Page 9 of The Alpha and the Baker

“Here, buddy, let me tie your shoe for you. We’ll get a Band-Aid on your battle wounds, okay? Then you can tell everyone how tough you are.”

Unfortunately, I could scent his blood in the air, meaning he definitely got a scrape. I couldn’t see anything yet, though, meaning that wherever it was, it wasn’t grievous. But it did make me wish that kids had the same healing abilities as us grown shifters did.

“Okie.”

As I approached, I saw blood beading up from a scrape on his knee, and his palm definitely had an abrasion from a rock.

Definitely not the worst, but certainly not comfy.

Instantly, I was swamped with guilt for putting him off, but I really was worried about accidentally exposing the existence of our kind to a random human woman.

But I wasn’t going to rush the kid, so I tied his shoes for him—again—then picked him up with his permission and took him to the main house—my mother’s house—and dropped him off with an aunt there to tend to him, making sure to remark how incredibly brave and cool he was.

With that handled, I went back to the tent, walking in a way that hopefully told people that it was not the time to ask me for random tasks. But sure enough, once I got there, Felicia wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

What, did she turn invisible? I could swear I smelled the faintest hint of her pomegranate shampoo, but every time I saw someone with dark hair, they’d turn around to be someone else.

“Hey, has anyone seen the baker woman?” I asked as I approached a group of older folks sitting around one of the tables closer to the spread and idly chit-chatting.

“Baker woman?” Gammy McCallister asked, and honestly, I was surprised she heard me.

We shifters tended to live long lives because of our ability to heal, but Gammy was exceptionally old at a hundred-and-twenty-three.

She was half-blind, mostly deaf, but still as sharp as a whip.

As long as it didn’t involve those aforementioned senses.

“Yeah, she’s about yea tall,” I said, gesturing before remembering belatedly that she couldn’t see my hand. “Black hair. Brought the cakes in.”

“Weren’t we just talking to her?” Claudia said, looking up from the crossword she’d been working on.

“You mean Melodie?” Gammy half-shouted back. “She was just telling me about how she made the cakes!”

Melodie? As far as I knew, Melodie had gone back to her parents’ home to cool off and was now playing frisbee with some of the other kids before food time, so I highly doubted she was hanging out with the elders.

“Why do you think you were talking to Melodie, Gammy?” I asked slowly, making sure to enunciate.

“I’d smell that jam and cream anywhere. I might be old, but flour is flour, and butter do be butter.” That last part was a nearly perfect imitation of her great-grandniece, and it would have been amusing if I wasn’t rapidly putting together how wildly my pack had just stepped in it.

Somehow, in the wild story that was my life, the very human baker had been mistaken for a pre-shifted werewolf and had spent the past half hour or so just chilling right in the middle of our family reunion with none the wiser.

Nothing could ever be simple.

“That wasn’t Melodie, I’m afraid,” I said with a sigh. “That’s the baker who pitched in to help because the cakes were burned this morning when Arietty shifted in Auntie Letitia’s kitchen.”

“Arietty? But she’s far too young!”

“Don’t I know it,” I muttered before getting back to the matter at hand. “But where is she, if she’s not here?”

“Oh, she asked to use the restrooms, so Elizabeth showed her where they were.”

“You mean the porta potties?”

“Yup!”

I was incredulous, but the logical part of my brain supplied that she must have headed there when I was taking care of Bobby. What were the chances?

Looked like it was back to the toilets to me. Thrilling. I bid my goodbye to the group and hurried to find the raven-haired baker that turned out to be as elusive as the Loch Ness monster.

Except, perhaps predictably, she wasn’t there. I even went so far as knocking, but each door swung open. What was going on? I felt like I was in the middle of a Scooby Doo montage or the world’s slowest Benny Hill chase scene.

Okay, Cas, think!

Claudia had said that Elizabeth had shown Felicia to the bathrooms. As far as I could recall, we had three Elizabeths in our pack, with one of them being a toddler. And the nineteen-year-old preferred to go by Lizzy, so that left the older Elizabeth, who I called Mrs. Parker.

Right, so if Felicia was with Mrs. Parker, where would the woman make any stops? I knew Mrs. Parker was incredibly proud of her collection of ceramic plates with cats on them, but I didn’t see the baker being willing to go into a random stranger’s house while she was waiting to get paid.

Mrs. Parker also loved sweet tea with a vengeance and made several different varieties from her garden that she was also quite proud of. So, maybe the drinks table?

It was the best lead I had, so I headed there.

It was just a couple of dozen feet from where I’d spoken to Gammy McCallister, but I had been so focused on getting to the bathroom that I hadn’t even glanced in that direction.

Were I in my wolf form, I could have easily tracked her scent despite all the other intense aromas around, but I couldn’t exactly transform into a giant wolf without her getting a little suspicious.

As an alpha, I was larger than the average wolf shifter, and the average wolf shifter was far larger than the average wolf.

As I strode over to the drinks table, I was relieved when I saw a woman with glossy black hair standing next to Mrs. Parker at the table. Already I could pick up on slight hints of pomegranate, and hope flooded me.

“Felicia!” I called, a bit breathless as I jogged up to her. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“There you are!” she drawled, beaming at me like I was someone important to her. I was a bit taken aback by the exuberance of her greeting until my eyes landed on the cup in her hand.

Punch.

Mrs. Parker had given her punch.

Punch that was made by shifters, for shifters.

“I was told you needed my signature?” I said, hoping against all hope that she hadn’t taken a sip yet. But when she blinked slowly at me and swayed, I realized I was a touch too late.

“Yup! I sure do! By the way, this is delicious !”

“I’m sure it is,” I said with an awkward laugh before glaring at Mrs. Parker. “But it’s a bit strong, and you’ve got a long drive back home, so let’s get you something else, okay? Us humans gotta take care of ourselves!”

At that, Mrs. Parker’s eyes widened, and I seriously wanted to facepalm. Somehow, in the matter of an hour, I’d had a human hang around unsupervised all over our celebration area and then get drunk off punch that was very much not meant for her.

“Wait, this has alcohol in it?” she exclaimed, handing it over to me. “Oh man, I gotta be sober to get home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, chuckling softly as I shooed Mrs. Parker away.

I’d give her a stern talking-to later, but I couldn’t exactly fault her for not realizing what was going on.

There were so many shifter scents, food smells, and everything else going on that it was hard to tell whether someone was human, especially since all the young ones running around smelled the same.

And I had to recognize that although I had a running mental list of every single person in our pack, a lot of the others didn’t.

There were far too many of us for that. It was entirely possible that Mrs. Parker saw Gammy talking to Felicia like she would to Melodie and just assumed everything was copacetic.

God, what a mess.

“Here, how about one of these juices?” I asked, reaching over to the kid’s drink table and pulling a little plastic barrel out of a bucket of ice. I expected her to object and insist that she was an adult, but instead she gasped and took it in both hands as if it were something precious.

“Oh my god, I haven’t seen one of these in forever!”

“Well, it’s all yours.” I couldn’t stop myself from grinning at her enthusiasm. “Come on, let’s go have a seat, shall we? I’m sure Gammy would love to continue your conversation while I sign whatever I need to.”

“Sure!” Without warning, she looped her arm through mine, having already poked a hole through the silver foil on top of the barrel with her finger. “Lead the way!”

My brain almost went offline for a moment as it registered so many things all at once.

The heat from her body where it was pressed against mine, the strong muscle of her forearms and biceps, the soft swell of her hips.

And then there was her scent again, even more overpowering than before. I wanted to drown in it.

What was going on? I hadn’t been so drawn to a scent in ages, and certainly never to a human. But it was like I was inexplicably drawn to Felicia in a way that I couldn’t quite describe.

Strange.

But I did manage to get myself moving before there was too long of a pause, and a few moments later, Felicia was sitting beside Gammy again.

“Ah, you found her,” the older woman said, clapping her hands together. “It appears that we’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding, young lady. I thought you were my great-grandniece who helps my niece bake the cakes.”

“Oh!” Felicia said, smiling broadly before laughing. “No, I’m just a baker.” She swallowed a big swig of her juice. “And I am tipsy!”

“Tipsy?”

“Elizabeth had Felicia here sample the punch,” I said with plenty of weight to my voice.

“Oooooooh.” The sound came from the entire group of four elders, and it would have been comical if I wasn’t worried about the situation as a whole.

I couldn’t send Felicia home by herself in such a state—she said herself that she wasn’t safe to drive.

So that meant I would have to drive her home, then run back here.

I could only hope Felicia didn’t ask too many questions.