Page 16 of The Alpha and the Baker

When I broke through the trees, I wasn’t surprised to see a good half of our pack cutting up a rug, jumping around, and dancing in the field.

Normally, I would have retired by now, my social battery completely drained, but I felt invigorated in a way I hadn’t in a long time.

So, I joined in the dancing and let myself cut loose, bolstered by all the good feelings from the day.

Once the music faded, a good twenty or so of us went on a midnight run. I knew that when I eventually fell into my bed, I would sleep so damn good. Better than I had in months, maybe.

As I made my way to my cabin once all the perishables of the party had been picked up and packed up, Chris jogged up to me sans Arietty.

The only thing I would’ve changed about the day was getting to talk to my best friend about everything that happened.

After all, his only child, his beloved daughter, had experienced her first shift really early. That was a huge deal.

“Wild day,” he said with a sigh as we stepped onto my porch.

“You’ve got that right. How are you feeling? How’s Bethany? Arietty?”

“Arietty is at home, in bed, and snoring like a log. She got her human form back a while after you left, and I’m sure she’s going to want to eat every steak we have in the house.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to ask one of the hunters to get some venison for us.

Good for a growing girl. Normally, I try to keep a lot on hand, but you know how Bethany craves it on her cycle, and she just wrapped up two days ago. ”

Oh boy, did I. Bethany had gotten her first shift at fifteen, when we were all in high school together.

From that point on, she’d had to be pulled from school once a week every month because her bloodlust was so intense.

Now that she was an adult, she could contain herself, but it was a known joke how much protein she could consume in five short days.

“I’m guessing your daughter is going to be much the same. I can put a double ration into the books.”

“Would you? That would be awesome.” But then he grimaced, and I sent him a curious look.

We’d been friends for so long, however, that I didn’t even have to ask out loud.

“My little girl is growing up. Today, she’s gotten her wolf.

Soon she’ll get her period. And then she’ll be in high school, and the next thing you know, she’ll be dating.

Maybe fall in love.” His voice tightened ever so slightly. “Maybe marrying into another pack.”

Although I’d never gone through it myself, I understood the intensity of emotion in my friend’s voice. Chris loved so incredibly deeply. Right down to his core. And I knew without a doubt that he loved his little family.

Some wolves—very shitty wolves in my opinion—would have abandoned their mates after finding out they couldn’t have any more children, but Chris had never once wavered in his relationship to Bethany.

Every now and then they got the bug in them to try for a baby, but I knew he was perfectly okay if they only ever had Arietty.

“I know time is going fast. And I don’t think that’s ever going to stop. But the best you can do is just celebrate every moment you can and be grateful that you’re getting to see your daughter grow up.”

I didn’t expect it, but my mind drifted to Felicia and what she’d said about her mother. Again, although I hardly knew anything about her life, I was absolutely sure her mother would have been proud of her if she could see Felicia now. And I really wished she could.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Chris let out another long breath.

I didn’t mind standing in quiet with my best friend.

In fact, sometimes that was all we would do together—stand on my porch, drinking a honeyed mead brewed by one of several pack members who dabbled in the art of fermentation, and watching the sun set over our lands.

“Speaking of celebration, you seemed like you were having a real good day today. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you grin like a loon so much. ”

Like it was a Pavlovian response, I smiled as I recalled the day. “Yeah, I had a pretty good time.”

“I’m glad. It wouldn’t have anything to do with that human woman who knows how to bake a real mean cake?”

And that was my cue to bow out.

“I should hit the shower. Goodnight, Chris.”

“Goodnight, Cas. And for what it’s worth, she really did seem lovely.”

I grinned even wider as I shut my door.

Yeah, she really did.

“Shit!” Chris hissed from beside me, startling me out of my contemplations about brown eyes, dark lashes, and rosy cheeks. Thankfully, I didn’t jerk the steering wheel to the side. That could have been pretty disastrous on the highway.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I forgot the list Bethany gave me. It’s got a bunch of stuff she wants for Arietty. You know how tastebuds change after your first shift. She wants to make sure she has some sort of vegetable and fruit on hand that’ll be palatable to her.”

I nodded, all too familiar with that unfortunate little road bump that came with becoming a shifter.

I used to love green beans and pears, but after my first shift, they began to taste like rotten meat and gym socks.

And then I’d become obsessed with brussels sprouts and butternut squash for several years.

Now that I was older, I could handle beans and choke down pears, but I still didn’t enjoy them.

Some shifters had it much harder, though.

I knew Seamus had gone through a period where even smelling spinach made him gag, which was awfully complicated for a wolf with a massive garden in his backyard.

Sometimes the enhanced senses of a shifter could be more of a curse than a gift.

And Uncle Lazar had a story he loved to tell about how he’d lost the ability to eat anything that was pickled or fermented for two decades, which was why he was able to brew such sweet-tasting ale.

“Why don’t you text her? If she doesn’t wake up before we finish at the public market, we’ll just buy a bit of everything. You know it won’t go to waste.”

“True, true. I guess I’m just a bit scrambled after yesterday. I thought I had more time before my little girl got her wolf. I have so much I need to teach her.”

I patted his shoulder reassuringly. Although I wasn’t a father, I remembered what it was like to have one. I admired Chris so much for how hard he tried to be the best one he could be. To me, sometimes it seemed like being a parent was a lot like being an alpha, just on a smaller scale.

“We’ll all teach her together. And for what it’s worth, she behaved amazingly yesterday.

” Which was somewhat shocking. I didn’t mean that in an insulting way, but Arietty was a mix of rambunctious and precocious.

She was too smart for her own good. She was in a gifted program at her school in the city because Bethany and Chris quickly realized that homeschooling wasn’t enough to challenge her, and in robotics club and theater as well.

I hoped that her shifting wouldn’t affect those hobbies too much, but such were the trials of being a teen wolf.

“Yeah, she really did. Of course, she has a mind of her own, but she didn’t try to challenge anyone or make a break for it. The worst she did was nip at Sammy when he tried to steal the pink frisbee she was playing with.” Chris paused again before sending me a grin. “She sure liked that lady.”

He didn’t need to clarify who he meant by “that lady”. As if I’d been able to get her out of my head at all. “Her name is Felicia.”

“Ooh, Felicia.”

I was reminded exactly where Arietty got so much of her sass from.

“It suits her.”

“Does it?” I mused even though I thought the same thing.

“Yeah. Definitely. It’s classy, but not stuck up. Like someone you could have fun with.”

“That’s a lot to get from a name.”

“What can I say? I’m insightful. It’s why I’m your beta.”

“You sure are,” I said with a light laugh. We continued to banter all the way to the public market.

Chris and I didn’t always do the runs to the city, but we were in the rotation.

One of the nice things about being in a pack was that chores for the entire community were split amongst large groups of people, so it worked out that he and I only made the journey to the city about once every two months.

Obviously, anyone could go to the grocery store if there was anything their family particularly needed or wanted.

Goodness knew I’d made plenty of late-night trips to get brie, camembert, and crackers when the mood struck me or my mom.

But it was nice to do the bulk shopping with a truck while also supporting other growers.

We grew a lot of our own food and hunted—sustainably, of course, with us hunters sometimes traveling quite far to where there were reports of deer or other animal overpopulation—but there were some things our climate didn’t allow, or we couldn’t keep up with.

Like strawberries. No matter how many of our gardeners had their own patches, there was never enough between the jams, the pies, and hungry helpers eager for a snack.

Then there was the citrus and avocados. I didn’t know what it was about being a McCallister, but we had a wild love for pretty much all citrus and avocados.

I would say that maybe we had ancestry south of the border, but we were about as Irish as could be, with the only genetic variance coming from people who married into our pack.