Avoiding Alpha (Alpha Girl #2)

I ignored their yelling. I knew I was right. It was the only way.

Slowly, my wolf settled down. I breathed a sigh of relief. Today was not a good day to change.

“As much as I hate to say it, Tess has a point,” Adrian said. “But maybe if we knew what happened to her, what the spell or curse was, then we’d know how to calm her wolf better.”

I spun around. “Does anyone know what happened?”

Shannon stayed quiet, while Chris and Adrian shook their heads.

Interesting. I wondered what Shannon was hiding.

“Well, we can’t let Dr. Gonzales wake her up,” I said. “The sedatives won’t work for long anyway.”

Chris bounced a pencil on the table. The tap-tap-tap made me more on edge than I already was, if that was even possible. I ripped the pencil from his hand, snapped it in half, and threw it across the room. Wooden splinters rained down on the gray shag carpeting.

Everyone in the room froze.

“Holy shit. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.” I’d reached the point where I was acting without thinking. My control was seriously slipping and I hadn’t even noticed it. The wolf inside me was gaining the upper hand, and that couldn’t happen. I sat heavily in my chair.

“It’s fine. I didn’t realize I was tapping my pencil.” Chris shrugged it off like it was no big deal. To them, maybe it wasn’t. To me, it was.

“It was the sound, but God—I’ve never just done that. It was incredibly rude. I’m so sorry.” My wolf wasn’t conflicted about it. Something was annoying me and she stopped it.

Oh no. I was starting to realize what my wolf wanted.

“This might be a crazy idea…” Chris started, then shook his head.

Focusing on Meredith meant I didn’t have to deal with the whole wolf thing. I waited for Chris to speak up, but he didn’t. “Spill it.”

“I know you can get visions and stuff, but can you dig around in someone’s mind?”

The thought of doing that turned my stomach. Messing around in someone’s head seemed a shade darker than anything I ever wanted to do. It was worse than snooping around someone’s closet or medicine cabinet. Everyone had secrets and memories that they’d rather not talk about. What I saw, even when it was something little, was extremely personal, and I felt exactly what they felt. Saw what they saw. To dig around in multiple memories, hoping to run across the right one…that seemed far from kosher.

How far would I go to save Meredith?

Apparently pretty far, because I was seriously thinking about giving this plan a shot. “I’ve never tried. I spent my whole life trying to avoid getting visions, so forcing one from someone wasn’t even on my radar. But getting a specific vision of an event…I don’t know. I could try. You think it’d help?”

“Yes,” Adrian said. “If you could figure out how she got cursed, then maybe we’d have a better shot at undoing it.”

“I guess it’s worth a try.” I just hoped Meredith wouldn’t mind me messing around in her head.

Chapter Seven

I opened the conference room door and walked straight into Dastien. He grasped my shoulders as I stumbled back a step.

“What’s up?” I asked.

He’d changed from the sweats into his usual jeans and T-shirt, but his eyes still held worry. “I was going to ask you the same thing. I felt you go a little…out of control.” He squeezed my shoulders once before letting go. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t even know how to answer that question. I was feeling on edge. That said, I’d been feeling on edge since my run-in with Luciana. Being anxious wasn’t unusual for me, but today was over the top. I’d nearly shifted twice already, and it wasn’t even dinnertime. To say that I felt uneasy was an extreme understatement, and I didn’t like it at all. I used to be even-keeled. With my visions, I had to be able to roll with whatever was going on, but now I was a mess.

“I’m thinking of doing something that I’m not exactly sure is a super fantastic idea,” I said, taking the easy road out rather than discussing my wolf for the one-millionth time.

“We’re going to the infirmary to see if Tess can see what happened when Meredith was cursed,” Shannon said.

Who knew she was such a little tattletale? Not that I wouldn’t tell Dastien, but it would’ve been nice to ask his opinion myself. I gave her a less-than-friendly look, but Shannon didn’t look the least bit sorry.

“Are you sure that’s something you want to try?” Dastien asked.