Avoiding Alpha (Alpha Girl) (12 page)

They jumped, and dropped the books, keeping their gazes on the ground. Except for Shannon.

She held onto the book and slowly closed it. She wasn’t strong enough to meet my gaze directly, but she stared at my forehead. “We were working on helping Meredith. What you’re planning is wrong. I can’t let you try to suppress her wolf when she wants out.”

I tried to push the wolf down, but fur rippled along my forearms. My control today was total shit. “I’m trying to
help
her, not
kill
her. Anything else we try will end in a funeral. And I don’t think I gave any of you permission to dig around in my bag.”

“They were given to a pack member. They’re the pack’s books now,” Shannon said.

Was she trying to piss me off?

“Man, that was a dumb thing to say,” Adrian said.

Chris grunted as the cold fury beat inside me. The fur spread, but I wasn’t ready to change. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let myself change.

Dastien cleared his throat. “You want to think very carefully about what you say next, Shannon.”

I took the fallen books from the ground and grabbed the
Book of Shadows
out of Shannon’s hand. “You two will leave here now and never speak of these books again.” I let my alpha power roll out as I said the words to the two girls.

“Yes, ma’am,” they said, but they were frozen in place.

“Go. Now.”

Dastien held my hand, and I barely hung on to my human form.

Once they were gone, I turned to Shannon. “What the hell is your problem? I know we don’t get along, but we’re after the same thing.”

“No. We’re not.” She met my gaze for a split second before looking down. “I know you’ve gotten close with Meredith, but I’ve been friends with her for years. We spent our summers together. I know what this has done to her, and I know that if there was a time to try and fix it, it’s now.”

“And you’re willing to take that risk?”

“Yes.”

I looked down at Meredith’s pale form. She was drugged, and couldn’t speak for herself. Maybe my reasoning was off. Everyone else thought so.

I couldn’t afford to screw this up. “Guys? I’m a little out of my element here. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. So, let’s vote.”

“A pack isn’t run by vote,
cherie
,” Dastien said.

“Well, this isn’t a pack. This is us being Meredith’s friends.” I turned to Adrian. “What do you think?”

He looked around the room and then crossed his arms. “Given what we know, I’m with you. Safest option is best.”

“Chris?”

He ran his hands through his hair, making his blond waves stand on end. “I hate this. I really hate this.”

I knew the feeling. There was no doubt that this whole situation was messed up.

“If we’re going on what we know right now, I think there aren’t any good options,” Chris said.

Shannon growled in the corner but didn’t speak up.

“But for the record,” Chris continued. “I want to be on Shannon’s side. I want to find another way besides making a bad situation worse. I just don’t know that there is one.”

I nodded. “Agreed.” The guys were with me, even if they didn’t want to be. “Dastien?”

“I agree. It would be good to find a way to get around this, but for now if you can help her in any way, then that would be good.”

“You’re not helping her,” Shannon yelled. “You’re making her worse. I’ll not be a part of it.” She slammed the door so hard the door splintered around the knob.

The room was quiet for a second.

“Well, that was super fun,” I said. I rolled my shoulders back, trying to ease the tension. “Am I doing the right thing?”

“I think so. Breaking the curse is dangerous. Calming the wolf has worked for years,” Dastien said. “Her parents and three of her brothers won’t get here until tomorrow, but her
oldest brother is close. His flight should land in a few hours. We’ll talk it out with him when he gets here. They can try to calm her wolf, too, but I don’t think it’s going to work.” He made a face. “None of them are stronger than me.”

I glanced down at Meredith. I’d met her brother in the vision. Although the word ‘met’ might’ve been a stretch. “Yeah. I’d feel better if we got the okay from her family before we did anything to her.”

“We should still get the potion ready,” Adrian said. “If they agree, then we’ll be good to go. And if not…it’ll keep us busy while we wait.”

“Yeah. Let’s go,” Chris said as he gingerly opened the broken door.

We left the infirmary and walked to the next building over. Classes had all let out by now. Everyone else on campus was eating, studying, or working out.

The metaphysics lab was at the end of the hall. That way, if someone accidentally blew something up, not as many classrooms would be destroyed. When my lab partner told me that during my second week, I was shocked. What about the students in the classrooms? He told me in a you-gotta-be-kidding-me voice that we were werewolves. Healing wasn’t a problem.

Still, I hoped we didn’t blow anything up with our attempts at potion making. Healing fast didn’t mean we couldn’t feel pain.

Adrian opened the door and turned on the lights. The fluorescents flickered a few times before burning at full strength.

Heavy-duty metal tables took up the room, each one with two stools. It looked like a chemistry classroom from a normal school, complete with beakers and Bunsen burners on every table. The only difference was what actually went into the beakers.

“Can I see the book?” Adrian asked as he sat at one of the tables.

I opened up my bag and pulled the little brown book out. “Be careful with it,” I said as I handed it over.

“Of course.”

Dastien grabbed the stools from the table behind us. We sat as Adrian placed the book gently on the table. It still had little yellow pieces of paper sticking out from it marking pages.

“We have three options, but only one really viable spell. At least that’s my opinion.” He opened to the first one. “This is a basic healing spell.” He tapped the page and turned it so that I could read it. Little scribblings filled the margins. It called for dried sage, holy water, and an egg.

An egg?
Brujas
were weird.

I skimmed the description. It was a spell. There were steps to be performed and words to be said, but nothing that required any pre-mixing in the meta lab. As far as things went, this one seemed much easier than I’d thought it’d be. Anyone could do this.

It was too easy. “She doesn’t need to be healed. She needs the wolf to chill out so that she’s not fighting against the curse. And this spell doesn’t mix any kinds of magic.” Donovan hadn’t given me much, but I was going to trust what I did have. “That option’s out. Right?”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.” He flipped to the fourth piece of yellow paper. “This one is the most complicated of the bunch.”

“Dude. It says eye of newt,” Chris said.

“Seriously?” I looked closer. “I didn’t know that was an actual thing.”

“This one would be awesome, but it calls for the blood of the caster,” Adrian said.

I ran my finger down the ingredients. Sure enough, there it was. Three drops needed. Short of going back onto the compound, holding Luciana down, and taking her blood, I
didn’t see how I could possibly get that. “Yeah. We went over this one already. Not going to happen. Unless you’re saying that there’s a way around it.”

Adrian shook his head. “No. But I want there to be. The potion uses the blood to break the hold the curse has on the afflicted.”

I stood and paced the room as I tried to think of a way I could convince Luciana to give us some of her blood. I could bargain for it. She wanted something from me. I wanted something from her. There had to be a way for us to work it out. I pulled my hair down from its messy bun and ran my fingers through the tangles before putting it up again.

I turned back to the guys. “Maybe I can make a deal with—”

“No. Just no.” Chris turned to Dastien. “You can’t let her go back there. The vibe there wasn’t even close to cool.”

“I tried to tell her not to go earlier, and she went anyway,” Dastien said. “But, for what it’s worth,
cherie
, you shouldn’t trust someone who would bargain with you over the life of someone else.”

I chewed on my lip for a second as I thought. “You’re right.” I went back to the stool. “We’re desperate, but not that desperate. Not yet.” I leaned forward on the table. The cold metal was a shock to my warm skin. But the fact that I got zero visions because I wasn’t trying to have them was another shock. I had control. I had
bruja
powers and alpha ones. I could do this. “And the last one?”

“It’s our best shot,” Adrian said.

“Show me,” I said.

He picked the book off the table, and flipped to the right page. With a deep breath, he placed it down in front of me. “This is the one that talks about calming the inner demon. It doesn’t have as many crazy, hard to get ingredients that the other one does—although there are a few in there that I have no idea what they are and some that I have no idea where we’d
get them. Aside from that, it’s trickier. There are more steps. Everything has to be timed. And there are three different potions involved.” He paused. “Now that I’m thinking back on what you said, this is a combo of spell and potion. It could be what Donovan was talking about, but we have no real way of knowing.”

I couldn’t risk pulling that much power again. He’d be here tomorrow afternoon. Maybe morning if he ran really fast, but Meredith didn’t have that long.

I turned to Dastien. “Can we wait for Donovan?”

“I’ve never seen anyone last without the wolf for so long. And I’ve never seen someone fade so fast. If Meredith makes it to midnight, I’ll be surprised.”

In other words, no. Shit. My eyes burned and I rubbed them. I couldn’t cry. Not yet. We still had time. “Everything’s a risk.”

“There’s one more thing,” Adrian said.

What now? “And…”

“It has to be done exactly at midnight under the moon.”

God. That seemed too soon. “How much time does that give us to get everything ready?”

Chris checked his cell phone. “It’s almost five. So we’d need to have everything prepped and good to go in six hours.”

“Is that enough time?”

“We’ll make it enough,” Adrian said.

“Okay.” The pressure of what we were going to do weighed down on me. My chest constricted and I swallowed, trying to keep everything under control. “Let’s do this. Right now, it’s our best option. We’ll get started, and when Meredith’s brother gets here, we’ll give him the final call.”

“How are you doing?” Dastien said as he looked down at me.

“Fine.”

“Your wolf. She’s restless. Any chance you’ll let her out?” He nudged me.

Was he nuts? “Now? You want to talk about this now?”

“Did you read the spell?”

“Yes.”

“It says the person performing it has to be at one with themself.”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

“You’re not at one with yourself,
cherie
.” He pulled me toward him. “Why are you still so afraid of it?”

“I don’t fucking know!” I snapped at him and instantly felt bad about it. My temper was out of control today, but Dastien didn’t seem bothered by it.

“You’re a beautiful chocolate brown wolf. I’d like to see that again sometime, but you’ve been putting it off for weeks.”

When I was going through the transition from human to Were, I’d been a wolf. At one point, I kept going back and forth between forms so much that they were worried whether I’d survive. I didn’t remember, but apparently the only thing keeping me together had been Dastien staying by my side.

I rocked from foot to foot. “It’s weird.”

Adrian and Chris laughed, but Dastien shot them a look. They shut up immediately.

“I’m going to do it. I really am…not today, though.” I gave him the best smile I could. “I’ve gotta take care of Meredith first.”

He pressed his lips in a firm line before speaking. “You’re going to have to deal with this before the full moon. Three days, Tessa. It’ll give us the edge we need to fight during the Tribunal.”

“I know.” I got it, but I couldn’t deal with it now.

“It’ll be really fun. Going on a run. Feeling the wind against your face. You’re going to love it. Trust me.”

I trusted him, but still, letting go of my humanity was harder than expected. Doing it a little bit at a time was easier. I’d gotten much more comfortable with the pack and being Dastien’s mate, and those powers were pretty cool. Being on four legs was what freaked me out.

“Meredith first, then wolfy stuff.”

“Promise?”

I hated to promise if I wasn’t going to follow through. Still, I kind of had to with this one so I might as well give him my word. “I promise.”

“Good.” He placed a quick peck against my lips. “Now, let’s raid the supply closet.”

The meta lab storage room was across the hall. It was tiny, three feet by six feet at most. The door bumped precariously into the shelves that lined every inch of wall as we opened it. Every item in the room was perfectly labeled with white tape in two-inch round glass jars and alphabetically organized. The space was perfectly used. I may have been slightly jealous of the skills it took to organize at this level.

Dastien opened the door and then his cell phone rang. He pulled it from the back pocket of his jeans and glanced at the screen. “Excuse me for a sec.” He stepped into the classroom next-door.

For a moment I wondered what the phone call could be about, but soon I forgot all about it. Taking one final look around the room, I turned to Adrian and Chris. “Let’s get what we need from here, and figure out what we don’t have. After that, I’ll call my mom and see if she might know where to get the rest.”

Adrian handed me the book. “Sounds like a plan. If you read, we’ll pull.”

“Cool.” I grabbed the book. The paper was yellow and the edges were worn, but the handwriting was still readable. In the margins, someone had written, “Shortcuts result in ineffective potions.” Great. So, no shortcuts. “Cinnamon.”

Adrian searched, and handed the bottle to Chris.

“Next,” Adrian said.

“Salt.”