Page 25 of The Alpha and the Baker

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

I’d never had a week go by so slowly in my life, and I was certain it was a personal trial to test my patience.

Never in a million years did I ever think that I would go on a date with a human, let alone that my pack would be all for it, but the both of those statements were absolutely true.

I hadn’t planned on anyone knowing about my date. It wasn’t that I kept my personal life a secret, but it wasn’t necessary information for anyone beyond maybe Chris.

I should have known better. I went to bed excited about the prospect, woke up the next morning still excited about the prospect, only to receive about a dozen texts by noon.

Before the end of the workday, several excited aunties had cornered me about it.

It hadn’t been hard to put two-and-two together about who was responsible for the leak, but I couldn’t exactly be mad at them.

They were kids. And they were excited about something good happening for their alpha.

Even if it was a bit awkward, it was nice to be so supported.

I could have used a little less support, I thought, as my phone had buzzed with at least twenty different texts all saying different variations of good luck.

“You doing okay?” Chris asked from the couch. Arietty sat on the floor in front of him so he could braid her hair. That didn’t happen often, but I figured they were celebrating her first full week of wolf-hood as well as letting her show off a little on her first day back in her human school.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered.

“I’d like to believe you, but it’s not that convincing when you’re pacing a trench into my living room floor.”

Oh, was I?

I had been walking back and forth for quite a while.

I was itching to rush to the city and see Felicia, but if I left now, I would be way too early.

And I also knew that I would rush through getting ready, so I still had another fifteen minutes to hang out with my best friend before I could get going.

Because yes, while being punctual was a good thing in my book, I knew better than to show up too early to pick up a date.

“Sorry about that.”

“No apologies needed. If you need to talk about anything, I’m here. I know this is your first date in a while.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Arietty said with all the confidence that came from being a preteen and thinking you knew everything about life. Sometimes I really missed those days. “She really liked you. I could smell it.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “And what about the fact that she’s human?”

I didn’t hate humans, or discriminate against them like some shifters, but we were quite literally from different worlds.

She likely had no idea about fairies, or shifters, or any other of the various Wild Folk that had inhabited the earth long before her kind.

If we were going to have any sort of relationship, I would either have to hide a huge part of myself and lie to her for the duration, or I’d have to tell the truth and shatter her entire perception of reality.

Then there was also the risk that she would take it extremely badly.

Although I didn’t think she was the type, one could never truly tell.

And I was pretty sure that every shifter in existence had heard horror stories of a “nice” human either turning into a Wild Hunter after finding out about shifters or trying to expose us to the fairies.

Because that would be the biggest violation of the peace treaty that allowed us to keep our ancestral lands.

The fairies saw themselves as protectors of man, the Wild Folk, and the peace.

If we threatened all that by revealing our existence to the wrong person, it wouldn’t be entirely out of the realm of possibility for them to magically nuke us off the face of the earth.

So yeah, I was taking a huge fucking risk. That was why everyone’s support mystified me. Sure, Felicia was beautiful, charming, and kind, but not a single one of them seemed concerned that she could possibly pull an about-face.

Maybe I was being too much of a worry-wart, but that was my job as an alpha. What kind of leader would I be if I didn’t care about the possible extinction of my people? Even if I really, really didn’t believe that Felicia would do that.

“Who cares?” Arietty shot back, pulling me out of my clouded thoughts. “Everybody knows a human or two who’s married to a shifter. It’s not like it never happens. You just gotta find the right one. A safe one. Ya know?”

While it would have been easy to dismiss her and all of her preteen perspective, she wasn’t entirely wrong.

Besides, I hated when adults automatically assumed they could dismiss what kids said.

There was a reason there was a phrase out of the mouth of babes and fools.

I liked to think that sometimes not being trampled down by the realities of adulthood gave youngsters a different sort of insight.

“Thanks, Arietty. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. We still have to actually get through our first date.”

“Where are you taking her, by the way?” Bethany asked, coming in from her office.

The members of the pack had all sorts of jobs within the pack, but Bethany worked from home as a voice-over artist. We had a community bank that gave every household a basic income, but it wasn’t usual for at least one person in each family to have a job outside of our little community.

“That steakhouse that opened up a couple of months back. Gregalios?”

“Oh, Greggilios . I’ve been wanting to go there. Just been slammed with deadlines lately.”

“It’s the post-holiday pickup,” Chris said. “Hits you every year.”

She let out a soft laugh, and they shared a look that was so full of love it almost felt like I was intruding. But the moment passed, as did the remaining minutes I had to wait out the clock. I hurried back to my cabin to change.

The restaurant wasn’t black tie, but it was nice, so I chose a cobalt-blue turtleneck that my mother had gotten me, some nice slacks, and a gold necklace with our pack’s emblem.

It was a simple thing, passed down through generations.

The metal circle had a beaded tree within it, its roots taking up a third of it.

It wasn’t stunningly unique or anything, but it was ours , and that was what mattered to me.

From there, I hopped in my car and made the drive back into the city. Every minute seemed to take forever, yet not long enough. One part of me was anxious to get there, and the other half wanted to delay, delay, delay.

Anxiety was a hell of a thing.

When I arrived at the bakery, I pulled into what little space was left behind her van at the back, then got out of the car and went to the side door.

Should I have gotten her flowers? Or was that gauche now? I wasn’t sure, and suddenly I found myself wishing I had a massive bouquet to hand to her. Did I look like a cheapskate? Thoughtless?

I was so caught up in that spiral that I didn’t even have time to pull out my phone and text her that I had arrived before the side door opened.

My mind went blank.

Felicia.

She looked… She looked…

Beautiful.

The word didn’t even do her justice. She was always stunning, with her sweet smile and honey eyes, but now she looked ethereally gorgeous.

“Hey there,” she said softly, looking up at me through her thick lashes that looked even longer and darker than usual, giving her a sort of siren look. Was it makeup? Magic? Who was I to say? All I knew was that I was captivated.

She was dressed in a satiny, emerald-green dress that hugged parts of her perfectly, then hung in sort of artful folds across others. I wasn’t overly familiar with the style, but I liked it.

Oh, I liked it a lot.

“Hey,” I murmured back, still taking the whole art of her in. She was taller than usual, thanks to the black heels that made her calves look incredible. Then again, what part of Felicia wasn’t incredible? “You ready?” I asked, offering my arm.

“Sure am,” she said, grinning up at me. My eyes were drawn to how ruby-red her lips were. I loved the normal petal-pink shade she naturally had, but hey, I was not complaining about the switch-up.

The only downside was that it captured my attention so entirely that all I could think about was kissing her, or running my thumb along that perfectly scarlet lipstick and smearing it in a lovely mess.

“Is everything okay?” Felicia asked as she took my arm, her perfume filling my senses.

Damn, somehow, she smelled ten times more incredible than usual, which I’d thought was impossible.

But there was something that had changed about it that made my inner wolf want to bury his nose in her neck and breathe.

“Everything’s perfect,” I said, mentally pulling myself together and walking her to the passenger side of my car.

It wasn’t the communal truck our pack used for errands that required hauling, but a practical four-door that was nondescript and painted black.

Some alphas had showy cars, and if that was what they wanted to spend their alpha stipend on, that was their business.

But I had never been a car guy. I’d much rather shift into my wolf form and run as nature intended.

However, I couldn’t exactly take a human on a date like that, so having my own vehicle had its uses.

“Where are we going, by the way?” Felicia asked once we were both in the car and buckled up.

“ Greggilios, ” I asked, monitoring her scent closely since I couldn’t exactly watch her face while I was backing up.

To my delight, her response was positive.

While humans didn’t communicate with pheromones and scent quite like us shifters did, our noses were sensitive enough to pick up on quite a few variations in their mood.

It also helped that we could generally hear if their heartbeat suddenly picked up for no reason.