All Chapters of Alpha Brat: Chapter 11 - Chapter 19

I wake up tangled in approximately fourteen blankets and one extremely questionable life decision. For a few blissful seconds, I forget where I am. What I cannot forget, is how since being here I have developed a super nose. My sense of smell is another level, and that alone has me worried about how damaged my body is from years of city grime.Right now, whatever that is makes me want to snuggle back in and never leave. I take another whiff.My eyes snap open, “Oh no.”Because my entire bed smells like Jax and Leo.Not faintly, it’s everywhere. Ground into the sheets, clinging to the pillows, wrapped around me like the world’s most emotionally confusing weighted blanket. And somehow, overnight, my stupid body has decided this is comforting instead of deeply alarming.I bury my face in a pillow and groan loud enough to the wildlife outside.Last night runs through my mind.Leo lifting me, Jax behind me with his hands everywhere. Growling. Teeth scraping my mouth. Corrian catching us a

River does not explain the tail.Which, personally, I think is wildly unfair considering I just watched Corrian tackle three furries who were talking shit about me into the forest like a divorced dad at a rugby match.Instead, he waits patiently while I finish dragging my jeans on the correct way around, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest like this is a completely normal Tuesday morning and not the beginning of my psychological collapse.“You gonna murder me?” I ask finally.River blinks once. “No.”“Kidnap me into your weird woodland mascot cult?”“No.”“Gaslight me about the ears?”A pause.“Yes.”“At least you’re honest.”That almost-smile appears again. Tiny and barely there unless you’re looking for it.I hate that I’m already learning his expressions.He pushes off the wall then and crosses the room toward me with that same unnerving silence that clings to him like smoke. The others fill space naturally, River somehow moves through the world without d

The daycare kids are either tiny geniuses or future supervillains. There is genuinely no middle ground.It’s been four days since the whole naked-balcony-furry-forest-fight incident, and somehow nobody has acknowledged it directly since. Which feels more disturbing than if they’d sat me down with a PowerPoint presentation titled So You Accidentally Joined A Cult.Instead, life has carried on with this bizarre, unsettling normalcy that keeps making me question whether I imagined half of it. The children still growl occasionally. One little girl hissed at a pigeon yesterday. A toddler named Max climbed a bookshelf without using his hands. And this morning, a five-year-old looked me dead in the eyes and said, “You smell happier now,” before biting another child over a juice box dispute.I did paperwork after that. Mostly because I needed a moment.Still, despite the deeply concerning feral undertones, I kind of love it here.Which feels suspicious.The kids are too clever. They absorb in

I stare at him. Yep, he’s finally lost whatever fragile grip he had on sanity.He stares right back at me, one hand still buried at the nape of my neck, dark eyes fixed on my face.The shopping bags hanging off my arms feel ridiculous. Tiny little paper shields against whatever the hell this moment is becoming.“You can't ask people things like that,” I tell him, trying for offended and landing somewhere closer to breathless. “You sound like a jealous Victorian husband.”Ezra doesn’t blink. “You let another male touch you,”That sends a weird little tremor through me. Those words aren’t sexy, absolutely should not be sexy. But there’s something underneath them, raw, furious in a way I’ve never seen from him.Usually Ezra hides everything behind polished smiles and expensive sweaters and dry little comments that make me want to bite him. Tonight he looks wrecked by me.The evening light catches sharp angles of his face as he stands over me on the deck. Heat blooms low in my stomach.So