Page 5 of Jacked-up Mate (Alphas of Whisper Grove #1)

Jack

I ran for my home faster than I ever had. My home wasn’t even my destination; away from that man was.

He was the most gorgeous person I’d ever laid eyes on, but my thoughts flicked to the terrified or disgusted faces he might make if he saw me, and my mind was immediately made up.

Run before he can see the real me.

Run before he curls his lip in horror.

As soon as my feet hit the step of my porch, my head began to change. A quick look at the setting sun told me the change had come on faster than all the other times.

And this time, there was no drawing out the phase from human to pumpkin head. It was instant. Powerful. So quickly that I stumbled backward with the power of it.

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but the scent of pumpkin spice had dwindled some. I could see better out of these triangular eyes.

My head didn’t feel so…slimy inside.

I plopped down on my front porch, grateful that I’d chosen a home away from the town a bit. The harvest moon was apparently a blood moon as well because as it rose, it took on a scarlet hue that made my heartbeat faster.

What brought on the change so fast this time? What made tonight so much easier and less pumpkiny?

I reviewed the events of the day leading up to the evening.

I hadn’t done very much differently. I worked from home, as an editor.

My home was paid in full, so I worked when I had to instead of every day.

My day had been full of the mundane. Same breakfast of steak and eggs because something about the change made me starving the next morning.

I did my chores around the house and then the ones outside.

Feeding my flock of chickens. Watering my small garden that Cole helped me with.

Then I went into town and volunteered with the festival setup for the rest of the day.

Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t eaten lunch and nothing for dinner before the change, but certainly that minor detail wouldn’t cause such a chasm in between this shift and the ones before.

“Would it?” I asked the moon since there was no one else around to hear me.

I leaned back, against one of my porch posts. The pumpkin head was heavy. Once, in the beginning, I’d tried to bash the damned thing against a rock and a brick wall, wondering if it would smash as easily as a regular pumpkin.

It didn’t. It hurt like hell, and I had a headache for a week.

I even enlisted a questionable witch, only to hear her cackle and tell me that curse was too powerful even for her.

The same with the hoodoo practitioner—the voodoo one too. None of them could help me.

So why tonight?

Nothing had changed, and yet, everything had.

I went inside for dinner, finding joy in the fact that my food tasted little to nothing like the pumpkin spice I’d grown to hate over time. I ate until I was full and washed the dishes while starting at the moon that had given up its redness.

I sat in my favorite chair and settled on two ideas.

The first was that this was a natural evolution of the curse because my thirtieth birthday was coming up faster than I wanted it to.

Maybe my permanent pumpkin head would be one last shift, easier and less tedious than all the previous ones, and poof, I’d be a Halloween decoration for the rest of my life.

There was another theory, but I didn’t give it much clout.

The man I’d seen across Autumn Square.

I didn’t know his name. Who he was. Alpha or omega. Good or bad. Though, from his smile, I assumed good.

I doubted that one man could change the course of my curse, especially after not knowing anything about him other than the fact that I’d never seen him in town before. He could if he were my omega, but I’d have to date him before knowing if he was mine.

This curse really should’ve come with a rule book.

But damn, if there was a person who could not only break this curse but fall in love with me, he would be at the top of my list. He had sexiest-man-next-door vibes for days.

Longer brown hair that curled at the ends.

A long-sleeved T-shirt. No sweater or coat.

A killer smile. Warm brown eyes. Eyes that an alpha could get lost in.

Before going to bed, I did one more round of overthinking—pacing in my yard and begging the Goddess for an answer.

I received none.

I even considered going back to the festival and scoping things out with the man I saw, but that would mean him seeing me as a pumpkin. When I spoke, the mouth moved. My triangle eyes blinked. He would know it wasn’t just a costume.

Being a jack-o’-lantern was the worst.