It's been three months since Delilah "Del" Cross stumbled her way into the mysterious town of Whisper Valley. During that time she's grown to appreciate her new life amongst ghosts, vampires, mages, zombies, and werewolves. Yet, there's still so m...
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"Big brother?" I sputtered, my eyes blinking several times as if I needed to clear a fog that had been guarding me against the truth. I looked the young woman up and down again, assessing her features and overlaying them over my carefully curated memories of Everett's own physique.
She didn't have his muscular frame, she was instead toned but lithe. She did, however, share the same messy disposition that Everett had. Her stance relaxed, her clothing thrown together and her hair loosely tied back in a messy bun. Upon noticing her hair, I caught the slight reddish tint in her sandy strands. Like me, she was a strawberry blonde and though Everett definitely sported dark locks, he too carried a reddish hue within it.
All of that, however, could just be coincidental. I couldn't say she was strikingly similar to her brother, but there was one element that drew me in and held me captive. Though Everett's dark brown eyes often smoldered with his silent brooding, Luc's dark brown gaze danced with mischievousness. Still, there was no denying they were the same eyes.
"I...I didn't know he had a little sister."
"Not just a little sister," said the Beta with a vicious curl to her words, "but many little sisters and little brothers. He doesn't have any big siblings though. He's the oldest, hence him becoming the Alpha after Papa left."
"He never told me," I mumbled. I knew of the Alpha Titus, though as I reflected on it, it might have been because others had spoken of Everett's father. All I really knew was that the previous Alpha had been around during the zombie outbreak that ravaged the town about a century prior.
I looked out over the fields towards the rooftops of the Moonshade neighborhood. I wondered how many of Everett's many siblings lived there. Then, I picked up on a key word in Luc's statement.
"Wait," I said as my face snapped back towards the Beta's direction, "how many is many?"
"Mmm, well," she said as her eyes rolled up to the soft morning sky and her long finger scratched the underside of her chin, "I think it's twelve total, including Everett and myself." She paused, mumbling some names under her breath as she counted on her fingers. After a moment, she looked back to me with a smile. "Yeah, there's twelve of us from Papa's lineage. I'm the third born myself."
"Twelve?" I said, unable to stop myself from gulping back the fear that started to manifest inside my mind. As if sensing my suspicions, Luc went ahead and settled the matter by tearing the bandage off in one quick movement so the wound could be exposed for all to see.
"Yep," she said with a knowing twist of her lips. "It's kind of the Alpha's duty to go forth and multiply." She waggled her eyebrows, while my mind whirled with questions.
Was this why Everett was so distant? Did the growing tension between us bring his thoughts to a future? Did he fear how I would take the news that he was expected to fill the pack with Alpha spawn? Or was it because he knew that a human like me couldn't meet the needs for bearing a brood of pups?
