Alpha Assassins Guild: (Complete Series: Books 1-5)

by Juniper Leigh

  “Are you insane?” I asked, perhaps a bit too harshly. “You can’t stay on. You have to come with me in a couple of months. This has always been our plan, Verity.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that you had a say,” she countered, sitting up a little straighter and puffing out her chest to make herself as big as she could. Which was not very big at all.

  “Of course I have a say,” I said, canting my head to the side and looking at her like I thought she was an idiot which, in that moment, I did. “Don’t you get it? The second I turned eighteen, I became your legal guardian.”

  She sprang to her feet then, her nightgown falling past her knees. She paced the length of the wood floor in front of me, her feet in little white socks with little pink bows on the ankles. Children’s socks. “You can’t make me leave with you, Vi,” she said. “I don’t want to leave him. And you can’t make me.”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” I said, and rose to my feet as well. We shared a small corner room, reserved for the older children, out of the central dormitory. We had twin beds, side tables, desks, lamps. It was small, cozy, homey. And in that moment, utterly claustrophobic. “You’re talking like an idiot kid right now,” I said, and I could see how my words were wounding her. “You’re sixteen years old—no one is ever really in love at sixteen years old.”

  “Just because you’re too much of a frigid bitch to understand what I’m feeling doesn’t mean that it isn’t real,” she hissed. “Just because you’re a virgin doesn’t mean that the rest of us should live a lonely life of—of—of… I don’t know, celibacy and… loneliness.”

  “A lonely life of loneliness, eh?” I mocked.

  “Would you please just try to understand where I’m coming from?” she begged, suddenly desperate. “I think if I leave him, my heart will crack wide open. What if I never recover?”

  “You’ll live,” I said, unmoved. And maybe if I’d felt anything even remotely close to what she was feeling in that moment, I would have been kinder. Sure, there’d been a few boys, a few kisses, a few awkward fumblings. But nothing had ignited anything more in me than curiosity. Verity stood before me in that moment in total vulnerability, and I told her to just get over it.

  “I’ll hate you forever if you make me go,” she shouted, crossing her arms in front of her.

  “Fine,” I spat back, “I can live with that, so long as you go.”

  “You’re supposed to be on my side, Viola!”

  “I am on your side. I want the best in the world for you. And staying in a goddamned Catholic orphanage for an extra two years because you want to bone some teenaged ginger is fucking stupid, and I’m not going to let it happen, do you understand me?” I reached for her, curling my fingers around one of her tiny little wrists and tugging her toward me. “All right, so you love him. Great. Terrific. But I love you, and I need you to come with me.”

  She jerked herself free from my grip, shaking her head.

  “And you might like the new school. Who knows who you might meet there?” I sighed, rubbing at my eyes with the heel of my hand. “This is a school of unwanted, discarded leftovers. You’ll find something better at a normal school.”

  She turned her eyes up then, and they were wide, and blue, and glassy. My words had slapped her, and she flushed red with the impact of it. “Unwanted, discarded leftovers,” she repeated. “Is that what you think we are?”

  I considered her for a moment, and I don’t know what it was that kept me from shielding her in that moment, but I simply said, “Yes.”

  She left me then without another word, in her nightgown and socks, to be anywhere else, anywhere that I wasn’t. Perhaps she snuck into the wing of the boy’s dormitory where Leo Devins was in his bed, and maybe she pressed herself against him in the dark and wept. I don’t know. All I know is that we never spoke of it, of Leo Devins, or of her staying behind ever again.

  Sitting in the car with Graham, on the way to fetch Rowan to speak to all of the Clan Leaders, I felt something odd and unfamiliar. I no longer felt like a lonely, loveless, unwanted, discarded leftover. I felt a strange sense of belonging, of a fullness in the cavern of my heart. Was this what Verity had felt when she’d spoken to me of Leo Devins that night all those years ago? Had she felt this full up with warmth and radiance? Had she wanted to take her lover into her and hold him there? Because if she felt even a fraction of what I feel now, then I owed her a big, big apology.

  ***

  CHAPTER 1

  She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep in the passenger seat of Graham’s truck when a bump in the road jolted her awake again. She stretched her arms up high over her head, yawning a great catlike yawn and settling into her reality. She had just killed Alec Weaver, the Alpha of Clan Felidae, thus elevating Rowan to that most coveted position. She had enlisted the help of the young lioness Katherine to gather the Felidae council and leadership from the other local clans, all of whom would be converging on the Ursus Dwelling. She was the most powerful shapeshifter anyone had ever encountered.

  Graham cast a furtive glance in her direction as he continued down the deserted mountain road. “How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice a low hum over the din of country music that emanated from the radio.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, arching her back with a satisfying pop of the stiff vertebrae. “Okay, I guess.”

  “You crashed pretty hard there,” he noted.

  “Yeah,” she said, scratching at the back of her head, “it happens. When the adrenaline is gone, I just sort of…” She heaved a sigh and leaned her head against the cool glass of the passenger’s side window. Her breath left a fog through which she could spy the lights of the motel. “We’re nearly there,” she remarked absently.

  “Yeah,” Graham confirmed. He reached out and switched off the radio, pulling the truck over to the side of the road. Both of them were wearing precious little in the way of clothing, their options having been limited through their various shifts into creatures much too large for slacks and boxer briefs. Graham turned in his seat so that he was facing her and raked his fingers through his full mass of brown hair, and she turned and lifted her tired eyes to his face.

  “We should work out how this will go,” he said. “Before we get back.”

  “Go?” she echoed, not quite following.

  “With Rowan.”

  “Ah.” Viola combed her fingers through the tangled mass of her hair, trying not to think about what she must look like, in Rowan’s long-sleeved black shirt and boxers, her body aching from the effort of her shifting, her heart heavy with the consequences of her actions. She’d killed Rowan’s father: there was a very real chance he would never forgive her.

  “He needs to be convinced that my plan is a good one,” Graham continued. “Everything could fall apart if he doesn’t get on board.”

  “He was on board before,” she said. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of? That’s not good enough, Viola.”

  She shrugged, still pulsing with the exhaustion of the day, the week, the lifetime. She shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Graham. He was as willing as he was ever going to be when I left earlier, and now… we just have to go in there and talk to him.”

  “Fine,” he said, shifting back into gear and pulling out onto the road once more. He was closing the distance between them and the motel at a rapid pace. He was gripping the steering wheel, and his expression was one of thinly veiled rancor that elicited a long-suffering sigh from Viola.

  “You treat me like I haven’t done enough for you, for this cause,” she snapped, unable to rein herself in under the continued stress of the night. “Like it’ll be my fault somehow if Rowan doesn’t immediately fall in line as soon as we walk through that door. We killed his father, Graham. He might hate me forever. You do realize that.”

  “Well, maybe if you had done this my way—”

  “Your way?” She whirled around in her seat, leaning forward so that her arm was resting on the dash. “Your w
ay would have meant we would be returning to a man knocked unconscious, robbed, and tied up. You think that would have been more effective?”

  “He wouldn’t have the choice—”

  “There would always be a choice, Graham,” she countered, “always. And, frankly, if we had done it your way and he had chosen to attack us on site, I wouldn’t have been able to blame him.”

  Graham glowered into the distance as he pulled the truck into the motel parking lot, throwing it into park and killing the engine in a series of agitated movements. He threw open the door, preparing to climb out of the truck, but, given his current state of undress, thought better of it and sighed, his own fatigue showing even in the sickly orange glow of the tall overhead lamps of the parking lot.

  “Why are you treating me like you’re angry with me?” she asked, her voice thick with emotion. “Why can’t you understand how hard I’m trying to make this all go how we want it to go?”

  Graham was silent for a long while, and the only noise in the compartment was the click of a cooling engine and their breathing. “I don’t know,” he began on the wings of an exhalation. “I guess… God, after I say this, you’re going to hate me.”

  “What?” she said, suddenly alert. “I won’t hate you.”

  “This whole thing is my fault,” he went on, “and now part of what I have to do is go in there and convince a man who hates me—and rightfully so—to take the woman I love for a mate.” He angled his eyes up at her then, warm and glistening, and proffered a chagrined sort of smile. “I’m a bloody hypocrite.”

  Viola let out the whisper of a laugh and gave a slow shake of her head. “Actually, I think, it means you and Rowan have a lot more in common than you think you do.”

  He nodded, scratching at the back of his neck, “Yeah.” He caught her staring at him and blinked, suddenly self-conscious under the careful scrutiny of her wide blue eyes. “What?” he asked.

  “You love me.”

  “You’re the first and only of your kind,” he said plainly. “You’re extraordinary.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Yes. Yes,” he said, “of course I love you.”

  Maybe it was years of feeling like an outsider, years of knowing only the love that comes between sisters, of not believing that anything else mattered or even existed. Maybe all of that was why she felt overwhelmed by the love of these two men. Overwhelmed, and utterly undeserving.

  “Come on,” she said quietly, opening the passenger’s side door to his truck, “let’s go inside.”

  ***

  Rowan had bolted the door from the inside so that when Viola pushed her way in, it caught on the chain. He was slow to rise and let them in, smirking at them in their state of undress: Viola in his black shirt and boxers, Graham naked except for an old windbreaker tied around his waist. They scurried inside when he finally threw the door open, the three of them exposed. Rowan spread his arms out to the side, making no move to conceal his nudity from Viola or Graham.

  “Is it done?” was all he wanted to know.

  “Yes,” Viola confirmed. “It’s done.”

  He was silent as he retreated to the bed. He slipped under the mussed covers and remained upright, his lower half obscured by an old floral bedspread, leaning back against the blond wood headboard. “I’m not usually one to take things lying down,” he joked, “but I’m not usually delivered this kind of news while someone else is wearing my clothes—where are my pants, by the way?”

  “Collateral damage,” Viola said, and tried to smile. Graham sat on a chair by the window, relieved to be even slightly more covered, and Viola stood between them.

  “Do you even feel sorry?” Rowan asked, inclining his head slightly.

  “Of course I do, Rowan,” she said, finding her heart had risen up high in her throat. That was probably the thing she liked least about being an adult, the feeling that there are no good choices to be made, but inevitably being forced to make one anyway. How many more alphas and innocents would have lost their lives if Alec had been allowed to remain?

  “Well,” he said, his voice thick, “I suppose that’s something.” He shot a glare in Graham’s general direction, but Graham had his head turned demurely away, as though he wanted to give them just a modicum of privacy for this exchange. “What do we do next?”

  “So, you’re on board, then?” Viola asked, brightening.

  “Maybe,” Rowan went on, crossing his arms over the expanse of his chest. “That depends entirely on what you’ve got planned.”

  “Next, we unite the clans,” Graham interjected. “Next, the three of us head back to the Ursus Dwelling, where your council and clan leadership from the other major clans will be waiting to hear what we have to say.”

  “The three of us,” Rowan echoed, his voice distant, like he was lost in thought.

  “Yes,” Graham confirmed.

  “I don’t even know you,” Rowan said, his bright green eyes fixated on Graham, “and I’m supposed to just… unite with you? Share the same woman? I don’t even know who the fuck you are.”

  “You knew me well enough to sic an assassin on me,” Graham shot back, and Viola found herself tensing, ready to spring into action to tear them apart if she had to.

  “That was my father, and you know it,” Rowan spat back, “which I imagine has something to do with why you killed him today.”

  “Yeah, a move you knew about—don’t think for a second you wouldn’t go down as an accomplice if this ever reached a court.”

  “Fuck you,” Rowan shouted, moving like he wanted to rise to his feet, but remaining relegated to the bed because he also didn’t want to present his naked vulnerability. He was breathing hard so that his chest heaved, up and down, in rapid succession.

  “Yeah, fuck you, too,” Graham grumbled, turning away as much as he could in his chair by the window.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Viola said, glancing between them. “If you two can’t manage to get along, then everything we’ve all been through will be for nothing.” She climbed onto the bed, sitting cross-legged at the foot, careful not to inch too close to Rowan lest it be misinterpreted as her throwing her lot in with him entirely. She sensed that taking sides would not go over well. “Let’s just talk about what needs to happen next, all right?”

  “Next, we go to the Dwelling,” Graham said plainly. “There is no other course of action.”

  “It’s the middle of the goddamned night,” Rowan said, rubbing at his eyes.

  “And everyone is gathering.”

  “But that will take time.” Rowan looked at Viola, hoping that logic would prevail. “Right?”

  She bounced her shoulders in a shrug and averted her gaze. She felt fragile, a delicate linchpin that was holding this entire operation together.

  “Just… speak your mind, Viola,” Graham urged. “Don’t go all demure on us now.” He grinned. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  She peered up at him through the thick black forest of her lashes and couldn’t help but smile a little. “Fine,” she said at length, “I agree with Rowan. It’ll be light soon; we may as well try to get some sleep, and maybe have someone from Ursus drive out with some clothes so that we don’t show up at the Dwelling like we’ve just come from a 1970s key party.”

  “Key party?” Graham echoed, brows arched.

  “Orgy,” Rowan explained, “swingers’ party, see, what happened was—”

  “Focus, boys,” Viola said.

  “Fine.” Graham planted his feet on the dingy carpeting and stood upright, untying the windbreaker from about his waist and exposing his manhood to the open air. Rowan subtly averted his eyes. “No reason to stand on ceremony here.” Graham went around to the other side of the bed and climbed in between the sheets.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Rowan protested, though his words didn’t deter Graham, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sleeping,” Graham said plainly, and snuggled down, turning his back to Rowan as he got com
fortable with his head on his bent elbow. Rowan stared at him with a furrowed brow for a long stretch of silence. But he was never one to be outdone, so he reached out to the lamp on the bedside table nearby and switched it off before he scooted down and lay on his back, inching as close to the edge of the bed as he could.

  There was a great chasm between the two men, and Viola knew it was the spot reserved for her, but she found herself overwhelmingly irritated. Why, she couldn’t precisely say.

  “So I guess that’s that, then,” she said, climbing off the bed to head into the bathroom.

  “Aren’t you going to sleep?” came Graham’s somnambulant voice.

  “I’m going to pee, if that’s okay with everyone,” she snapped and closed the door behind her. She switched on the harsh overhead fluorescents and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked as tired as she felt, with dark ripples of pale purple and blue expanding out from her eyes like ripples in a pond. She was pallid, her black hair mussed and unruly, like spilled ink. She splashed cool water on her face, trying to find some way to feel refreshed, but she felt numb. Her ears buzzed; she was exhausted.

  She used the toilet, washed her hands, and rubbed cheap motel lotion into her skin before returning to the darkness of the bedroom, where the only sound was the resting breath of two large men. She climbed onto the mattress between them and found herself with slightly less space than she needed. So she burrowed, down, down underneath the covers, and pressed her bottom up against Graham’s. She slung an arm over Rowan’s hips, and this is how she would be between them, the only one of the three wearing any clothes, pressed up against them both. She would be the link that connected them; she would be their peace and their homecoming, and she would usher in the unity to which they were both, ostensibly, devoted.