Alpha Betrayed: A Dark Shifter Romance

JULIET

I'm in my new room, picking out something to wear after my shower, when Diana flies in through the cracked window on her side of the space.

I turn, lifting my hand in greeting. "Hey. Find something good to snack on out there?"

She hops over to the machine that's charging on the desk near her perch. She taps on the buttons and a slightly robotic female voice says, "Mouse central out there. My family thinks it's gross, but my owl wants what it wants."

I laugh. "Dude, I'm not here to judge. You do you. There were times in the not too distance past when I was hungry enough, I would have eaten a mouse if I got my hands on one. And I didn't even have the bird of prey thing as an excuse." Diana's eerily human eyes hold mine for a beat before she taps out, "You looked pretty hungry by that tree earlier. Who's the hottie?"

I blush and then curse myself for being an idiot with Ford and, what's worse, getting caught being an idiot. "That was...a mistake. One I don't intend to make again. At least not for a good long while."

She hoots, a sound I'm guessing is a laugh since her next words are teasing. "At least he's a yummy mistake. And seems like a good wolf."

I nod. "Yeah, he is. But we should keep that between us, okay?"

She c***s her head sharply to one side.

I answer the silent question. "Ford is going to infiltrate the wolf dick squad and try to weaken it from the inside. To do that, he's going to have to pretend to be one of them. That's why we were saying goodbye." "With your tongues," Diana types out.

I fight a smile. "Yeah. With our tongues."

"Best way to say goodbye," she teases as Layla bursts through the door.

"Did I hear tongues?" she asks, tossing her bag on her bed. "No fair! You can't gossip about good stuff without me. I need all the sordid details and please, please, please let them be about that smoking hot gentle giant you ran off with earlier." Ford isn't as gentle as she thinks, not even close, but I skip that part and fill her in on the plan and the need for secrecy.

I end with a stern, "And Ford is just a friend I like to kiss. Nothing more. And we're not kissing again until after the trials are over and we're both in, so I won't be running off with anyone in the near future. Sorry about that, by the way. I didn't mean to leave you alone on the lawn."

Layla waves a hand. "It's fine. A couple panther shifters glared at me a little, but they didn't say anything. The wolves weren't around so it was fine. They must be taking advantage of our last day off to sleep until noon or something." She shrugs. "Whatever. Who cares about them. I have itineraries!" She pulls rolled up papers from her back pocket and holds them in the air. "Dorm welcome meeting at four today, luau welcome party at six, and then we're having a rooftop shindig just for us! With s'mores! It's going to be lit." Her lips turn down. "But there's also bad news. Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," I say, accepting the paper she passes my way.

"Starting tomorrow we have two weeks of Lost Moon history, protocol, and new student etiquette classes," Layla says. "They start at eight and go until noon. Then it's physical conditioning until five, right up until the start of the trials. We're going to be way too tired to sneak out and explore after hours."

I smile. "Well, as a person who could use all the physical conditioning she can get, it sounds okay."

Diana hoots and types, "I wonder if they'll have little owl-sized weights for me? Tiny bird-sized treadmill?"

Layla arches a brow, "Considering you're going to fly over every obstacle and leave the rest of us in the dust, I doubt they'll worry too much about your physical conditioning. But hey, being a cursed bird ought to have some perks, right?"

"Amen, sister," Diana taps out. "Want to see the crazy thing I found in the woods while I was hunting before the meeting? We still have a few hours, right?"

Layla glances at the clock on the wall. "Yeah, but I want to be back in time to clean up so I can wow Jay on the second floor with my cuteness at the after-party."Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

Diana glances my way, and I nod, "Yeah, I'm up for an adventure. Just let me throw on some shorts and a t-shirt."

"Grab this for me, Layla?" Diana types. "I want to be able to talk when we get there."

"Sure thing," Layla says, snagging a small backpack from the chair in front of her desk and slipping Diana's speech machine inside.

Half an hour later, we're standing in front of the spookiest graveyard I've seen in a long time.

And I have the perfect excuse to come out to the woods tonight.

No one else here knows my real name, but Natalie does, and if I tell her I heard a rumor a Zion was buried on Lost Moon land and came to investigate, she'll believe me. Especially since it's true.

"Wow," Layla says from a few crumbling tombstones over. "This one is from the 1800s. She was only seventeen. Clara Mason, born to the moon and gone too soon."

"This one, too," I say, studying what's left of Tobias Zion's once grand marker. The massive stone pedestal used to hold a statue of some kind, but all that remains are the legs and part of a wolf crouched beside them. "Seventeen."

"They all are," Diana taps out from the grass not far away where Layla set out her machine. "It's so weird. That's why I wanted to show you guys. And because it's so pretty out here."

"I was thinking creepy as hell, but okay," Layla says, echoing my thoughts exactly.

Diana makes her warbling "laughing" sound. "I don't know. I love old cemeteries. They're so peaceful. And it reminds you to live big because it's all fleeting."

"It does." I stand with a final nod to Tobias, hoping he was one of the good ones.

I don't know much about my family tree before Hammer's dad, who was allegedly the Alpha to end all Alphas. But maybe not all the men in my family were bad. Ford isn't.

But then Ford isn't really a Zion. And thank God for that.

If we were actually related, I'd have no choice but to lock myself in a tower somewhere. I'm pretty sure that's the only way I'd be able to stay away from him long-term. I wasn't lying when I said I don't feel whatever "fated mate" woo-woo thing he professes to be experiencing, but I want him. Badly. Way more than I've ever wanted a guy before.

That's scary enough without throwing destiny into it.

"Do you think this is where the serial killing ghost comes from?" Layla asks, proving she's done her digging on Lost Moon, too. She shudders. "Or what if they were all murdered by the serial killer ghost? What if he has a taste for young blood?" "Well, we're all older than seventeen, so we should be okay," Diana says, proving herself even more pragmatic than I am.

"Girl, I'm only nineteen," Layla says. "That still feels too close for comfort."

"Valid. Want to see the old cabin I found?" Diana asks. "It's a little deeper in, but not too far, and we should still be back in time for you to primp."

Layla shivers again. "No, let's go. Maybe I'm just scaring myself, but I'm starting to get bad vibes."

"Maybe it's because you're somewhere you're not supposed to be, Little Variant," a silky voice rumbles from the tree line on the far side of the cemetery.

A beat later, a massive guy with closely shorn blond hair steps out of the woods. A second guy with thick brown hair pulled up into a loose ponytail is not far behind him. "Didn't your parents tell you not to go into the woods little girls?" the blond dude says, his lips curving in a diabolical smile. "You might run into a big bad wolf."

"Or two," the ponytail guy says, before adding in a chilling voice, "I want the curvy one. I like my Variant whore with a little meat on her bones."

"Run, Juliet!" Layla sprints to the right, away from campus, clearly trying to draw them away so I can make it back to school, proving she's as good a friend as my gut said she was.

But Diana has already exploded into the air and is flying hard toward the quad. I trust that she'll find a way to get help, even without her voice box, and I can't leave Layla alone. The ponytail guy is already almost on top of her.

I'm not sure I'd be able to get away, anyway. Buzz cut is stalking me slowly now, but if I try to run, it wouldn't be hard for him to catch up. I'm fast, but I'm still weaker than I should be, and my legs are half as long as his.

"A fight it is," I murmur, tapping into the cold, rage-filled place inside of me, where the feral thing lives. I lift my fists and curve my lips into a smile, determined to fight so hard that this boy will have to kill me before he violates me.

I've nearly died enough times to handle that, but I won't let him take my first time away.

That belongs to me and maybe, to Ford.

I have a second to hope that maybe the fated mate bullshit is real, and Ford will feel that I'm in trouble, before Buzz Cut says, "Take her to the cabin, Ferris. I don't want to hear her whining while I'm f*****g Crazy Eyes." He grins again. "Ready, Crazy Eyes? I sure am. I can tell this is going to be fun."