight at my place, have everyone brainstorm. Might cause more attention to be drawn to my house and also give us an opportunity to all be in the same place.”

I was pretty sure that there hadn’t been a single family dinner since I was attacked, which was a terrible tradition to let fall by the wayside.

But Theo nodded slowly, one of his cheeks full of the steamed dumplings we were going to town on. “Sounds good.”

“I’ll text folks now. Oh, and I’m definitely inviting Savannah.”