Read Alpha for Free Online

try to explain. Before he heard from anyone else.
    Jace was sure my dad would throw him out. Marc was worried about the same thing. Or rather, he was worried that if Jace got thrown out before I’d come to a decision, my father would pressure me to choose him in Jace’s absence, even if that wasn’t what I really wanted. Marc didn’t want to win by default. He wanted to win for real. Forever.
    But my dad wouldn’t kick Jace out. Not now. Not with everything else going on. Probably not ever. Jace was a part of our family and, like Marc, he had nowhere else to go.
    â€œDamn, somebody sure did a number on your face,” a familiar voice called, drawing me from my thoughts.
    My hand flew to my left cheek and my pulse raced so fast my heart felt stressed by the effort. I looked up to see a tall form in the shadow of the cabin ahead. His clothes were a dark blur, but his height and shockingly white hair were unmistakable. As was his voice. Colin Dean.
    Damn, damn, damn.
    â€œI was gonna say the same to you.” I forced my hand back into my pocket without letting my fingers trace the thin, straight scar running from my left cheekbone to the corner of my mouth. Dean had put it there. He’d carved up my face slowly while I’d stood frozen, afraid to breathe too deeply for fear of pushing the blade farther into my skin. But in the end, he’d gotten the worst of our little exchange—I’d buried the knife in his gut and left him bleeding. But not before Marc had broken his nose and one cheekbone, and Jace had sliced the side of Dean’s face wide-open.
    Surely his scars were worse than mine.
    Dean stepped into the light, and for the first time since we’d met, his face made me smile. His scar was thick and knotty, and unlike mine, he could trace it from the inside with his tongue. His nose had healed straight, but was still kind of swollen, even after a full week and ample time to speed his recovery by Shifting. But the faded yellow bruises around his eyes and thedarker one on his cheek only made Dean look scarier and more pissed off than I’d ever seen him.
    Maybe my father was right. Maybe we should have killed him.
    For a moment, I regretted my decision to come by myself. I’d assumed Malone and his men were staying in the cabin on the other side of the main lodge, where they’d stayed last time, in which case I wouldn’t have run into any of them alone.
    Either I was wrong, or Dean had come looking for me.
    He stalked toward me, and my options raced through my head. I could run, but then he’d chase me, either for fun, or because he truly couldn’t control his cat’s instinct to pounce on anything resembling prey. Or because he didn’t want to control it.
    I could stand up to him and fight. But that would be stupid with the vote coming up. I couldn’t risk doing anything that would make my father look bad.
    I could yell for Marc and Jace, but that would label me even more a coward than running would.
    Or I could keep walking and hope Dean had orders not to touch me—surely Malone wouldn’t want to get his hands dirty, either, this close to the election.
    I walked on, and Dean altered his course to intercept me. “How many stitches did it take to hold your guts in?” I asked, clenching my fists in my coat pockets as he fell into step beside me, like we were old friends.
    â€œNowhere near what it’ll take to sew you back together when I’m done with you.”
    â€œThat sounds like a threat.” My voice came out cool and confident, and I hoped my racing heartbeat didn’t ruin the impression. Yes, I was a damn good fighter, butDean outweighed me by more than a hundred pounds and had been training at least as long as I had. Probably much longer. And his grudge against me had moved far beyond the desire to see me dead—he wanted me broken and humiliated first. If he wasn’t under orders to play nice, we