Alpha Divided (Alpha Girl Book 3)

I focused on not making a face. Why did she want to meet me? “Oh.”


“I hear that you and I have a few similarities.” Cosette twirled a curl around her finger, and I couldn’t imagine anything we possibly shared. “We both have some form of second sight and are torn in two directions.”

Torn in two directions? “You’re a Were?” She didn’t look like any born Were I’d ever met, and I knew I was the only one who’d been bitten in ages.

She grinned, and I would’ve sworn she glowed a little. “No! Fey.”

I must’ve heard her wrong. “I’m sorry. Did you say fey?”

“Yeah. Only we’re not anything like Tinkerbell.”

“Right. Of course.” I thought my eyes might pop out of my head. I knew there were other supernatural beings out there. I’d found that out on my first day at St. Ailbe’s, but I hadn’t actually run into anything other than vampires. I’d put it out of my head a little.

“I wanted to say hello. There aren’t many of us who understand what it’s like balancing two supernatural worlds.”

“True.” And I really didn’t know what else to say to her about it.

Someone tapped my shoulder and I turned. “I’m Shane. Live two doors down.”

Shane had his dark hair buzzed short, and a big colorful tattoo ran up his arm. I wanted to stare at it, but didn’t want to be rude. He was also tall and ripped to the point that he would’ve fit in perfectly at St. Ailbe’s. Boy must work out hard for that body.

I realized I was staring after all, and awkwardly shoved my hands in my pockets. Way to check out the neighbor. Real slick. “Cool,” I said, trying to go for nonchalance but once again, failing.

“And this is Elsa.” Claudia motioned to the girl in curled up on the couch. She looked like a child with a pair of large, green glasses. “She doesn’t talk much.”

Raphael walked to the front door and muttered something so softly, that I wondered if he was merely mouthing the words rather than saying them. Then he ran a finger along the painted wood, and I knew exactly what he was doing.

When the ends of the knot met, the pressure in the house suddenly increased, making my ears pop.

“What spell was that?”

“No one can listen in now,” Raphael said. “Most of La Aquelarre is meeting in the schoolhouse today, so we should be fine either way, but always better safe than sorry.”

Maybe I should’ve been annoyed that I wasn’t told about the meeting, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. “Why aren’t any of you there?”

“Because we know talking to you is more important that hearing whatever Luciana has to say,” Shane said.

Oh, no. This couldn’t be what I thought it was. “I thought you said that the coven was split?”

“It is,” Raphael said.

“This isn’t in half. There are like forty—”

“Sixty-two,” Shane said. “We don’t all live here on the compound, but if everyone is called in…”

Shit. There were more members than I’d thought. “Fine, sixty-two, and what, five others plus another half-witch visitor? That’s not split. That’s not enough.”

“It’ll have to be enough,” Claudia said. “We need to make this work. If we don’t, the coven is going to go fully dark and a lot of lives could be lost.”

I sat down in one of the wingback chairs and closed my eyes. My pulse was pounding in my ears, and the wolf was rising. Something brushed against my hand, and I opened my eyes.

“Eat it,” Raphael said.

I glanced down to see the PowerBar. My cousins were starting to get used to my eating habits. I gnawed my way through the tough, tasteless bar as I thought. With every new thing I learned here, defeating Luciana seemed more and more helpless. The deck was stacked and I didn’t—couldn’t—see a way around it. It would’ve been better for these people if they left the coven and joined the pack. They could defect and stay on St. Ailbe’s land.

Were there consequences to leaving? The only way to find out would be to ask. “Can you leave the coven? You could stay at St. Ailbe’s. There’s enough room. And you’d be safe until we figured out what to do next.”

“No. That’s impossible,” Claudia said.

“Why?”

“We all take a blood oath to formally join the coven.” Shane crossed his arms, staring down at me while I gnawed on my snack. “Once you’re in, it’s hard to leave. Especially for people like us whose families have been members for generations. The blood oath grows exponentially in strength with each generation.”

“And you all took this oath?” I waved the bar around the room at them. “Even though you disagreed with Luciana?”

Claudia nodded. “With the exception of Cosette. Where else were we supposed to go?”

“I don’t know, anywhere. The world is a big place.” Was it better to live here than to venture out into the unknown? I didn’t think so, but then I couldn’t make their choices for them.