Stealing the Alpha’s Heart

I was tucking Ashlee into bed when I heard the front door open. K!ssing her on the forehead, I rushed out to see Mahlan carrying in an unconscious woman.

“Why do you have — Oh my God! Is that Sarah?” I rushed over to him, looking at the unconscious face of my friend. “What’s going on? Is she hurt?”

“You know this woman?” Theo asked, his voice icier than I’d ever heard it.

“You should back up,” Mahlan said much more softly. “She’s dangerous.”

Sarah? Dangerous? How? She was the friend who fed me, helped clothe me, even gave me makeup all throughout high school. I’d spent the night at her house more times than I could count.

“Lyssa, your friend is the witch who cursed you.”

What?

“Well, maybe not originally cursed you; she’d have to been pretty young then. But she’s the one who’s strengthened it since you’ve interacted with Mahlan’s pack and put it on your young Ashlee. How is she, by the way?”

“Tuckered out and in bed,” I said, beginning to pace.

My closest friend had known about me being a shifter and helped curse me? That didn’t seem possible, and yet…

“Hey, sorry to rush what is no doubt a heady personal revelation, but I have to get her into a magic sealing circle ASAP. You mind if I draw on your floor?”

“What? Oh, sure. Go ahead.”

Maybe it wasn’t my place to give permission to do that, but I doubted Mahlan would object.

And that was how I ended up sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, watching as my mate carefully deposited Sarah within the circle.

“Well, the good news is we got our moonstone back,” Parker said, holding up a strange-looking stone.

“Huh, so that was what you guys were after this whole time?” I murmured, feeling like I was half in the world and half out of it. Sarah, my friend of years. Sarah, who was funny, sweet, and a bit mother hen-ish, was my enemy. Had tricked me, hurt me.

My abandonment complex was flaring up something fierce, and it was all I could do to not spiral back into the closed-off Lyssa that I had fought so hard to grow from.

“So,” Mahlan murmured to me, voice full of concern. “How do you know this witch again?”

“She’s my best friend from high school,” I answered weakly. “The whole time.”

“Oh, Lyssa, I’m sorry.”

Mahlan enveloped me in a hug and I sank into him, accepting the comfort. We would have stayed like that forever if Sarah’s eyelids hadn’t fluttered as her posture slumped.

“Wha…” she murmured, l!cking her l!ps and blinking her eyes like she was coming out of an exceptionally deep sleep. “Where?”

She blinked some more before realization must have hit her because her face drained of all color. “You should just kill me.”

Well, that was certainly a turn.

“Sarah, are you serious?” I asked, suddenly more angry than anything else. How dare she!

Her head snapped towards me, her eyes wide as she went even paler. “Lyssa, what are you doing here?”

“Do you think you’re in the position to be asking that right now?” My voice was sharp, but I didn’t care. “You owe me an explanation, and you owe it now.”

She was silent for a long moment, then two, before finally speaking. “It’s complicated.”

“Then uncomplicate it.”

Sarah shifted for a moment, clearly uncomfortable, but I didn’t care. Now that the shock was wavering, I was full of indignant fury. “You had to be locked away, Lyssa. It wasn’t my choice.”

“How so?” Mahlan asked.

“It’s her parentage.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

“It started with your father, Lyssa. Your biological one. He was close to these two brothers, childhood best friends even. One day, one of them was hurt, and he took them to his pack’s alma, who just so happened to be your biological mother.”

“My mother was an alma?” I murmured, trying to fit that revelation with everything else that was going on in my head.

“Yes. But she wasn’t yet when she was healing the brother. His wounds were… complex. Impossible even, but your mother was ambitious and determined to save them. She created a potion infused with things too powerful for her to use, including her own b***d. But she did anyway, and it caused a b***d oath between your mother and the injured brother.”

“That… is that bad?”

“It can cause psychosis as time passes and the b***d fades from their system. Your mother didn’t know this, so when the healing brother began to show symptoms of this psychosis, it took them a while to figure out what was happening.

“But once the healthy brother figured it out, he started to look for ways to cure it. He went to witches, sorcerers, medicine men — you name it.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t go well?” Samson murmured.

“No, not at all. The brothers slipped further into their madness and determination to find a cure, and after an altercation, they ended up killing your parents. You were still a pup, so I think that somehow saved you. Like murdering a toddler was too much for even them.”

I covered my mouth, my heart hammering in my chest. My bio parents had been… had been murdered? So there was no chance to meet them. Ever.

The loss bubbled up within me, but I tried to push it down.

“So they took me?”

“Yeah, and put you with people who would raise you, I don’t know how.”

“And where do you come in with this?”

“They did the same to my parents. They were friends of your father’s, and the brothers didn’t want them to live. Then they took me and placed me with a family close to your new one, and I was raised to watch you. Then, later, to curse you.”

Samson straightened at that. “So, you made this curse?”

“No, I was taught it from someone else once I was old enough. I seem to have a certain… magical aptitude that’s fairly unparalleled for my age.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Samson scoffed. “Couldn’t break your curse if I tried.”

“Yes, with the moonstones, it was nearly impossible to.”

“But you don’t have the moonstones anymore,” Parker remarked, holding them up.

My b***d ran cold when Sarah smiled, standing to her full height. “No, but I don’t really need them.”

She clapped her hands, and a flash of light filled the room, making all the wolves wince. But I didn’t, so I was the only one who saw her hand grow into a long blade of crackling electricity as she lunged at Mahlan.

No!

Suddenly the world cracked in two as I became aware of several things all at once. First was that my best friend was about to kill my mate. The second was that I was bristling with more energy than I’d ever had in my life.

“Stop!” I screamed, leaping forward and letting the energy burst through me.

And then time slowed, thousands of things hitting me all at once. First of all, it felt like I was on fire, but in a pleasant way, heat spreading out across my limbs in an intense rush. Secondly, it was like my body was stretching, stretching, cracking, and popping in ways that should have been painful but were somewhat of a relief.

Thirdly, all of my senses turned up to eleven so quickly that for a moment, there was just brilliant light and static. But I didn’t let that distract me. My only goal was protecting my mate, and I was determined to do that.

Finally, I hit the floor on all fours, snarling with my teeth bared.

Wait… all fours?

Looking down at myself, I realized that I was a wolf, a real, honest-to-God wolf! It was so much all at the same time, but I also couldn’t take the time to comprehend it because Sarah was suddenly trying to impale me.

I jumped to the side, aware of the other men shifting behind me, but I didn’t need them. A voice took over my mind that I’d never heard before.

Protect. Defend. Revenge. We’re free! Finally free!

The intensity of feeling from the strange voice almost made me dizzy, but instead of distracting me, it urged me onward. As Sarah tried to cast another spell, the voice within me told me what to do.

Which was to jump forward, catching Sarah’s neck between my teeth and yanking as I twisted past her. The result was instant, only the coppery taste of b***d made me realize I’d just killed my best friend.

Sh!t.

I skidded to a stop and watched as Sarah’s magic fizzled out, then she collapsed to the floor in a pool of b***d. Shocked, I idly realized that we would have to hire cleaners again. The neighbors were going to be suspicious.

But I looked down and realized something wasn’t right. There, in my center, was a crackling ball of black and purple magic. It felt icy cold and sharp before it shot into me, burying itself in my stomach and flooding my insides with its vileness.

I stumbled back, my fur rippling in strange waves. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, and I realized that my friend had tried to kill me with her last dying breath.

No. No. I had just found out who I was, what I could be. I had just discovered love. I didn’t want to lose it already, not when I’d finally had a taste.

I hugged my inner wolf tightly, trying to cling to it with all my might, but I could feel the cold locking me up and turning me to stone. It would drag me into the darkest depths, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I was going to die.

“Lyssa!”

But then something made it through the storm within me. Blinking as the feeling grew stronger and stronger, I realized that Mahlan had shifted and was biting me.

Seemed like kind of a d**k move, considering I was dying. But then a beat passed, and suddenly my entire body was filled with a bursting light that I couldn’t describe. It attacked the darkness, beating it and the cold back until whatever spell had been cast on me was finally obliterated.

I felt good, euphoric even, but utterly drained. My body, out of energy, reverted back to my human form. Stumbling, only Mahlan catching me kept me upright on my feet.

“You shifted!” He gasped, k!ssing me all over my face. Which was probably pretty macabre, considering I was covered in b***d.

“I did,” I whispered before pulling him down into a k!ss. It was full of so much, and I hoped he felt every bit of it.

Speaking of bite…

“Here, let’s get you into the shower and then bed. I’ll have Theo take care of this.”

Nodding, I let him pick me up and take me to the guest bedroom. Maybe I shouldn’t have put Ashlee to sleep in our bed, but I hadn’t been thinking ahead at the time.

And naturally, the guest bedroom had a smaller bathroom where Mahlan carefully washed me down. Usually, I would make some snarky remark about his place having two and a half baths when he was a bachelor, but I couldn’t work up the sass.

The shower was more of a haze than anything, then Mahlan picked me up again, all bundled up in a towel. Typically, I would object to being so babied, but hey, maybe being a little spoiled wasn’t such a bad thing.

But the moment Mahlan set me down, I wrapped my arms around his neck, staring up at his handsome face. I was still reeling from what just happened, but I knew without a doubt that I was ever so grateful he was with me.

“You all right?”

For some reason, my teeth were itching, growing longer and harder in a way that almost seemed pornographic. My eyes slid down to Mahlan’s neck, and before I knew it, I was biting him exactly where I’d bitten him when we’d made love.

Oh.

OH!!!

I hadn’t been expecting something remarkable, yet the moment my teeth locked into his skin, I was shocked through to my very soul. Endorphins rushed me, drowning out all the bad and refreshing my soul.

I felt connected to him in a way I never thought possible, my heart swelling in my chest as I felt Mahlan’s emotions. Suddenly my entire world shifted, so he was at the center, someone I could trust. Rely on. Protect with my last breath.

“Was that what you felt when you bit me?” I gasped when I pulled my teeth from his neck.

He nodded, swallowing me hard as he looked at me with so much love that I could cry. “Yeah, it is.”

I had to pull him down into a k!ss again; I had to. I k!ssed him with all I had, yet it still wasn’t enough. Thankfully, I had a lifetime of k!ssing him in store for myself.

“I love you,” I murmured, so glad that he’d found me out of everyone else in the city.

“And I love you,” Mahlan said back.

I believed him, right down to my core. We were wolves together, pack through and through. And I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him.