Alpha Beast (The Alpha Shifter Collection)

She didn’t know why they were sitting with their enemies. After the latest massacre had killed nearly ten people, she learned three of them had been young civilians. She knew because they came to her.

Some people—spirits, ghosts, didn’t matter, they were dead people—didn’t accept that they were in fact, gone. Most did. Those that did liked to linger a lot, to watch. She’d see them looking over their loved ones, and they were nice to talk to. It was how she talked to her grandmother.

Her own mother… She cut that thought off immediately. Thinking of her mother always made her feel sad and lonely.

“Seriously, you fucking weirdo. Do you think I want to be talking to you when I could be keeping an eye on my wife and kid? I know about you. I even know that after tonight, you’re going to be engaged to Liam, so this is as much—”

“Wait, what?” She turned, looking at the spirit. The moment she focused on him, the damage to his face healed.

“You can see me. Thank God.”

“Honey, what is it that you didn’t hear?” her father asked.

She didn’t turn to look at him, instead, listening to the man no one else could see.

“I guess you didn’t know that this was an engagement party of sorts. It has all been decided by your dads. Liam is a great guy, by the way.”

“I can’t believe this,” she said.

“Believe what, honey?” her father asked.

“You’re going to marry me off?” She glared at her father, and from the deep crimson of his cheeks, she knew the dead man hadn’t been lying. Betrayal hit her hard.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“How do you think?” She glared at him. She couldn’t believe she had tried to ignore this damn spirit. A complete stranger to her in every single way and yet, he’d shown more compassion to her in a few seconds. “What do you need me to say?” she asked.

She was aware they were all looking at her strangely, but she didn’t care. From the time she was three, she’d been different. The weird one. When she was first born, there were pictures of her with deep-brown hair. Since she turned three, when she saw her first dead person, her hair got whiter. At first, streaks of it appeared. By the time she was ten, her entire head of hair was white, just like her mother’s.

“Mr. Wolf, have you ever heard of a man named Bordaux?” she asked.

“What is the meaning of this?” Liam Sr. asked.

This was going to get ugly fast, and she didn’t want it to escalate. “What’s your name?” she asked the stranger.

“Kenrick. He knows I died on the job. They buried me quietly.”

She took a deep breath as Kenrick started talking. “A guy who worked for you, Kenrick, died of a gunshot wound to the face. He said that he has discovered Bordaux has a direct communication to the coyotes. He’s feeding them information and your money in the hope of a takeover bid. He was killed trying to contact you.”

Kenrick stopped talking.

“Will you ask him to take care of my wife and kid?”

“Will you take care of his wife and his child? He misses them very much and knows they’re struggling with his death.”

She looked at Kenrick, seeing that was all he had to say. Wiping her mouth, she threw the napkin to the table and stood.

“Excuse me.” She rushed out of the dining room, going straight toward the front door. She needed to get some air.

Slamming the door closed, she took several deep breaths. It wasn’t long before she heard the front door opening. She could imagine Danny, her brother, the only one who never called her a freak to her face, watching her, waiting.

“I know he said to not embarrass him, but you saw what happened. I had no choice. Otherwise, that dickwad Kenrick was going to throw more than a damn fork.”

“I saw with my own eyes what happened.”

She spun around to find Liam Wolf, the son, the one known and whispered as Alpha Beast. That was what they called him.

He’d been watching her from the moment she entered his father’s home. All her life, she’d gotten used to the stares.

This man didn’t look at her like she was a weirdo, though. She’d become accustomed to those kinds of looks. No, these looks were something more. She’d seen so many men looking at women like that. Like they wanted to eat them, to ravish them.

Her reputation carried across the city. Everyone who was within the packs knew of the white-haired weird girl who talked to herself.

Never once had she been desired. Feared, all the time. Hated, even more so.

People didn’t understand her, and she was okay with that.

Her grandmother would often tell her—alive and dead—that it didn’t matter what other people thought, only what she did. She missed her grandmother so much.