Page 13

Lily

My alarm went off, and I groaned in frustration.

I’d already been lying in bed for three hours, wishing for sleep to come.

It never did. Not that it should’ve come as a surprise.

The same thing happened when I went to bed in the first place—watching the clock, counting imaginary sheep, doing the weird breathing exercises Rumor taught me years ago.

All the tricks of the trade, and nothing helped. Nothing.

I’d had maybe two hours of sleep total all night, and that had been interrupted. Slapping at my phone, I eventually reached it and turned off the stupid alarm. No need for snooze when I’d been awake for so long. It was freaking time to start my day. May this one be better than the last.

There wasn’t really a ton on my to-do list for the morning. I made sure to fill my time, though. If I slowed down too much, I was going to be thinking about my alphas. No. Not mine. The alphas I already rejected, the ones I was better off without, the ones who wouldn’t leave my head.

I started with the chickens. They loved me best right now because I was the one feeding them.

Talking to them couldn’t hurt. Was it weird to have chickens as some of my main confidants?

Absolutely, yet there they were. I tossed them their feed and some dehydrated worms as I regaled them with the story of how I looked so terrible and about my lack of sleep.

“You’re lucky I remembered to feed you.” If they didn’t care what I was saying, they sure cared about their food and me opening up their henhouse for the day.

We didn’t think wild foxes and such would come this close to the house with wolves aplenty here, but better safe than sorry.

It only took one animal to decide it was an all-you-could-eat buffet and destroy our flock.

Chickens done, I set about weeding.

I weeded.

Then weeded some more.

Patches currently growing, patches we were planning to plant next season and were currently resting because corn zapped them or were brand new.

And when those were done, I worked along the foundation of the structures.

Anything and everything I could yank out of there, I did.

Why? Because it was mindless, and at the end, I had a big pile that made me feel productive.

My wolf pushed for me to spend my time hunting, but I knew better.

She didn’t really want to hunt. She wanted to see if we could pick up on the scent of those alphas.

She didn’t understand how bad that would be, how this life here was so much better than anything we could find outside of her pack.

She didn’t understand that I was scared.

About lunchtime, my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten at all today. I dropped the last of the weeds into the compost pile and went to my apartment to clean up and make food.

But as I got to the door, I saw a truck pulling up to the house. And not just any truck. In this one sat an alpha, one of the three from the market. I didn’t know his name…any of theirs. If they told me, it had gone right by me as I focused on getting rid of them. And now, one of them was here.

I moved quicker than I ever had, getting inside my apartment and shutting the door with the hopes I managed to be unseen. And then I did something I hadn’t done since my early days here; I locked it.

He pulled up to the main house and headed for their door, not mine.

My heart raced. Rumor and the guys wouldn’t send him my way, would they? Not that they would need to for him to find me. If he wanted to, he could easily follow my scent. I’d be so easy to track, too.

I didn’t bother with the blockers when I was home. Why should I? I was safe here. This was my pack.

He shouldn’t even freaking be here. And yet he was.

I squatted behind the door, holding my legs to my chest, trying to disappear, so that if he came and looked in any window, he wouldn’t be able to see me.

Moving as little as possible, I listened for his footsteps, voice, or beast. Instead, I heard something better, the rumble of his truck driving away.

It took time, but when my heartbeat slowed and I could breathe again, I peeked out the window to make sure he was really gone. It looked like he was, but I didn’t trust that he was gone, gone, and I crawled around the apartment so I was lower than the windows and pulled the curtains shut.

I didn’t leave the house again, scared that if I did, he wouldn’t be far enough away and he’d see me.

Instead, I climbed into bed, pulling my covers over my head like I was a five-year-old scared of a storm.

Hours passed, and I must have slept in there somewhere, because it felt like I lost segments of time. My body was so in hide mode that it was difficult to know what had happened over those hours. But it worked. No one found me.

If they were even looking.

I finally risked going outside, knowing that I had to, at the very least, put the chickens away for the evening.

Rumor was walking around, Bernie on her back in a carrier, almost asleep but fighting it hard.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

“Checking on the chickens.”

“No, I meant hiding. That’s where you were, right? Hiding.” She knew me so well. We’d been through a lot together, so it was no surprise, but still…it was embarrassing.

“Maybe.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Fine. I was. But I saw the alpha pull in and…” And what? I freaked out and hid under the blankets?

“And they left you a hat. A sun hat.”

Why was she smiling?

“They didn’t even ask to see you. Just said that they saw that you needed this before the next market day. And then he left.”

“He just left.” That didn’t make sense. Weren’t alphas all possessive and controlling? “He didn’t try to see me?”

“Listen,” she said, “they’re trying to give respect you and accept your rejection.

But they also feel this need to protect and take care of you.

And I’m not saying it’s easy for you. I can see from the bags under your eyes and the tension in your shoulders to know it’s absolutely not, but it needed to be said. ”

From anyone else, I’d have second-guessed every part of her assessment. But this was Rumor. She’d never be dishonest with me, and she would protect me with her life—she already had.

“I know you won’t believe this, just like I didn’t believe it about my alphas at first, but these alphas aren’t like most of them. They aren’t like what we knew before. I don’t think they’d ever hurt you. I don’t think they could. Let me go grab the hat.”

She went away without letting me respond, or maybe so I couldn’t respond—to give me time to think about what she’d said, before she came back with the beautiful sun hat.

He could’ve found me. He could’ve pushed in so many ways, including a note, or waiting until market day and blindsiding me. But he didn’t. He went to the pack house and left this for me.

Rumor might well be right. They might be nothing like the other alphas.

But I was staying here. My life was too good to leave. I couldn’t risk it.