Preying on Three Alphas

"Adrian, stop the car." Angeline blurted it out from the backseat, loud enough that Adrian braked before he'd decided to, and the three of us turned to find her squirming and pinching at her nails. For a girl who had never raised her voice in her life, it was practically a fire alarm.

"I think you should get out here, Melica. Instead of at the main gate." She couldn't look me in the eye.

"What do you mean?" I checked the map on my phone anyway, as if it might have changed. We were still fifty meters from the gate, with a long curve and the service lane in between. "That's a walk."

"Remember when people bullied me because of you?"

Because of me. Not because Arabella and her friends were natural pricks. Just me, the stray the Arvaunts took in, and the reason Angeline's life got hard.

"I just don't want that to happen again." She finally looked up. "You understand, don't you?"

To be fair, it had been bad. They'd dumped her satchel into the koi pond and made her kneel on the stones to fish out her own vials. They'd shoved her at the top of the east stairwell, and I'd gotten under her fast enough that my collarbone took the landing instead of her skull. She'd healed me afterward, crying the whole time, and I had told her it didn't even hurt.

I looked at Adrian in the rearview mirror. He was supposed to be our big brother, or near enough, and he had never once stepped in when it counted. He'd watched all of it from the sidelines like a very well-dressed referee who had forgotten the rules.

"Adrian."

"It's your call," he told the windshield.

Of course it is.

"Fine," I said. "It's fine."

I took my bag, Angeline's, and the satchel with her vials, and I got out. I'd like to say I slammed the door, but I closed it softly. Politeness is a skill I'd had to learn ever since Alpha Arnold adopted me. Arnold Arvaunt was the pinnacle of politeness. He had taken in my mother, a lone wolf who'd healed him, and then taken me in after my father, the beta, died. The habit had passed down to Angeline, Adrian, and the rest of the Arvaunt line like a family nose.

"Melica, our pack didn't survive the war on grit. We survived it on diplomacy. We maintain cordiality." That was how he reprimanded me after I lashed out at the enemy pack that killed my father.

The gravel was loud under my sandals, and the curve was long. Maein, my wolf, stirred somewhere under my ribs to give one sulky shrug before going back to sleep. She was the weakest wolf the Celestial Moon Academy had ever tried to rank, and even she seemed to have given up on me this morning. My mother swore that the closer I got to eighteen, the stronger Maein would be. I turned eighteen today. So far, the evidence was not impressive. I kept my eyes on the road.

When was the last time I'd walked this far with someone beside me?

Two years ago. Steven, at sixteen, trailing me up this exact curve with his arms crossed like the world's most reluctant bodyguard. He'd stood at the bottom of the east stairs the week after my collarbone cracked, and every week after that, until the whole hall emptied out and nobody said a word to either of us. It had only ever been Steven who protected us. Me.

"Melica, what are you doing out here?"

Steven Highvern.

Angeline's mate, goddess-given, signed and sealed on his eighteenth birthday, and therefore the one boy at the academy I was not allowed to be glad to see. Of course it's him. Of course he's the one who gets to see me like this.

"Exercise," I said. "Doctor's orders."

"You don't have a doctor."

"I have a very strict one. He's imaginary."

He didn't laugh, for the first time. Steven always laughed at the stupid things I said, and I'd spent years carefully not interpreting that. He looked past me at the empty road, then at the three bags in my arms.

"Where's Adrian?"

I shrugged.

"Get in."

"I'm okay."

"That wasn't a question." His voice slowed down. He always talked to me this way, and I always wished he didn't do it out of politeness. "Don't make me carry you into my car."

I got in. My feet hurt, anyway. I could pretend they didn't, but I had never been a convincing liar around him.

"Did Angeline ask you to walk?"

"It was my idea."

"You're a terrible liar."

"It's a gift." I stared at the dashboard. It was clean and free of any trinkets that might tell me more about him. What he liked. If he ever liked me. His car smelled like woodsmoke and cold rain, and his hands were on the wheel, wide and sure, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't look at the tendon in his forearm every time he took a turn. It's a crush, you loser. He's Angeline's. He'd do this for a stray dog.

"Does your imaginary doctor take new patients?"

"He's full."

"I can wait."

"What for?" I said. "Maybe I could use my VIP privileges for you."

"A broken heart."

I burst out laughing before I could stop it. It was the first time anyone had laughed all morning, and it was me. It was a joke. Steven made jokes at me the way people throw bread to ducks. I laughed anyway, too loud, and for once I didn't care.

"Happy birthday," he said, and he set something small in my palm.

It was a necklace. A vintage one, a tiny silver moon on a thin chain. Nobody had said it to me all morning. Not Angeline. Not Adrian. Not Alpha Arnold, who hadn't even come down to breakfast. I turned the moon over with my thumb because I couldn't look at him. Future Alphas remember birthdays. It's in the job description. I put it on anyway. I wore it where anyone could see, which tells you exactly how well I was thinking.

He didn't take the front gate. He took the ramp into the basement valet lot, the one with the flickering lights, and parked where no camera or classmate would catch me getting out of his passenger seat. Careful of him, I decided. Careful about his reputation, and hers, and the whole spotless arrangement.

"Tell me if anyone gives you trouble," he said.

"Sure," I said, and meant absolutely not.

His arm passed my knee as he reached across to push the door the rest of the way open. I got out fast and didn't turn around until his taillights were gone.

That's when I noticed the boy leaning against the pillar.

Calix Montbeau. Soon-to-be Alpha of what would soon be a defunct pack, if the rumors about the territory they'd lost were true. I'd thought nobody was here to see us, and yet he was looking at me. Or at Steven's car. They'd been friends for as long as I could remember. He didn't move from the pillar. His eyes did the walking, slow, like he was reading something in very small print. I'd been looked at like that before. People like him, deciding exactly how funny I was going to be. They were never harsh or rude about it. I was just entertainment.

"Nice ride," he said.

"It was a lift," I said.

He smiled slowly. It wasn't the first time someone had enjoyed themselves at my expense. I lifted my chin and walked past him. I didn't look back. If I had, I might have noticed he'd straightened off the pillar the second I passed.

I climbed the stairs with three bags and stepped into the main corridor just as half the school was pouring through it.

Nobody turned.

It was usually my favorite part of the day. Today I stood there for a while, waiting for it to feel like one.