“Mom, can I have some chocolate milk?” Noah chimes in.
“Of course, sweetheart.”
With one last glare tossed in my direction, Alina drifts away to finish her shift.
Noah is still staring at me like he’s waiting for me to growl or bark at him. I haven’t exactly made the best first impression on him. As far as he knows, I’m the man who never gave a damn about his mother, then showed up out of the blue yesterday to chase them down.
In an effort to befriend my own son, I gesture to the comic he set down. It’s an old Marvel issue. One of the Black Panther books.
“So, you like comics.”
Noah nods wordlessly.
“Just superheroes or…?”
He shrugs.
“I really liked Captain America when I was a kid.”
Victory races through me when Noah offers me a slight smile. “Really?”
“Yep. I used to wish they’d put me in the Vita-Ray Chamber, too. I was small for my age, but I wanted to become huge and strong like Steve.”
Noah blinks. “But you are huge and strong.”
A chuckle escapes me. “Well, now I am.”
He glances thoughtfully down at himself, as if taking stock of his scrawny limbs. “Will I grow to be as big as you? Since you’re my dad?”
Dad. I haven’t dared imagine what it might feel like to hear someone use that word for me.
“I think it’s highly likely,” I assure him.
“But what if I don’t? What if I stay small forever?”
I offer him a smile. “It’s okay to be small. It doesn’t mean you’re any less powerful. You’re an Alpha’s son, Noah. You were born strong, no matter what size you are.”
Noah grins. “You’re really nice. I don’t know why my mom doesn’t like you.”
I almost laugh, but manage to choke it down. Before I can respond to that, however, Alina reappears with Noah’s chocolate milk.
“Noah, it’s not that I don’t like him,” she corrects him lightly, clearly having overheard the tail end of our conversation. “Your father and I are just very different people.”
“Not really,” our son counters matter-of-factly. “You’re Mates, aren’t you? That means you’re not different at all. That’s what my friend Ryan told me today at recess.”
Alina sighs. “We can talk about this later, okay?”
Noah makes a gesture that communicates something like sure, whatever, Mom, and I have to hold back another laugh. This kid is funny. Smart, too. I have a feeling Kseniya would say he has an old soul.
The pack would love him. And I think he’d love them back.
He belongs with the Greenbriars, and so does Alina. If they don’t come home, they’re going to be in danger. In fact, they’re already in danger, given the Blackburn scent that I detected yesterday.
I’ll play nice with Alina for now and follow her so-called rules. But if it comes down to it, I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure their safety.
Alina
For the last hour of my shift, I watch Rowan like a hawk from behind the bar.
Zahra, propped on a stool with a mug of overly-sugared coffee, watches me watch him.
“I mean, I’m not offended you didn’t mention who Noah’s father is,” she remarks at one point. “But you could have at least had the decency to tell me your Mate is sexy as hell. You won the lottery.”
“He’s not my Mate anymore,” I grumble. “And I’ve won nothing.”
Zahra instantly sobers. “Right. I’m sorry.”
She knows now that Rowan rejected the Mating bond, but I haven’t yet been able to explain the prophecy. Wise women like Kseniya aren’t common in most modern packs. The only reason she and her predecessors have any power at all among the Greenbriars is because the Prophet has been a formal role among the Celtic shifter bloodlines for centuries. And there’s nothing a Greenbriar loves more than tradition.
Even though she’s my best friend, I’m relieved when Zahra gets a call that one of the elders needs help from a healer. It leaves me to brood in solitude as I mix drinks and serve beers.
Noah seems to be enjoying himself, though. That should make me happy. Of course I want him to get along with his father.
It’s just…he’s been all mine for a decade now. I’ve been his only parent. And I was so young when I had him-barely eighteen years old. I’ve lived my entire adult life being his mother, his sole provider.
I hate that I might be feeling something like jealousy at the ease with which Noah and his father are conversing. It pains me to know that they can connect with each other on a level that I can never offer to my son. Noah and Rowan are both born to royal bloodlines. Thus, they are both destined to lead the pack. They are Alphas, blessed by the so-called magic of the Greenbriar ancestry.
I’m nobody. I’m just the rejected Luna-that-never-was.
I refuse to let Rowan take him from me. I’ll fight until my dying breath to keep him from returning to the Greenbriars. Not without me. And since I have no intention of going back…
It’s an effort to push all those thoughts aside as I finish up my shift. It’s obvious that the customers can tell that my mind is elsewhere. Old Betty and Old Joe are being particularly nice to me, and one of Henry’s Betas twists his normally stoic face into a smile for me when I slide his double whisky across the bar to him.
Everyone feels bad for me, I’m sure. Poor, rejected Alina and her big, scary baby daddy. Poor Alina, who will never be wanted by the people who matter most.
It makes me want to kick things.
Instead, when my shift ends, I tug off my apron and head over to the booth where Noah and Rowan are deep in conversation about, of all things, the Captain America movies.
“Winter Soldier is definitely the best one,” Noah is saying.
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.