Page 36

A lina

“Miss Alina, darling, can I bother you for a refill?”

“You can bother me for just about anything, honey,” I respond automatically, grabbing the fresh pot and gliding down the bar to where Old Betty is perched with her usual cup of over-sugared coffee.

“How come you’re always flirting with my wife?” jokes Old Joe beside her, shooting me a wink.

“Don’t be jealous! You know I flirt with both of you.”

The older couple cackles as I twirl away again.

Betty and Joe are two of West Pond’s most beloved residents, and for good reason.

They’re always sweet, always generous, and never tolerant of bullshit.

Even when I first met them a decade ago, they were referred to as “Old”, an important designation to make considering their son and daughter are named after them.

Young Betty and Young Joe are nice, too, but they aren’t regulars at The Diner like their parents are.

I gaze around the busy space. Table three is still waiting for their food, but Danah is already harassing Josh in the kitchen about it, so I mind my business.

Table seven is in need of refills. Two thick-bearded men named Roy and Cory are sitting there who drink more diet soda than what can possibly be considered healthy, but Caitlyn is already on her way toward them, ever the watchful waitress.

Table nine, tucked in the back corner of The Diner, is occupied by my son.

It’s Noah’s usual spot whenever he gets out of school before my shift ends.

He hops off the bus, dashes inside with a chirped hi Mom!

and makes himself comfortable in the back with a comic book.

Today, I slid him a pre-dinner strawberry milkshake because he got an A+ on his math test.

Basically, everyone who could possibly need something at the moment is taken care of. Which means that I have nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs behind the bar for the next hour.

Even though West Pond is a peaceful place ruled by the aging, pacifistic Whiterose Pack, I can’t help keeping a watchful eye on my son while he’s in here. Nobody in this town knows who his father is—nobody alive does, other than the man himself—but Noah is looking more and more like him every day.

It’s in the eyes, I think. Mine are brown, round, and a little too big for my face, while Noah’s are bright blue and sharp as ice. Just like his father. He’s got his thick hair, too, though it’s not quite as dark as I remember Rowan’s being.

I flinch outwardly. I’ve tried to make a habit of not even thinking about his name after all these years, but sometimes it slips through.

Soon enough, Noah is going to hit his tenth birthday. He’ll hit puberty and have a growth spurt.

He’ll experience his first shift.

Of course, he knows what he is. He knows what we are. He knows what will happen to him around the age of twelve or thirteen.

It’s what he’ll be capable of that concerns me, especially considering who his father is. Noah’s scent has remained dormant for the past nine years, but once he starts shifting… the Whiteroses are going to start wondering how an Alpha’s son with Greenbriar blood ended up in West Pond.

But I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it. It’s not like I think the Whiterose Pack will cause trouble over it. That doesn’t mean they won’t spread the word, though.

We’ll probably have to move. I’ve already been saving up for that unfortunate possibility.

Honestly, I like West Pond. I like the life that I’ve made for myself here. It’s a hell of a lot better than the life I would have lived back home.

“Earth to Alina? Hello?”

I snap out of my reverie to find Zahra, my closest friend, standing across the bar from me. She’s leaning forward on her elbows, peering at me with a furrowed brow.

Glancing down at my hands, I realize I’ve been polishing the same pint glass for the past five minutes.

“Hey. Sorry.”

Zahra is still frowning at me. “You okay? You look a little…flushed.”

Honestly, I am pretty warm. It’s a chilly February day, but The Diner can get hot inside when we’re bursting with customers and Randy insists on cranking up the thermostat.

I shrug. “I’m fine.”

“You look like you just walked out of a sauna.”

Sure enough, when I swipe the back of my hand across my forehead, it comes away damp with sweat.

“I’m working hard,” I deflect. “You should try it.”

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 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.