Alpha Betrayed: A Dark Shifter Romance

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Endless, anxiety-fueled minutes turn to hours, and still, there's no indication of Juliet's resurrection or any sign of rescue.

I gather fallen pine limbs and cover her ashes, protecting them from the wind, then head over to the far side of the island, hoping to get a distress signal to someone onshore. But the university is a smudge on the horizon, barely visible through the late-afternoon fog and there isn't a single boat in sight.

I think it's around six o'clock, but I can't be sure.

The sun has gone behind the clouds and it's hard to guess the time in the gray light. But judging from the snarling in my core, it has to be close to dinnertime. I don't feel hungry-I'm too worried to feel anything but sick and scared out of my damned mind-but after the day I've had, my body is demanding fuel.

And I'm probably going to need it to swim off this island, considering no one seems inclined to launch a rescue mission. But why not for f**k's sake?

Layla made it to the top and I trust her. There's no doubt in my mind that she ran to fetch the medics, just like she said. And didn't the faculty spend most of the last few days, since Diana's supposed death, insisting the safety and well-being of the student body was their top priority? So, where the f**k are they?

And why didn't Natalie or some decent staff member intervene when they saw things were going to shit? Maybe not when we were still down on the course and they didn't realize what had happened, but at the very least when Juliet shouted that I'd been attacked. It all feels...wrong.

It reminds me of the madness this morning at the dorm.

In all the insanity of the first trial, it slipped my mind, but now it comes rushing back, seeming even more ominous in hindsight...

A little after five, I awoke to find my room trashed and a note at the bottom of my bed, that read "Get out while you still can. Leave and don't ever come back."

The message obviously wasn't great, but the truly disturbing thing was that someone had broken into my room without waking me. And not only broken in, but taken their sweet time being an agent of chaos while they were at it.

They'd tossed my clothes all over the floor, pulled down the one piece of art I'd hung-a watercolor of a phoenix Catherine painted each of us for good luck-and ripped the pages from my journal, making me glad I hadn't written anything too personal in there. They'd also stolen every jersey I'd been issued for the trials and the counselors had been clear when they handed them out-if you aren't wearing a jersey when you line up at the starting line, you don't compete.

I'd searched everywhere, even the trash bins behind the dorm, but I did't find so much as a scrap of blue fabric. In the end, I'd broken into Ferris's room and stolen one of his spares. The dorm was mostly empty by that point, and I figured I could explain it away later.

I'd tell Ferris I'd been pranked and had to "borrow" a jersey without asking in order to make it to the trial on time. He wouldn't have wanted me to miss out, after all. He was my buddy, my New Lupine brother.

Or so I'd thought.

Maybe Beck was acting alone this morning when he tried to kill me, but I doubt it. The rest of the "brothers" must have known this was the plan all along. Lure me in, string me along, then take me out at the first opportunity.

But why? It has to be more than the fact that I'm a Variant sympathizer. Plenty of other wolves support keeping things the way they are on campus, and I didn't hear any plans to take them down or push them out. The only assassination attempts were supposed to be against the Variants themselves. In the brotherhoods' minds, even a "weak wolf," one too soft-hearted to claim their place as an apex predator, is still a wolf, and therefore worthy of life and protection. There has to be a bigger reason Beck wanted me out.

Whatever it is, it's not good, and my gut says this isn't just trial drama as usual.

My gut also says it's going to eat a hole through my spine if I don't give it something to work on digesting while I wait for Juliet to come back.All text © NôvelD(r)a'ma.Org.

She has to come back.

Without her, the future is cloudier than the fog-covered sea. I can't make a plan or a back-up plan or even plot my revenge on Beck until I know she's getting off this island with me.

Focusing on something I can actually control, I scavenge through the underbrush, finding a patch of seaside rocket growing not far from sea plantain, roseroot, and a patch of blueberries the birds haven't completely decimated. I gather my bounty into a pile and shove my makeshift salad into my mouth in fat handfuls, until my stomach is growling for different reasons-pure roughage on an empty belly isn't pleasant, even for a man with an iron stomach-then go back to check on Juliet.

When I see there's been no change in her condition, I cross back to the sheltered side of the island and the reef I spotted there during my foraging. I shift and sit at the water's edge, letting my wolf instincts rise to the surface. The silvery fish nibbling at the rocks are small and quick, but eventually I catch enough of them to ease the ache in my core.

But the ache in my chest remains.

Usually, my wolf manages emotions better than I do. It's not that he doesn't care, he just sees things through a different lens. My wolf knows deep in his bones that he's part of something bigger, a link in an unbreakable chain that stretches back for millennia and will stretch on into an unimaginably vast future. But at the same time, he also realizes that life happens now. He's aware of his connection to the past and the future, but his focus is always on the present.

It's hard to get too upset about anything when you're existing for the breath in your lungs and the sand under your padded feet and the warmth unfurling in your belly as food fuels your body. No matter what a single moment holds, good or bad, it's almost never more than you can bear. It's dwelling on the past or worrying what happens next that makes human emotions so hard.

But today, even my wolf is struggling.

I lie down and rest my muzzle on the pine needles covering Juliet's remains. The acrid smell of the ash makes my eyes water, but I don't rise to find another place to rest. I need to be close to her, to guard her, to be here when she comes back to me. She's coming back to me.

She'll be here when I wake up.

All you have to do is close your eyes, I tell myself.

But deep down, I don't believe it. I've seen a lot of incredible things in my life-shifters, vampires, witches with the power to curse a girl into the body of an owl-but Death rules the land beyond this one with an iron fist. Once you enter His territory, you don't return. It's the ultimate one-way trip.

In my heart, I'm starting to believe I'll never see Juliet again, that she sacrificed her life to save mine and that's the way our love story ends.

And then a new day dawns, and nothing is what it was before.