AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Who knew that a person who’d never even pushed me on a swing could break my heart twice? Or make me cry at all.
So much for keeping my cool.
An Alpha Without a Plan
“Hey, wait a—”I mumbled a half-hearted reply as Aera ran away. The tears streaming down her cheeks before she’d turned made my stomach sink. Was I the cause? Was my honesty too much for her? Maybe I really was the villain in her life.
I hung my head. Maybe I was just a villain, period.
Rather than chase her down and cause her more pain, I headed toward the other side of the school, stifling a growl as a sharp scent forced its way up my nostrils.
Wolfsbane.
Pain seared through my jaw as the mandibular muscles automatically contracted at the dangerous scent. Students nearby were oblivious, their laughter and pre-class chatter interrupted only by the occasional locker slam or chiming cell phone.
Still, I knew somebody nearby had to be responsible for what had to be a potent distillation of the herb. Breathing shallowly, I moved my head to scan the crowd. Aera’s dramatic exit and the girls still watching from the opposite corner weren’t helping. And that was exactly when I noticed Rainer and his rigid back—basically the human equivalent of raised hackles—as he kept one arm tucked tightly to his side.
Concerned one of my pack members had been injured, I shoved aside thoughts of Aera and the wolfsbane and focused through the herby haze of my heightened senses.
There was definitely something bulky hiding under Rainer’s worn army jacket, folded up against his side, as he walked away.
I side-stepped a group of nerds sauntering with their noses deep in their calculus notebooks and followed Rainer as he made a quick turn down the locker bank to the row for the students whose last names started with R through U. Dread pooled in my stomach. I had a very bad feeling about what he was carrying, carefully wrapped and hidden.
After strolling across the hallway, Rainer hid the suspicious item in a locker that was not his own—it was Keith’s—before camouflaging in with the crowd.
I yanked my hood up, went over to Keith’s locker, and put my genius hacker mind to use. I entered a random passcode at first.
1, 2, 3, 4. It didn’t work.
0, 0, 0, 0. Nah, but then again, I was thinking about my cell phone pin code.
Frustrated, I pressed other combinations more than ten times, until finally I came up with 9, 1, 1, with an extra 1.
Open sesame.
“Well, isn’t he asking for help?” I muttered to myself, eyes widening in surprise as soon as I saw a gun lying flat on a book. A gun with wolfsbane. Without delay, I grabbed and dropped it in my sling bag.
Normally, I wouldn’t be carrying a gun, or anything doused in wolfsbane, but Rainer and I had a habit of saving each other—from bears, to other werewolves, and of course, the monsters in ourselves.
The life of a wolf is dangerous and unpredictable. More so when pack members went rogue and schemed up shit on their own. My lips twitched, and I covered my instinctual teeth-baring with a cheesy smile as I hurried back past my fangirl club on my way out of the school. I would not be attending any classes with a gun in my possession. That would not end well.
Instead, I grabbed something to eat at Mrs. Choi’s Korean Street Food Hangout and spent a few hours trying to figure out what to do as the alpha.
* * *
After sunset,I crossed the road, entered the woods, and welcomed the sight of the sequoia trees. My feet skimmed through the damp blades of grass as I looked up to the sky. There was something beautiful about standing under a blanket of stars scattered across the sky like aVincent van Goghpainting. It made me temporarily forget why I was there in the first place.
As the cold, night air whipped against my face, I picked up my speed and sprinted further into the woods, where the scent of greenery and moss wafted through my human form, pulling me into a tight embrace.
The sounds of life—of insects crawling on the bark and the ground, owls hooting and ravens croaking in the distance, and grasshoppers whispering their proud song of nightfall—eased my anger in more ways than one. Even more so as I glimpsed fireflies lighting up the outskirts like shooting stars.
I had to pause to let it sink in, adjusting to the power of what I was.
Everything morphed together in a crescendo, turning my stomach over from the rush. I found a log and used it to propel myself up, and for a mere second, I was suspended in the air before my foot landed on the side of a tree.
I soared, leaping from branch to branch like a child who had no fears.
Alas, that innocent joy lasted only until reality came plowing into me. I’d lost focus of where I was headed.
