Alpha Erased (Alpha Girl 9)

I should get some sleep, but I wouldn’t be able to do that. Not when there was still so much to do to get this apartment set up. I ran a hand down my face.

“What’s wrong?” Michael stepped toward me.

“Nothing. I just…” I didn’t know what to tell him, so I went with the easiest thing. “This place is a mess—”

Cosette waved a hand through the air, and the apartment was suddenly sparkling clean. It even smelled faintly of fresh lemons and lavender. “Any other problems?”

I walked into the kitchen and swiped my finger over the top of a cabinet. It could’ve been a fey illusion, but there was no dust on my finger.

I walked into the living room to see Cosette smirking proudly to herself.

If she could just magic the apartment clean, what else could she do? “Furniture. Can you—” I mimicked moving my hand through the air. “—and make that appear?”

She shook her head. “But Van could. He could take us into any store, and we’ll just send him back here with whatever you want.”

“You’re talking about stealing?” Michael asked.

Cosette’s grin was nearly wolfish. “Eh. Let’s not put a label on it.”

“No. That’s not a plan. Or not one that we will be participating in.” Michael pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I’ll make some calls. Where do you want to shop?”

“It’s nearly midnight.” Where were we going to get furniture at this hour?

Michael raised an eyebrow at me—it was his yes-I-am-aware look. “This is Los Angeles. Anything can be opened for a price. So, where?”

Everyone looked at me, but I didn’t know. “Wherever is fine. As long as Tessa likes it.”

“We’ll go to some of the same places we got the furniture for your house,” Chris said. “Everything we got was already Tessa-approved. But I need food.”

“You drive. Cosette will give me names of stores.” Michael tossed me car keys. “We’ll make calls on the way. By the time we’re done eating, I’ll have some stores opened.”

True to his word, he arranged for a string of stores to open. Not just one store. A string. He even had a truck ready for us to haul everything to the apartment. He also had a Target stay open for an hour later than their normal.

I wasn’t sure how Michael pulled all of this off with a few phone calls, but I was thankful.

We hit the Target last. By that time, we were in full-on shenanigans mode as we slurped down milkshakes and tore through aisle after aisle. We already had a TV waiting at the front of the store, plus some video games and three other full carts. I wasn’t even sure I needed all this shit, but I was having too much fun to stop everyone from dumping anything and everything into the carts. Cosette kept throwing in unicorn stuff, swearing that Tessa was obsessed with them.

She wasn’t. As far as I knew, Tessa didn’t have strong feelings one way or the other toward unicorns. Axel backed me up on this. So, we kept sneaking them out of the cart and back onto random shelves.

We were making a mess, and Michael would just have to up whatever we were paying them to stay open. No one should have to deal with this many werewolves and a fey princess.

The only time I stopped to really think about what we were getting was the book section, since Tessa had strong feelings about what was on someone’s shelves. Axel and I stopped to pick out books, and the others wandered off.

A few minutes later, Cosette came back with a massive framed print.

“Check out what I found.” Cosette flipped it around so I could see.

Surprise had me laughing before I knew I was still able to laugh.

“Oh my God.” Axel grabbed it from her. “This is amazing. You have to get it.”

I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t stop laughing at it.

The print had three wolves howling at a full moon, and it looked like it might’ve been printed with blacklight reactive paint. It was cheesy as hell and amazing.

Chris walked down the aisle with some Bluetooth speakers. He tossed them into the cart. “What’s so funny?”

Axel turned so he could see.