Avoiding Alpha

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.