I might only be the Alpha heir, but I don’t need the power of an Alpha command to make her confess to me.
“I didn’t know,” she swore between hiccuped gasps. “He said, he… All he said to me was that he had to convince Dempsey to listen about my mom.”
My eyes narrowed dangerously. “He made you an enemy of the alpha clan, Avery.”
My jaw clenches as I bury the memory in my mind. I was right to reject Avery.
I have to be. Because if I’m wrong about any of this…I’m no better than a monster for condemning her to the fate of living with a broken mate bond.
She’ll never feel complete with anyone else, enduring a lifetime of longing never fulfilled.
An uncomfortable burning sensation grows in my chest. I ignore it.
It’s near dawn when measured footfalls approach. I angle my head to the side just enough to see Liam without taking my attention completely off the cottage. His hands are in his pockets, pace slow and unthreatening.
“You stayed out here all night?” he observes in an overly neutral tone.
I grunt. He offers me the pair of pants folded over his arm. I accept them and yank them on.
“I tried to come over a few times to report on the run, but you were growling loud enough I couldn’t get close,” he says.
I pass a hand over my mouth, grounding myself with the scrape of stubble. Was I? Shit.
Clearing my throat, I turn my back on the cabin. It takes far more effort than it should. I blink at the blinding rays of sunlight rising above the treetops.
“The run?” I prompt.
“All good. A few curious about following you, but they were easily steered away.” He rubs at his nape. “By the way, I put Taryn Barnes in the hold last night for stealing.”
I huff. “What else is new? Put her on the usual punishment duty.”
“Your sister, too. Callie was the distraction.”
“Of course she was.”
I press my thumb and finger into my eyelids to alleviate the dull throb building there, an echo of my father’s admonition surfacing from my memories. I did the best I could raising Callie once he passed, yet still I feel like I’m failing him.
“Anything else to report?”
“The liaison from Timber Hollow Pack arrived this morning. I put them in one of the guest rooms in your lodge. You have a meeting scheduled with her at eleven.”
Right. She’s going pack to pack to review preliminary planning for the upcoming summit.
I glance at the dilapidated cabin. “I’ll be down in an hour. My wolf’s still a bit, ah…”
“Out of sorts?” Liam suggests with a hint of amusement.
He can laugh all he wants. I don’t have time for this shit.
“Sure. Let’s go with that.”
He claps me on the shoulder. “So if you’re not around in an hour, I should come up to drag you down to the commons for work?”
I rumble in response. He takes it as a yes before leaving me to wrestle with my wolf to let me walk the fuck away.
11AVERY
As if last night wasn’t bad enough, Caden’s standing proud in front of my house for some unknown reason, every inch of his carved body giving off an undeniable vibe of raw Alpha power. Every inch, because he’s stark naked.
A noise sticks in my throat when I catch myself staring at his huge—I snap my gaze away with a huff. He has every she-wolf in the pack panting after him whether he notices their rapt attention on him whenever he’s around or not. I won’t be lusting after him, too.
He’s fixated on the cottage. I watch him until the sky begins to lighten with the impending sunrise, frowning when he remains a still, muscled sentry.
The broken bond is less raw this morning. I’ll live with it. It just means ignoring the twinge of what I imagine a hot poker to the chest would be like every time I look at him.
This is fine. Totally fine.
An absolutely manageable pain screaming in every movement.
I’ve survived the worst things imaginable, what’s one more gash to my heart at his hand?
I first spotted him through the window when I got up with the sun to check on Lena, not liking the hacking sound of her cough. His surly growling must be what made the windows rattle in the early hours before dawn. I’m so used to the wind knocking the loose panes around in the rotting frames, I wrote it off, too drained from my first shift to bother stuffing rags against them to muffle the noise.
My wolf seems pleased by his presence, though she’s content as she is, stretched out and licking her paws. The only indication she gives that she’s aware of him are her pricked ears poised to listen for him.
Rolling my eyes, I pretend he’s not there. He’s ridiculous, probably suspicious enough of me suddenly finding out I have a wolf and the ability to shift, that he’s come up here himself.
A thrill swoops through me. I have a wolf. I bite my lip around a smile, marveling at the new sensation of my connection with her. She preens, tail wagging.
I’m so lost in thought over it, I drop the pot of honey I want to add to Lena’s tea on my foot. Cursing, I bang my fist on the counter.
An answering growl sounds from outside, loud enough to wake my sisters when it grows closer, as if Caden took several strides towards the cottage. I glare at the wall as if I’ll be able to burn a hole straight through it.
“Go bark up some other tree,” I mutter while picking up the sticky, broken pieces.
This was my last jar. I got a whole crate of it in town from a beekeeper the baker knows because the price is too high at the commissary on the ground floor of the bunkhouse. For the likes of me, anyway. It was a big enough pot to last us through winter.
Lena’s scratchy cough draws my attention. She rolls over with a feeble murmur and Beatrix automatically rubs her back in sleep.
The kitchens have honey in their stores. If I butter old Alma up with an anti-inflammatory paste for the arthritis she’s developed in her hands, she might look the other way. I’ll have to hope the head cook is feeling as doting as she used to when I was a pup, or that her hands are beginning to ache more with the cooler weather.
I salvage what I can of the spilled honey to add to the rusted tin kettle, then clean away the rest. By the time I’m finished preparing the girls oatmeal with dried wild raspberries I foraged over summer, the sun has risen above the trees, shining through the narrow windowpanes. Dust motes dance in the spotlight.
With my enhanced senses, my vision is sharper, allowing me to see much more detail than I previously could. I thought it was only last night while I was running in fur for the first time, everything appearing so new and vivid. If I concentrate, I can hear a bird making a nest beneath the eaves of our roof, a family of mice chittering in my herb garden, and the rasp of mucus in Lena’s chest. I swallow, hoping it’s not turning into pneumonia again.
This is the full strength I was born to have as a shifter, and it means I’ll be able to use my heightened senses to forage better for plants that can be difficult to find.
A thump at the door startles me out of my thoughts. My wolf lifts her nose with an interested sniff. I smell it, too. Cedar, though the warm comforting scent is more like it’s been heating for too long over a fire. Caden, and he’s not happy.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say with a resigned sigh.
I open the door, steeled to face the alpha along with the pain of rejection all over again. The overpowering scent of Caden all around the cottage weakens my knees. My wolf rolls on her back, mewling.