“Of course I wi-“
“And when he starts asking about where he actually comes from? Why you’ve forsaken your home pack and refuse to join this one?”
I adore Zahra, but she’s always way too eager to ask me the hard questions.
Plus, unfortunately, she’s right. I’m not feeling very well. I’m feverish and nauseous, and my joints are aching so badly that I’m surprised they don’t look visibly swollen. It’s what happens when a shifter tries to deny their nature for too long; the body rebels.
“I’m really not in the mood for this conversation,” I tell her.
Zahra rolls her eyes. If she could force me to shift, I know she would. Which should probably piss me off, but she means well. Also, I don’t have the heart to feel anything but unending gratitude for her and her mother. They were the ones who found me ten years ago, pregnant and starving and exhausted, stumbling through the woods on the Whiterose border with nowhere else to go.
Without them, neither me nor Noah would have made it.
At the thought of my son, I look back over to him. He’s thoroughly absorbed in his reading, hunched over at the table. He looks so small and vulnerable, but there is so much power running through his veins that it terrifies me.
I take a deep breath, swallowing down the groan of pain from the ache that spears deep into the base of my spine, and turn toward Zahra again. However, her attention is now fixed on the entrance to The Diner.
The Whiterose Alpha is here.
Weathered and rumpled after nearly forty years of leading his community, Henry Whiterose hauls his bulky frame through the door. He’s only in his mid-sixties, but the life of an Alpha can be a rough one, and he wears plenty of scars left over from a less peaceful time in his pack’s history.
A respectful hush falls over The Diner. Caitlyn jumps into action, rushing forward to guide her beloved Alpha to a table near the windows. Everyone knows he likes to have a good view of what’s going on both inside and outside, despite the decades of nonviolence that the pack has enjoyed.
Henry settles his tired, old bones in a chair and smiles up at Caitlyn.
“What’s he doing here?” I whisper.
The Alpha isn’t seen around town much nowadays. He’s been preparing his nephew, a good man in his late thirties, to become his heir. Rumor has it, though, that there are a couple of other contenders who feel like this decision isn’t fair. I prefer to keep myself out of it.
“You didn’t hear?” Zahra murmurs back. “There’s an Alpha visiting from another pack.”
I jerk back, unable to conceal my instinctive reaction. “What? What pack? Surely, not the Blackburns-“
“No, of course not,” Zahra quickly cuts me off. “The old man would never…and anyway, I don’t think it’s an Alpha visiting. Just an heir. I don’t know the details because I’ve been holed away all day trying to treat Sam Poulin’s arthritis. Poor old thing can’t even shift he’s been in so much pain…”
She trails off.
My stomach swoops. It’s not totally out of the ordinary that Henry would choose to hold a meeting with another pack leader in public. It is a little weird that he would opt for The Diner as the venue, though. I love working here well enough, but it’s a dusty old place with bad lighting and crooked tables.
Whoever it is, it’s clearly not someone the Alpha is worried about impressing. Either that or it’s an old friend. Or a friend of a friend. Probably someone who has stopped through town plenty of times before.
I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. It’s really none of my business. I’m not part of the pack. I’m just a civilian resident of West Pond-a small-town waitress.
“Anyway,” Zahra continues, tearing her eyes away from the Alpha and circling back to our previous discussion. “If you don’t shift within the next twenty-four hours, Alina Sinclair, I’m going to kill you.”
I huff out a laugh. “Is that so?”
“Affectionately, of course. I’ll kill you with love in my heart.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
Zahra snickers, but then her brow knits with sudden concentration as she turns to glance toward Henry’s table. I follow her gaze to see one of the old man’s Betas leaning in to murmur something in his ear. I could use my shifter hearing to listen, but that would only cause me more discomfort in my current condition. Zahra listens, though.
I give her a questioning look when she turns back toward me.
“The visitor from the other pack is here,” she informs me.
Before I can respond, and before I can bother to look in the direction of the door as it swings open with a cheerful ding, Noah calls out to me.
“Mom, I think I have a brain freeze.”
The tension in my spine eases as I let out a quiet laugh, stepping out from behind the bar toward my son’s table. With my attention on him, I don’t even notice the beast who wanders inside the restaurant.
Rowan
“You’ve got to be joking.” My voice drops into an annoyed growl.
Cal, my cousin and second-in-command, gives me a wry smile. “Afraid not.”
“The Whiteroses? Are you sure? When have we ever had an issue with them?”
My father, sitting in the Alpha’s seat at the head of the table, heaves a tired sigh. “Not since 1973. Henry’s great-uncle was Alpha back then, and he liked to cause trouble when he was bored. Not a very popular guy.”
I consider my father’s input for a moment, wanting to be respectful, and then turn back to Cal. “So, what exactly happened?”
“Sounds like it’s just a territorial dispute,” he explains. “You know Lara and Jamie Macleod?”
I nod impatiently. They’re two elder Greenbriars who live way up in the northwest corner of our territory. They have a small farm that curves along the border we share with the Whiterose Pack.
“Well, I guess they were in bed one night when their chickens started freaking out, so they assumed another fox got in the coop. But then, when they came outside to investigate, they scented two wolves. Jamie didn’t pause to think too hard about it, unfortunately, and shifted to go after them.” Cal shrugs again, ever the casual bearer of bad news. “There was a tussle. Some scrapes and bruises. Nothing too bad.”
“But it is the first time a Greenbriar has spilled Whiterose blood in decades,” adds my father.
“Yes, Alpha,” answers Cal. “I suppose that’s the tricky part.”
“It’s not tricky at all.” My father turns to clap a firm hand on my shoulder. “You’ll go smooth things over with Henry. No problem.”
That’s my role as the Alpha prince, after all. I’m the young diplomat, the one who needs to be showing my true leadership skills before I officially inherit the role as the Greenbriar Alpha.
It would be better, of course, if I had a princess-a future queen-at my side. A Luna to stand beside me. I might have had a chance at that once, but things beyond my control ripped my Mate away from me. I’ve tried to tell myself that it’s for the best, and that I was the one who rejected her, but there’s still a dull pain in my chest whenever I think about what could have been.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.