“Avery!” Alma calls after I’ve cooked two platters and saved Taryn’s batches of eggs from getting too crispy.
I turn off the burner and jog the last few steps when Alma beckons me impatiently. She shoves a large serving tray packed with food into my hands.
“Take the cornbread to the head table for a refill, then these other dishes go to the elders’ tables and this one can go to the unmated males and females at the back.”
Despite my best efforts to keep my face neutral, my expression gives me away.
“No pouting, now. Serving’s part of duties here. Get used to it.”
She nudges me and returns her attention to a male leaning against the counter talking to Emily, a she-wolf who usually comes to see me after she’s fooled around with whoever’s caught her fancy. She hasn’t acknowledged me once since I’ve been here.
“How many times do I have to remind you not to stand around? If you’ve got time to stand, you’re not working hard enough,” Alma blusters.
If either of them had time to idle, they could’ve served this food instead of me. I glance at Taryn and she gives me a thumbs up. She’s not the one who has to go serve her jerk of an alpha fresh off a mate bond rejection.
Rolling my shoulders back, I brave the swinging double doors with my chin held high. The din of chatter pauses. Caden’s blue eyes snap to me for a beat, then slide past me as if I don’t exist. Callie and Liam glance from me to Caden between them, then to each other. Everyone else resumes eating, but I feel the weight of their gazes following me as I make my way to his table first.
The closer I get, the more the bond acts up to remind me it’s there, throbbing in my chest. As though proximity will somehow magically knit the spurned connection back together.
He’s deep in conversation with Liam while I plop the cornbread baskets in front of him. He doesn’t pause, though the corners of his mouth turn down. A sharp pain twinges in my nerve endings and I stifle a gasp, refusing to allow him to see me hurting.
My wolf’s not impressed with the ignoring act. She also wants to steal the bacon off his plate, and I need to focus on standing still instead of darting my hand out. My mind stutters over the division of my own complex emotions and her baser impulses.
Liam clears his throat when I linger. I jolt, ignoring the snickers from Lorne and his brothers at the other table full of Cormac’s side of Blackburns nearby.
Lorne’s grating laugh cuts off when I move to the other table of elders before serving Cormac’s. He strides over, leaning over me to grab the platter of bacon I set down.
“That goes to my father’s table,” Lorne corrects.
A cup slams down on the head table hard enough to break something, possibly the table going by the violent crack of wood echoing through the room. It’s followed by a harsh snarl from Caden that makes Lorne stiffen. He steps out of my space, but still blocks my way once I’ve given the table the other plate.
An irritated rumble sounds in my chest. I should shift. Charge Lorne and knock him down. Make him submit to me with my teeth around his neck. I pinch my thigh to anchor myself before my wolf makes this situation worse by challenging him.
“There’s an order to these things, little witchling. Get it right.”
Rather than take the food he wanted first so badly, he dumps it on the floor. The room is silent except for Cormac’s husky chuckle.
Lorne lifts a brow. “Well? Clean it up.”
His brothers can’t contain their laughter any longer. I don’t dare look to Caden, though his presence suffocates me from several feet away, eyes boring into my back.
“Enough. Sit down, Lorne,” Caden bites out.
He ignores the order for a few seconds, holding my gaze. Then he backs away, tracking me as I finish handing out the remaining dishes on my way back to the kitchen to look for a broom and dustpan.
The whispering’s worse when I return. I set my jaw and silently clean up Lorne’s mess as my stomach burns. Part of me wants to dump it in his lap. It’s what he deserves, but I’d rather not paint a bigger target on my back than there already is.
Without a word, I leave the hall and almost collide with Taryn. She eyes the dustpan in my hand curiously.
“What happened out there? The alpha sounded pissed. We heard it over Alma’s barking.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Yeah, okay. That’s why your face looks like that and your eye is twitching.”
“Nothing,” I repeat. “It’s fine. Just male posturing. Lorne always making sure I don’t forget my place.”
She tosses an unimpressed look through the small window in the door. “I hope a witch curses his dick. That’d take him down at least twenty pegs.”
“I’d pay to see that.” I stifle a surprised smile, not used to having anyone take my side other than my sisters.
“He deserves it.” She flips off the door with a gesture I’ve seen the humans in Ashbury use when they’re angry with each other.
A snort escapes me. It helps chase away the indignation upsetting my stomach.
I keep busy enough that Alma doesn’t make me go back out there again, sending Emily when she catches her flirting instead of cooking. It works great to keep me off serving responsibilities, but by the time the breakfast shift ends Alma’s nowhere in sight.
“Where did Alma go?” I ask Taryn.
“Home for a nap. Martine manages the kitchen for lunch,” she answers.
“Oh, I wanted to talk to her.” I thumb the tin of paste shoved into my pocket.
“Good luck. She’s grouchy with anyone who tries to wake her up before she’s snoozed for at least three hours.”
There goes my plan. I’ll have to try to catch her later to bribe her for letting me access the honey stores.
Taryn balances two plates of food and nudges me through the back door. The others on kitchen duty are eating together. She leads us to a shady patch of grass and plops down.
“I put some extra on yours. I didn’t see your sisters and thought you’d want to take some back for them,” she says.
I chew my lip, peeking at her. “What’s up with that?”
“With what?” She’s tearing into her food, stacking her eggs and bacon on her cornbread to make a sandwich.
“Talking to me. Being…nice.”
She shrugs. “You’re pack. Why wouldn’t I talk to you?”
A lump forms in my throat. I pick at the food on my plate.
“You haven’t talked to me in a long time. I mean, not like this. Like it matters.”
Taryn stops eating to level me with a look. “Part of that is because you stay pretty secluded. Since—you know.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t have any problem with you, Avery. You’re the girl who would braid my hair so that I didn’t get it all tangled while I played with Callie because I told you it hurt when my mom brushed it. You taught me how to swim. And the time I ate those wild berries I shouldn’t have, you were the one to run all the way back to the commons to get the healer.”
I nibble on a piece of bacon, closing my eyes to keep the emotion clogging my throat at bay. If I hadn’t made a point of making myself scarce, would I have kept some of the friendships I believed were lost?
She bumps her shoulder against mine, and I don’t move away.
12CADEN
The scene at breakfast has me wrestling my wolf into submission before he takes my skin and fucks everything up by attacking Lorne again without an official challenge. It was hard enough to keep my attention from drifting to Avery the moment she stepped through the doors to the kitchen. Next to impossible to ignore her when she came near, tantalizing me with that divine scent I need to wipe from my memory.