Page 2

Zahra snorts. She’s the healer’s apprentice for the pack, and since the Whiteroses lean toward being an elderly bunch, she’s usually up to her elbows in herbal remedies for joint pain and muscle stiffness. She works plenty hard and we both know it.

“Sweaty and cranky,” Zahra muses. “Your symptoms are textbook, Lina. When’s the last time you shifted?”

Desperate to wriggle my way out of this conversation, I glance around for anyone who might need something, but the mid-afternoon crowd at The Diner remains perfectly content.

Instead of answering, I merely shrug. I pick up another glass, already clean and polished dry, and wipe it down with the rag in my hand.

Zahra purses her lips at me and leans in closer, lowering her voice. “You can’t keep going months between shifts. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“I’ll survive.”

“Yeah, you will, but you’ll be weak and unfocused and completely useless to Noah.” Zahra huffs in exasperation. “Is this really the example you want to set for him? He shouldn’t view shifting as a thing to be avoided, Lina. You know that.”

“Of course I know that.”

It’s just hard to put those thoughts into action. It’s not that I hate being a shifter. In fact, I used to love it with all my heart. Growing up, I couldn’t wait until my first shift, and once I could change into my wolf form at will, I took every possible opportunity to run freely through the forest.

I’m not ashamed of what I am. It’s just the thought of where that nature comes from that makes me sick. Because I’m not just a wolf shifter. I’m a Greenbriar. And that is never more unbearably undeniable to me than when I shift. Thinking about my old pack is too painful. I usually try to avoid it at all costs, just like I try to avoid thinking about Noah’s father.

As if she can see that pain written clearly on my face, Zahra’s expression softens. “You know I’m always happy to run with you. We could go out tonight. Somewhere quiet and isolated. I’ll have my mom look after Noah, and you can get this out of your system for a few hours.”

“Zahra, I don’t know…”

“It’s my job as one of the pack’s healers to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”

“I’m not a member of the pack, though,” I remind her for what is probably the thousandth time.

The thing is, despite my Greenbriar blood, I could have joined the Whiteroses. The Alpha himself offered me the chance to pledge myself anew a few years ago. Lone wolves don’t live as long, after all. They aren’t as strong. I genuinely considered the offer, if only for Noah’s sake, but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do in the end. Something held me back.

Luckily, the Whiterose Alpha was kind when I politely rejected the offer. He merely shrugged and extended his amnesty to me for the foreseeable future.

Zahra lets out a loud, long-suffering sigh. “What are you going to do when Noah starts shifting, huh? You won’t run with him?”

“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 goingon 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.