Kiss Of The Alpha : A YA Paranormal Romance

Chapter 89: Chapter 89

Heather

I’d never really liked going into school cafeterias. Throughout my life, they’d been a place where I was ridiculed. These days, they weren’t so bad. I’d found my place in the pack, and I had friends and a kick-ass mate. But as Brent stepped into the crowded cafeteria, I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.

Being carried was a horrible idea. "Put me down. Now."

He tightened his arms around me, cradling me against his chest. "No."

Everyone stopped and stared. Not just one or two or twenty people. Everyone. Every single person.

What was I supposed to do? Apologize for pulling all that power? Make a speech?

"Say something¸" Brent whispered into my ear.

God. This was so not what I wanted to do. "Will you put me down?"

"No."

"Fine." This wouldn’t be humiliating at all. I cleared my throat. "Hey, everyone. I’m sorry for taking without asking. Serena’s really sick, and I was trying to hold a connection to Donovan to find out how to break the curse. He’s in the Andes right now, and it took a little bit from each of you to talk to him. So, thank you."

People shouted out questions.

"I wish I had answers for you, but I don’t yet. All of you helped me get closer to finding out how to help Serena. So, thanks again. And I’m sorry." I turned to Brent. "Good enough?"

"Yes."

I wasn’t sure I believed him, but he looked around the room and then started walking to where Adrian, Xander and Leslie were sitting. As we wove through the tables, conversations picked up again.

Brent set me in a chair. "I’ll be back with food."

"Thanks." Everyone else was already eating. Smells of fajitas and enchiladas made my stomach growl embarrassingly loud. Whoops. I put a hand over my stomach. "I guess I’m hungry."

Xander shook his head, and his blond hair fell into his eyes. He slid a small plate with a pile of Mexican rice and refried beans smothered with cheese on it my way. "Start with that." He handed me a fork.

I wasn’t about to turn the food away. I gave Xander a nod, and started eating.

Brent hadn’t been gone long, but by the time he got back with my tray, I was nearly licking the plate.

"That was kind of intense," Adrian said.

I looked around the table, and they were all staring at me. "What?"

Brent took the plate from me and set a tray down. It was piled high with Mexican food. My favorite. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day and never get sick of it. It was like the cafeteria gods had read my mind today.

"I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life," I said over my mountain of food.

"I can’t watch this. It’s so...disgusting." Leslie stood. "I’ll be in Serena’s room."

"What’s her problem? I swear you guys regularly eat way more than this."

"Yeah, but usually we take time to do things like breathe and chew," Adrian said with a chuckle.

The extreme hunger that I felt sometimes took some getting used to. My stomach had somehow turned into an endless cavern when I became a werewolf. On a normal day, I ate maybe five times as much as I did as a normal human. Or more. Whatever I’d done to talk to Donovan had really worn me out, but the food was helping.

"Sorry, guys. I’ll try and slow down."

"Don’t worry about it," Xander said as balanced his chair on its back legs. "I’m not upset. I’m kind of impressed. You’re tucking it away like a pro."

Not even when I was recovering from being bitten by a vampire was I this drained or hungry. Although that was a different kind of drained. Or maybe it was the power that Brent was feeding into me? He ate one-handed, and his free hand hadn’t left my back.

The steady pulse of his alpha power warmed me from the inside like a balm on my tired muscles.

"Everything okay?" Brent asked.

"As long as you don’t count grossing out our friends, then yeah, everything’s fine." But I was feeling self-conscious about how much I was eating. "Merging witchcraft with what? Discuss options." I waved my fork at them. "And ignore what’s going on over here." I waved the fork at myself.

I started eating again, but tried to remember to breathe between bites this time.

"We were talking about that before you got here," Adrian said. "The only thing that we can come up with is combining types of witchcrafts. Assuming that, we have a few options."

I wished they only had one option, but I’d take what I could get. "Tell me."

"Basically there are incantations or spells, potions, and curses," Adrian said. "Although curses are like a subset of spells and incantations, but with a negative connotation. Assuming we rule out the whole curse category—"

"Wait. Why are we ruling those out?" It seemed like a bad idea to rule anything out at this point, but what did I know? For once, I wished my parents had moved us to Texas sooner, but there was nothing I could do about that.

"Because curses are dark," Brent said. "They’re meant to hurt, and we aren’t going to do anything bad to one of our own."

I chewed slowly as I thought. "Agreed. What’s the deal with the incantations and potions?"

"Well, sometimes they go hand-in-hand," Adrian said. "Like what your cousins gave us to fight the vampires."

They’d given us a bunch of little vials of herby-looking stuff. All I had to do was say the right phrase and chuck one at a vampire. As soon as the glass broke, the potion exploded. They were a pretty neat and had saved our butts. We wouldn’t have made it out alive without the magical assistance.

"Okay, and what happens when it’s just an incantation," I said.

"Sometimes all a witch—" Xander stopped when Adrian cleared his throat. "Fine. Sometimes all a bruja needs to do is say something. Their magic plus their will makes the words true."

"And potions are mixtures of magical ingredients that pack a punch," Adrian said. "They can do any number of things—from make someone fall in love to transform a person from human to mouse—depending on what you mix in them."

I took a break from eating. "So we need something like what I used in the cave. We should find something that mixes a potion and words to set the spell. And it should be one that makes her wolf hit the hay."

There were some grumbles around the table.

"If you guys have a better idea that won’t kill her, then I’m all ears. But remember that we’re only suppressing her wolf to keep her alive until we come up with something better."

"That seems really unnatural," Brent said.

"I know." I took another bite.

"Are you sure you’re not trying this because of your own issues with changing?" Xander asked

I dropped my fork with a clatter. "No. I’m not." At least I didn’t think I was.

We sat in silence for a bit, each of us eating and letting the cafeteria sounds fill the void.

After a bit, Adrian spoke up. "Can I see your Book of Shadows?"

Shit. I’d left my bag in Serena’s room. "You didn’t happen to grab my bag, did you?"

Brent shook his head. "Sorry. It’ll be fine there. No one’s going to mess with your stuff."

Those books meant something to my cousins, and they meant something to me. Leaving them laying around felt wrong. "Okay," I said, shaking it off. "I’ll grab them after."

"I think there was something in your family’s Book of Shadows that could work," Adrian said. "They weren’t specifically for werewolves but they talked about suppressing inner demons."

Xander cussed up a storm.

"I know. I know," Adrian said. "But to La Alquelarre, our inner wolf could count as a demon." He paused to let that sink in. He had a point, and I was more than a little ashamed that I looked at my wolf as a kind of demon. It made me feel out of control, which was not a fun feeling. It made me angry and violent. Two things I’d never considered myself before.

"There are still a bunch of ingredients that we don’t have in storage. I’m not sure where we’d find them," Adrian said.

"I could maybe ask my mom. Even if she didn’t really participate in La Alquelarre, my grandmother did. She might know where to find stuff." I pushed the tray to the center of the table.

"I think I’m done. I’m grossing myself out now."

"Eating’s part of being a Were," Brent said. "Don’t feel bad about it. I ate way more than you did."

I glanced over at his tray. He’d cleaned all of his plates. Three big dishes and two small ones.

"This tray was mine too." He pointed to another tray full of empty plates.

"Holy shit, babe." My cheeks heated. I didn’t want to make them feel bad or anything, and I liked food as much as the next person, but this was insane. "It’s weird, you know? Where does it go?"

"Quick digestion?" Xander said.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Let’s go get the books and figure out a game plan and then I’ll call my mom."

Adrian nodded. "If we could get everything together by tonight, then we can do a midnight casting. It’s almost the full moon. Could give us an advantage."

Sounded legit to me. "Cool. Let’s do this."