Alpha Erased (Alpha Girl 9)

Later. When I had her back, I would talk to her. I would tell her everything that happened while she was gone. But not now. Not yet.

I let out a shaky breath. “I can’t lose her again.”

“We won’t let her out of our sight. When she wakes up in the morning, we’ll convince her to skip class, to stay with us until it’s time to go to the concert.” Cosette stood over Tessa and touched her cheek.

“When I touched her forehead after she saw Chris’s painting, I was terrified. I want to lie to you and say that she’s going to be fine, but for a scary second there, I thought she might die on the spot. I’ve seen healthier looking skeletons.”

“She can’t—”

Cosette gripped my hand. “I swear to you that the magic is weakening. She’s still impossibly thin, but her color’s better.” Cosette reached toward Tessa and then hissed, quickly pulling her hand back. “Damn it. I still can’t get through the magic. Earlier I just helped soothe her. I didn’t want to make it worse, but now…” She looked at me.

I didn’t like the confusion on her face. She was supposed to be the expert.

“I don’t understand.” Cosette touched Tessa again. “The magic is thinner than cobwebs, but…oh. Right.”

“What?”

“It’s still in her soul. It needs…you. You’re her True Mate. When your bond comes back, it’ll break the magic.”

That wasn’t a revelation. I still didn’t know how to make it come back when it shouldn’t have been gone. Nothing should’ve ever taken our bond. Nothing except death.

I ran my fingertips down her face. “She feels so fragile.”

“She is. Anytime someone puts that much magic on a person…it’s not good long term, but Tessa is strong. She can overco

me this. You can, too.” Cosette straightened. “She’ll get stronger. It’ll take time, but I don’t doubt it for a second.”

Cosette got up and went to sit on the loveseat with Chris.

I wanted to believe that Tessa would get stronger, but I knew that would take weeks—maybe months—to get her to gain enough weight. The amount of food it took for any werewolf to gain weight when we burned so many calories was a lot. And the more alpha the wolf, the more food you needed.

She was going to hate every second of it. She’d whine about how all that chewing was getting old.

I closed my eyes and pictured us in our house. I could almost see myself shoving food at her, and her yelling at me to leave her alone.

I would love every second of it. Every bit of bitching and moaning and whining.

Because hearing all of that would mean that she was free. That she was with me. That we could be at our house and have a life together again.

God. I wanted to take her home. So badly. I wanted to see her face when she saw how it turned out. I hoped she liked it.

No, I knew she’d love the house and everything inside it. From the look on her face when she saw this apartment, I knew I’d gotten at least that much right. It was even better than this place that was thrown together in a few hours.

There was a tap on my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to see Cosette standing in front of me.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been talking to Chris. I changed my mind. I want to go check something inside her apartment, but I can’t do that without your permission.”

“Why?”

“Going inside means breaking the seals—it’d be like setting off an alarm—but I can’t stop thinking…I need to know more about the magic on her. Something about it doesn’t make sense to me. There has to be a clue inside her apartment. Something that I can use to help you break this magic. Her apartment wouldn’t be warded if there wasn’t something in there.”

An alarm meant that we’d have to leave here, but that was fine by me. I wasn’t letting her out of my sight, and I couldn’t stay if the fey were watching her so closely. We were going to have to convince Tessa to leave here somehow.

“Go inside,” I said. “Find something to help her.”

“I need you to understand that once I go through that door, my sister will know we have her. She might come after us. I don’t know if it’d be immediate—if the seals would give an instant warning or if someone needs to check on them regularly. That my sister was here to see if we’d been inside makes me believe that it’s the latter. But if not, if the magic warns them, and we have to leave before Tessa is ready and there’s a backlash—”