The Alpha's Little Rogue novel Chapter 1

Alessia's POV

I should have known from the moment I walked in that something was off. The atmosphere had a smell that I couldn't shake off.

But I take a step further into the house, my fingers clutching onto my phone as a sort of anchor.

I don't know what I expected to find when I walked past the front door, but it wasn't this. It wasn't to find my Mother lying on the floor with a gaping hole in her chest where her heart was meant to be.

Bile rises to my throat and before I can stop it, I'm emptying both my breakfast and lunch onto the floor.

My knees buckle, too weak to hold me up and I fall to the carpeted floor on my knees and hands.

With a silent sob, I crawl to my Mom's body. Grasping her cold, lifeless fingers between my hands, I press them against my cheek. The warmth that had once been present in them was now gone.

What happened between the few hours of my leaving the house to go to the woods for a quick run?

A crank from upstairs on the wooden floor takes my attention to the curved staircases leading upstairs.

Another noise has me dropping my mother's hand beside her body and lifting from the floor. The noise sounded like shuffling. Like someone was ransacking through things.

"Where the fuck is she?" A hoarse thundering voice asked and then the crashing of things onto the ground comes next.

I flinch and a whimper escapes me.

"Our informant said this was the house where she lives in," another equally scary voice replies.

"Then where is she?" Another crash of something. This time it sounds like a chair has been knocked over.

Are they looking for...me? At the prospect of that being true, my feet start moving backward before my brain even registers the movement.

It seems only right that I choose this moment to forget about the vase that my mother insisted be placed beside the entrance.

I bump into it.

The painted vase with flowery designs goes crashing to the ground. Not even my fast reflex stops it from shattering into a million pieces.

The only thing that I can do is hold my breath as the voices upstairs hush.

Then the thundering footsteps have me reaching for the door handle and nearly ripping the door off its hinges.

I fly out the door just as the footsteps start coming down the staircase.

'LET ME OUT!' Zuri, my wolf, screams at me as she tries to claw her way out of me. But I couldn't shift. At least, not until I was such that I was hidden out of view.

I can't shift and let them see me in wolf form. I have no idea of who or what they are but they will know what I am if I shift. I couldn't let them have that advantage over me.

"There she is," A voice hollers from behind me, sounding closer than I would have expected.