Alpha's Legacy (Black Moon Saga Book 3)

1. A Healer and a Rat

Anna Jade

“It’s a secret club,” the man on the exam table before me reveals between labored breaths, coughing up blood here and there, “and the only way in,” he pauses to cough and wheeze, struggling to tell me the rest of what he needs to say, “is by invitation.”

He stops talking as his coughing worsens over the next few moments, and I help him sit up so he can catch his breath. The internal bleeding is a real problem, considering that he’s the first who has said even a word about what has happened to cause the recent influx of severe injuries and critical care patients over the past weeks and months. I need to find out what I can so I can report it to my mother, the Alpha here at Black Moon, the largest werewolf pack in North America.

“How do you get an invitation?” I ask him, almost pleading with his body to let him speak. “The beatings? Does it have something to do with all these young guys who have been coming in beaten up to within an inch of their deaths?”

He nods but doesn’t manage to say more before the doctor steps in my path, pushing me back.

“We need to get him into surgery, or he isn’t going to make it, Anna,” he warns lowly. “I know this is important, but not more important than his life.”

“Let me try,” I plead with him to allow me to use my healing power, which my mom has banned the doctors from letting me use on injuries this severe because of the energy it takes to do it.

If I heal this man, I could potentially be asleep for the rest of the day, and my power will be weakened for a few days after. Expending a lot of magical energy makes me feel like my twin brother Emerick looks when he wakes up with a hangover.

“You know I can’t, but you can visit him again once he wakes up from surgery,” the doctor offers instead.

But I know what will happen. The man will no longer be desperate for help once he’s out of surgery, or one of his buddies will get to him and remind him to shut his mouth, or whatever it is that always happens. No one ever wants to talk, and even threats of spending time in the dungeon cells won’t sway their minds.

“Alright,” I concede finally, not wanting my stubbornness to cost this man his life. I also don’t want his own stubbornness to cost any more lives, but only one of those I can control.

Instead of the conversation I want to be having, I drag myself back to the packhouse, knowing I should tell my mother what I have learned, even if it isn’t as helpful as I’d hoped. I glance at the time, sighing when I realize it’s late enough that she might not be in her office anymore. In fact, she’s probably upstairs in the apartment my family shares on the top floor of the packhouse, and she will probably be irritated that I’m late for dinner again.

It doesn’t seem to matter that I’m late so much because I like to spend my free time over at the pack hospital helping out. Free of cost, I might add. I volunteer my time because I’m not yet of age, not for another three months, which means I haven’t been officially given a work assignment. I already know what it will be, though, once I finally turn 18. I’m a healer, so I’ll be assigned to work at the hospital and train under one of the doctors. No time like the present to get started, especially since I graduated high school going on two years ago.

As I’m making my way up the stairs, I’m joined by the last person I expected to see coming out of my friend Melanie’s room. It’s Emerick. I don’t even get a chance to fully process the shock and outrage, knowing that there’s only one reason he ever spends an afternoon with a girl. He’s somehow charmed his way into her pants.

It’s one thing that he sleeps around and there’s nothing I can do or say to change his mind about how wrong it is to rob women of the chance to remain untouched until they discover their mates without any intention of committing to them, but it’s a whole other level of outrageous now that he’s moved on to my circle of friends. I’m not okay with what I just saw, and as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking, he smirks at me as he joins me on the stairs, matching each of my strides with his own.

“Well hello there, baby sister,” he greets me with mock cheerfulness and affection.

He’s never happy to see me, so when he pretends that he is, there is always some ulterior motive behind it. I’m assuming that he’s just here to gloat this time, having timed his exit from his romp with Melanie for exactly when he knew I’d be coming through here. And for the record, he’s only a couple minutes older than me. He likes to rub that in my face whenever he really wants to annoy me.

There was a time when we were inseparably close, natural best friends since birth. But that started to change on our tenth birthday, the same day that my healing abilities first manifested. That was also the day that he discovered his own power, though in his case it’s a natural talent with the element of fire.

The first time he used it was an accident, and he nearly burned down the pack hospital while he was there with Mama to check on me. My special moment with Uncle Pete knocked me out for a few days after, and that’s where they ended up taking me since they didn’t know for sure what had happened to me.

But after Emerick learned that he was a pyromancer and could set things on fire, he turned into a bit of a troublemaker. He’s the only one of Mama’s seven children that other people around the pack get nervous about having around. He’s already been banned from two of the restaurants in town, as well as the barber shop, the bakery, and a handful of other businesses. It’s not just his fire magic, either. He walks around with a bad attitude and a chip on his shoulder, has a troublesome love affair with tricks and pranks, and seems to care very little about the feelings of others.

Our father, a warlock just like Emerick, has tried to soothe my mind over the years by explaining that it’s the natural way for a witch and a warlock, twins especially. They grow apart as their natural affiliations toward magic manifest in direct opposition to one another. Witches are good and gravitate toward helping people and maintaining order, while warlocks are fond of mischief and chaos. It’s how the magical energy in the world stays balanced. For every good caster who uses light magic, there must be a dark magic user out there somewhere. The former are usually witches, and the latter warlocks, though there are exceptions.

For instance, our father and his twin sister, our Auntie Lizaine. Circumstances in their lives turned them both dark when they were younger. As much as our father regrets the life he lived as a young man and has now reformed himself, he has never hidden his past from us. He says that there are lessons to be learned from his mistakes. Of course, Emerick has always used his tales as more of a handbook for everything he wishes he could do, if only he could get out from under the thumbs of our mother and her three mates.

Who are probably upstairs impatiently waiting for the both of us. It’s Friday, and that means it’s family dinner night. The worst thing a Brentwood can do on a Friday night is be late for dinner.

“I heard a rumor that you’ve been going around asking questions and poking your nose into things that are none of your business,” Emerick says next. I can sense the dark undertone of a threat in his words, and it sends a shiver down my spine.

Could it be that my own brother is somehow mixed up in all this business with the secret club and the beatings? I know he’s a troublemaker and a bully, but I never would have thought he was capable of something like this.

“I haven’t been going around doing anything,” I insist in answer. “I’ve just been working at the hospital, as always. You know, lending a hand to people who do important work.”

“I know some important people too. People who don’t appreciate that you’ve been poking around,” he continues, dropping the cheerful pretense and letting his voice take on a darker edge.

As we round the corner that will lead us to the front of our apartment, he startles me by suddenly pushing me up against the wall, his hand wrapped around my throat and the bulk of his weight pushed against me so that I’m trapped there. I can feel the heat of his magic threatening to break through, not to mention the raw power and strength of him.

We’re both hybrid casters, but the wolf in him is an Alpha, and mine is not. Neither of us is old enough to shift yet, but the difference in our bodies has always been apparent. In fact, I’m the only one in my whole family who isn’t an Alpha, and that’s because my biological father is a hybrid caster himself instead of an Alpha wolf.

Adam, one of my mother’s other mates, is an Alpha and the father of the rest of my siblings besides Emerick. But since our mother is also an Alpha, Emerick was lucky enough to have that passed onto him, while my wolf is probably more like our father’s, much smaller and frailer than an Alpha.

“Don’t worry, you’ll turn out to be the more powerful caster,” my father would always try to console me about it.

But it’s not as reassuring as he thinks. Emerick doesn’t hesitate to use his magic even when it’s not allowed, but I can’t bring myself to disrespect the rules like that. So, it turns out that it doesn’t matter how powerful I am when that strength doesn’t help me much during moments like this.

As I feel my breath being choked away, I can’t help looking up into his eyes, twins to my own bright turquoise eyes that we’ve both inherited from our father, and wondering how we got here. What happened to the sweet little boy who used to cherish and protect his twin? How did a little bit of fire potential suddenly turn this tall, handsome boy with the messy curls that remind me so much of the boy I once knew into such a menace?

“Let it go, Anna Jade,” Emerick threatens lowly. “It’s not your business, and it’s not our mother’s either. This is the only time I’ll be asking nicely.”

He abruptly lets me go as the door to our apartment swings open, revealing our mother’s vampire mate, Tian.

“Is there a problem out here?” he asks lowly, the suggestive threat in his voice far darker than the tone Emerick was just using with me.

“Not at all,” Emerick answers on both of our behalf. “I was just giving my sister a hug since I haven’t seen her all week.”

Tian locks eyes with me, his questioning gaze asking whether I’d like to add anything to that.

“We’re fine,” I smile weakly and try to assure him. “Just sorry we’re late for dinner.”

Tian and I have always been close, and I know he probably won’t be fooled by my act, but I don’t feel comfortable saying anything more in front of Emerick. Tian remains in the doorway watching over us carefully as we finally make our way over to join the rest of the family for dinner, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze as I pass by him.

I know I need to find some way to confess what I learned from the wounded warrior earlier, but Emerick’s threats are never empty. For now, I keep my mouth shut and take the scolding waiting for us in the dining room, not bothering to defend myself by revealing what I’ve been up to.