by Aileen Erin
First Published by Ink Monster, LLC in 2020
Ink Monster, LLC
4470 W Sunset Blvd
Suite 145
Los Angeles, CA 90027
www.inkmonster.net
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ISBN 9781943858927
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Copyright © 2020 by Ink Monster LLC
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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Cover by Ana Cruz Arts
To my amazing critique partners from Seton Hill University, who turned into my developmental editors and amazing, treasured friends.
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Lola Dodge
and
Kime Heller-Neal
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The two of you have been through this series with me from page one. I’m not sure how you made it through the 5 or 6 rewrites of Becoming Alpha as I struggled to hone the craft. It had to have been painful, since I’d never taken a writing class before… Oy vey!
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Thank you for sticking with me.
Thank you for pushing me to make the story better.
Thank you for telling me to keep going when I thought about quitting in the middle of the second act of every book in this series.
I couldn’t have done it without y’all. <3
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Also by Aileen Erin
To My Readers
Off Planet
Off Planet
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Tessa
It wasn’t the sirens that woke me up. Or Dastien jumping out of bed. Or the sound of the fight just outside our cabin door.
I was awake before any of that happened because of the smell.
Blood.
The scent had me frozen in bed. Unable to move. Unable to fight. Unable to even reach out and wake up my mate—the one person on this Earth I knew would fight with and for me. I wanted to ignore it, at least for a minute. And so I did.
I turned my head just a little to see him calm and peaceful in his deep, dreamless sleep. He’d cut his hair short, but I could still see a hint of the dark, loose curls that would come if he let it grow again. He slept on his back with his right arm raised over his head. He’d kicked off the covers enough for me to see his muscles, and I knew I was being stupid. If I was scared, all I had to do was reach out. But I couldn’t.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of what the scent of blood might mean, but I was tired. No. Tired wasn’t an accurate word. Not anymore. I was fucking exhausted. I thought I knew what that word meant, but now, I felt it in every ache of my bones and ounce of my soul.
I’d faced down demons and lived. Worse than that, I’d faced down Satan’s second in command and came out kicking, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep fighting and winning. I wasn’t meant for a life like this—a sea of endless battles and fights and bloodshed. If this kept happening, at some point I’d fight and I’d lose and I’d die.
After we sealed the realm and sent Astaroth and his demons back to Hell, I thought everything would be quiet. That we’d have some time to relax and recover. For about three or four days, it was exactly that—quiet, peaceful, relaxing.
And then a demon stumbled onto campus, ripping into the Cazadores on evening patrol. Three died that night before I got there.
The next night, we were ready and waiting when more showed up.
And then some asshole fey started tearing into innocent human homes in the area. That took us a week to find and kill. The fey had been upset about us killing their precious, baby-eating monster. Which opened a whole political can of worms that we were still trying to agree on. Would the fey attack us? Would there be war? I wasn’t totally sure, but it seemed like it might be a yes to both questions.
But the whole time we were fighting the fey’s baby-eater, more demons were showing up, too.
And they hadn’t stopped coming.
It’d been over seven months since the thirteen of us did the spell to seal our realm.
Seven long, excruciating months of unending fighting. And I was one fight away from breaking.
I’d been hiding my burnout from Dastien because I wasn’t sure that his knowing would do anything but cause him stress and guilt, and he already carried enough of both without adding to it. With how much he was in my head, it was probably pointless to even try hiding my exhaustion, but either I’d buried my feelings deep enough, or he was giving me the benefit of not talking about it, which was good. Because talking about it wouldn’t solve anything.
There was nothing we could do but keep going. Keep fighting. Keep hoping that tomorrow would be different.
And then the sirens wailed through the walls of our one-room cabin, and the brief moment I had before the next fight was gone.
Dastien woke instantly. A second later, he was opening the door, yelling at me to hurry, shifting, and disappearing into the fight.
The wail stopped and started again. But this wasn’t the new alarm they made for demons—three short wails and one long. Nope. This was the other one. The one I’d heard in my first weeks of being at St. Ailbe’s.
I had a second to thank God for it not being demons tonight before I realized it wasn’t just blood I was smelling. It was old blood.
Old, rank blood and rotted flesh.
Goddammit. There was no hiding from this.
One more. I could fight one more time.
I threw myself from the bed and hit the ground running.
Rotted flesh and old blood meant one thing. Vampires.
I ran to my closet, hoping I still had it. The search cost me precious seconds, but as soon as I had my backpack in hand, I ran after Dastien. I was exhausted, but he wasn’t facing a fight without me.
Dastien’s cabin was in the woods behind St. Ailbe’s Academy—a not-so-secret-anymore, currently defunct boarding school for werewolves. Trees surrounded his cabin with only a small trail leading to the main campus, but vampires were gliding through the trees as if they were floating above the ground. They didn’t make a sound as they moved.
Goddammit. I paused in the doorway for a second counting. I gave up at twenty. The moon was new, but my hint of wolf gave me enough sight to see through the trees. More were coming.
I wanted to be glad that it wasn’t demons or fey, but I couldn’t exactly be happy that we were now adding vampires into our nightly fun.
I grabbed vials from the backpack as I stepped outside and jumped down the three steps to the ground. Dastien was fighting in wolf form. So was Mr. Dawson, and four other wolves—Cazadores that stayed on campus to help us.
One of the Cazadores yelped as a vampire grabbed his muzzle and bit him.
Damn it. I was moving too slow.
I threw a vial at the vampire holding the were. “In th
e name of Jesus Christ, I purify you!” The vial exploded, turning the vampire to dust, and the whimpering werewolf hit the ground hard.
He was alive. We’d help him later.
I tossed another vial toward the largest group of vampires and repeated the words to activate the spell.
Three vampires turned to embers and then dust, and then the rest of them broke apart.
Double damn. I hadn’t used this backpack in a seriously long time. I didn’t have a ton of vials in it. There was too much room for them to do their fast glide into the woods. Too much space. If it was one vial per vampire, I was going to run out.
I threw another vial and winced when I hit only one.
Shit. I reached for another vial, but suddenly wolf-Mr. Dawson was there.
He shifted for an instant, punched through another vampire’s chest, and ripped out its black heart. He threw it on the ground, then shifted to wolf again and leaped at another vampire’s throat—thick black blood spewed as the vampire fell to the ground.
I gripped the vial in my hand, searching for a cluster of vampires to throw it at, but—
Twigs snapped behind me.
I spun with a vial ready to throw but stopped myself just in time. Lucas—in human form—was running toward us with Claudia on his back. It’d taken a few weeks for the magic that linked us all together to settle down. Now, I didn’t hear their heartbeats anymore, but when we were together—our magic was stronger. We were stronger.
Even if I’d wasted my exploding spell, it wouldn’t have hurt Lucas. If fire exploded around him, I was sure the Peruvian’s Alpha could heal something like that in seconds, especially now. But my cousin Claudia was a witch. She’d heal nearly human slow. The magic had made her stronger, but not like other supernaturals.
Lucas set her down carefully, and then pulled off his clothes and shifted to his wolf form, racing into the fight.
“Claudia!” I tossed her a vial, which completely went through her hands and hit the ground.
If we weren’t surrounded by vampires, I would’ve laughed. She dropped down to get it and then waved me away. “Go! I’ll take this one, but you keep the rest. I’ve got other magic!”
Good enough.
I ran around the edge of the fight to get closer to Dastien. He was fighting a vampire, and another one was coming at his back.
Not today, asshole.
The vampire’s arms were reaching for his throat. It’s long, white nails glinted in the moonlight. I threw the vial at it. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I purify you!”
Fire burst across the vampire’s back, igniting it just before it reached Dastien.
I heard Claudia’s words echo mine a second later, and then another explosion.
A few vampires were on the ground from the wolves’ attack, but not dead—or at least not all the way dead. Only fire did that.
The fight was moving toward campus, and I wanted it to end now.
“You burn the ones on the ground,” I yelled across the fight to Claudia. “I’m wading in.”
I’d been bitten once, and it was enough to give me a healthy fear of vampires. But not enough to keep me from fighting. I’d faced down a cave of hundreds. Twenty-something may as well have been nothing. At least that’s what I was telling myself.
I used that to push me. I ripped into their chests, just like Mr. Dawson had. Black blood coated my arms, and I kept moving. Throwing vials when I could, ignoring their red gaze, and using my hands when I needed.
When the vials were gone, I dropped the backpack, but two more vampires later and I was left searching the woods for more.
It was done. Over. No more vampires to kill.
I let out a long sigh.
Dastien and I trained so much these days that this fight didn’t even count as a workout, but the adrenaline still had my heart pumping. My hands shook as I wiped black blood off them on my leggings.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d been out here. It seemed like forever and yet only a few seconds. One more win. One more night done.
Damn it. I just jinxed myself. Stupid, Tessa. Amateur move.
Two Cazador wolves broke off to search the woods. Wolf-Mr. Dawson looked at me for a second before howling and following them. One shifted and grabbed the fallen wolf, running toward campus.
“Do you need help?” I didn’t see how many bites the wolf had gotten, but he hadn’t been moving.
“Nah!” he yelled without pausing. “I got him. It’s not bad.”
Okay. If he said so, I had to believe him.
I searched around the woods, looking for anything else needing killing.
Claudia stood with Lucas in wolf form. She said a few words and a flash lit the night. The fire burned bright and hot, ensuring that the vampire wouldn’t rise again.
“How many more?” I asked her.
“Just one over there.” She pointed off to the right. “I tried to keep up with the kills.”
“You’re awesome.”
She gave me a small smile, and I knew if there were a little more light in the woods, I would’ve seen her cheeks pink a bit. Claudia was garbage at accepting compliments. “No big deal.”
“Sure. Burning vampires with a spell isn’t a big deal.” I rolled my eyes even though her human eyes couldn’t see it. “You gotta show me that trick. Would be better than ripping out the hearts.” I looked at my arms. “Gross.”
“I’d be happy to.”
I looked down. Dastien was still in wolf form, panting at my feet as he recovered from the fight. I didn’t feel any pain coming through our bond, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding it from me.
I squatted down beside him. “Any bites?” I started to reach for him to check, but he darted away from me. “Right. Gross hands.” And now that the fight was done, I could do something about that.
I dashed into the cabin to rinse off my arms, and then decided I needed to do a better job of it. I turned the knob on the shower and shed my clothes. I did a quick-thirty-second rinse-off and jumped out. Dastien was in the bathroom and traded spots with me. I searched him, still worried that he might’ve been bitten. Maybe—
I’m fine. I’m not the one that hides vampire bites, but keep looking if you want. His voice came through the bond. Michael is going to come back once the coast is clear, but Claudia said she had something to talk about.
Now?
Unfortunately. She said she needed you for something, and since we were awake…
Right. It was going to take at least an hour for the adrenaline rush to fade enough so that I could sleep. I guessed Claudia was right. I might as well make good use of the time, except I’d been really looking forward to watching some crappy TV and eating equally crappy food.
I could still do that. Just later.
I left Dastien to finish his shower and grabbed a fresh pair of leggings and a T-shirt. I was pulling on my shoes when he came out of the shower to get dressed.
Did Claudia say what she wanted? I asked Dastien.
No, and I know you’re exhausted, but it’s better to deal with whatever it is that she wants. She wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.
I laughed. I was just thinking that I was doing a good job of hiding how tired I am.
He turned to me with his shirt in his hand and raised one eyebrow. It was a look that said Really? Did you really think that? He didn’t say the words or even use the bond to think them at me. But I could hear them anyway.
“Yeah. I really thought that,” I said aloud.
I plopped onto our unmade bed while I waited for him to finish dressing. A year ago, I didn’t even know that werewolves existed. I thought I was just a weirdo who had visions. When I touched something, I could see everywhere that thing had been. When I touched a person, I could feel whatever they were feeling, see whatever was bothering them, and sometimes things got interesting.
I’d always assumed I was a freak. It wasn’t until I moved to Texas eleven months ago, and Dastien accidentally bit me that I knew
that there were more supernaturals out there than I could’ve ever imagined. I was apparently born a witch, and was now also a werewolf. And now, I’d dismantled the whole political structure of the supernatural world.
My family’s coven in Texas had turned evil, and aside from a few exceptions, everyone from the coven was dead. Some charred ruins were all that was left of the abandoned compound.
Although some of the fey had fled to live with Chris and Cosette in their neutral supernatural compound in north Texas, the vast majority were still in hiding in their respective courts and poised to attack us at the slightest hint of provocation.
And the werewolves—well, they were still getting over the fact that I’d dismantled their Council of Seven with one pesky little spell. Most of the weres thought I was too young to rule over them, even though I had enough power to do the job.
They didn’t care that I’d done the spell to stop the apocalypse. The old Alphas were pissed off that now thirteen supernaturals held power. Four fey, four werewolves, four witches, and me—a witch-werewolf combo. It took an archon—an archangel with the power to act freely—to seal our magic together, but he wasn’t around to be a part of our lives. Maybe if he was, everyone would quit their bitching, but that wasn’t happening. No one could predict—let alone control—Eli.
The old Alphas needed to get over it. I didn’t see them running themselves ragged, killing demons for the last seven months. Nope. They didn’t help fight Luciana when she went full-on evil, or Astaroth when he ripped open the portal between our realm and Hell. That was just me, my mate, and our friends.