Page 5 of Wild Alpha (Cold-Blooded Alpha #12)

“ H i.” Fisher greets me with a friendly smile.

“Hi,” I say shyly.

He struggles to his feet, wobbles, and tumbles forward with a yelp.

I dart forward, my heart in my throat. The fire isn’t completely lit, but someone falling face-first into a campfire will cause at least a little damage.

He scratches his brown curls, smiling wryly at me. “The most beautiful girl in the world shows up, and I nearly fall flat into a fire right in front of her.”

I stare at him.

Beautiful ?

I lick my lips, shifting from foot to foot. He thinks I’m beautiful, and I don’t know what to say back. Should I thank him or tell him he looks handsome? How could I have completely forgotten how to talk to people?

“You’re fast,” he says into the silence I’m struggling to fill.

His eyes drift to my fingers on his shoulder, reminding me I’m still holding onto him.

He’s not falling into the fire anymore, idiot. Let the man go.

I drop his arm and back up. “Sorry. I…”

“Saved me,” he says softly. Then he frowns. “Wait, are you alone out here?”

I nod.

His frown deepens as his eyes scan me and linger on my bare feet. “Where are your hiking boots? Your supplies? Water?”

I was so concerned with the tangles in my hair that I should have spent at least five minutes coming up with a reason for wandering the forest in bare feet and an ill-fitting dress.

I think frantically. “Um, I was staying in a cabin and went for a walk.”

He peers around, frowning as he steps closer. His posture is undeniably protective, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I can protect myself, and the bear I can hear crashing around is miles away, too far to cause either of us any trouble. Obviously, I can’t tell him that.

“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” he says, still frowning. “There was a wolf here earlier. She seemed friendly, but I don’t want you to get bitten or anything.”

“Right.” I look down, hiding my smile. No wolf will bite me, especially not the one from last night.

“Have you eaten?” he asks.

I shake my head. I’m not really hungry, but I’m curious what he will give me since we ate all the rabbit for breakfast, and I didn’t think he was well enough to go hunting on his own.

“Come sit and I’ll get you something, okay?”

I settle beside the fire, trying not to notice his eyes lingering on my bare legs before dancing away again.

“I’m Fisher,” he introduces himself, though I already know his name.

The one response I had prepared for. “Averie.”

The Rowe portion of my name I keep to myself for now. Trust doesn’t come easily to me. It hasn’t for so long, which is why my willingness to want to trust this particular human surprises me.

He stops rummaging in his pack to smile at me. “Pretty name.”

My face heats up, and his smile grows. “Sorry. I embarrassed you.”

“It’s okay. I’m not used to..." I gesture between us, unable to find the words. “This.”

“ This ?” he echoes.

I lick my lips, and his gaze dips, a spark of heat warming chocolate brown eyes. “I’m usually on my own. It’s why I’m here. To be alone.”

He cocks his head. “But you decided you wanted to speak to me?”

“You seemed nice.” Nice enough not to hurt me the way so many have tried to before.

His gaze sharpens, and I think he saw—or heard—much more than I wanted him to. “You’re safe with me, Averie,” he says softly.

And even though he’s a stranger, a small part of me believes him.

“Did you stay here all night?” I ask him, wrapping my arms around my raised legs.

He abandons rummaging through his bag to pick up his fallen blanket and drapes it around my shoulders. “Here. I’ve been baking beside this fire. You take the blanket.”

I’m not cold, but it smells like him. It’s nice. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he says with another smile. “And yeah, I stayed here.”

I watch him curiously as he pulls out a lighter and piles small sticks together. The fire must be burning itself out to need more sticks. Once again, it’s disappointing not to see him rub two sticks together.

“I thought hikers stayed in tents or cabins,” I say.

When I ran from my pack, I was human at first. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t think many people would willingly sign up for a long night on the hard ground, swatting at bugs that bit, and hoping the wild growling animals in the distance wouldn’t try to eat you while you were sleeping.

“Some do. Sleeping under the stars is nice, too.”

“You’re not afraid of bears attacking you?”

He pulls out a spray and shows it to me. “Bear spray.”

“What if the wolf from last night came back?”

“The one last night didn’t seem aggressive. If it were another, I guess I might try to befriend it, and if that failed, run like hell,” he says cheerfully.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to warn him never to run from a predator. It triggers our hunting instincts. Since a warning like that would scare him and might lead to some awkward questions, I say instead, “It’s good that you were prepared for bears.”

I’ve only encountered one black bear since I came up here, and it kept its distance.

As we head into fall, they’re more focused on foraging for winter.

It’s the mountain lions that pose the biggest threat to humans and me.

Cougars are larger than I am, and I don’t have a pack to scare them off if one decides to fight me.

“I was prepared for anything I could imagine, except for a trip beside the creek.” He runs his hand through his hair, frowning. “At least, that's what I think happened. I remember stopping to refill my canteen, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up next to a wolf.”

“That must have been a shock to the system,” I say, trying to appear suitably shocked and surprised.

“The wolf was friendly,” he says, furrowing his brow.

“Oh?” Playing pretend is much, much harder than I thought. I keep wanting to avoid his gaze.

“They don’t usually bring you dinner. I thought I was going to be the dinner.”

Wolves don’t eat humans. I attack only when someone threatens me.

I point at his forehead. “You’re bleeding through your Band-Aid.”

He blinks at me. “Huh?”

“The Band-Aid. You’re bleeding through it.”

His fingers search for it, and his face twists in confusion. “I don’t remember putting a Band-Aid on…”

It is very hard to meet his gaze innocently, knowing I was the one who put that Band-Aid there, while he’s struggling to remember it.

“There was a wolf,” he eventually says.

I almost smile, and some part of me wants to tease. “The wolf put a Band-Aid on you?”

He chuckles, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

I blink at him. “It wouldn’t ?”

He grins as he hands me a granola bar from his bag. “Friendliest wolf I’ve ever seen. Brought me food. Pulled a blanket over me. It was almost as if…” his voice trails off.

I barely stop myself from sniffing the granola bar. A human doesn’t connect with the world through their nose the way a wolf does. If I start behaving like a wolf when I’m human, I’m going to have questions I can’t answer. “Almost as if what?”

Fisher looks at me a little longer, and I regret teasing him at all. He’s on his way to getting a headache from how hard he’s thinking. “Nothing. Just nothing.” He nods at the bar in my hand. “You’re not eating your granola bar.”

I look at the plastic-wrapped bar, then tear it open. Before I’ve taken one bite, my mouth feels bone dry. My wolf isn’t interested in whatever Fisher considers food. If I’m honest with myself, neither am I.

Reluctantly, I lift it to my mouth and take a bite. I chew and I chew and chew .

My gaze clashes with Fisher’s, and he laughs. “You don’t like it?”

He’s sharing his food with me, so I try to find a nice way of telling him it tastes like sawdust. “It’s… food.”

Good job, Averie. I tell myself sarcastically. That was some compliment.

My wolf demands to know why I’m not instantly spitting out this disgusting thing and hunting for something for Fisher, if this is the food he has to eat.

He makes a face. “Yeah, me neither. These are for emergencies. I’ve had them in my pantry for months. I don’t like to waste food, so I thought I should bring them on this hike and use them up. Yet I keep finding every excuse not to eat them, even passing them along to beautiful strangers.”

I swallow, but I swear the thing sticks in my throat.

Laughing, he offers me a pouch from his bag. “Here. Water. There’s not much of it, but it should help.”

I cross over to him, take the pouch, and sip from it. The water is warm, but it helps the granola stuck in my throat go down.

He returns to sorting through a familiar red pouch, pulling out a Band-Aid, then hesitates.

“Do you need help?” I offer.

“If you don’t mind.”

“Here.” I thrust the granola bar at him. “It tastes like sawdust.”

His laugh pours out of him, warming me from the inside out and wrapping me up in a hug so real it’s as if he has his arms tight around me.

“I know.” He takes the bar, unwraps it, and throws it into the forest, grinning at me. “Some wild thing can have it, though it’ll probably take one bite and spit it out and vow to avoid all human food forever.”

He catches me watching him tuck the granola bar wrapper into his pack. “Leave the forest how you found it. That’s what my dad used to say when he took me hiking. It’s a lesson I always try to remember.”

I appreciate that, and so does my wolf, who doesn’t want to be tripping over the trash that hikers sometimes like to dump in the forests before they go home.

“Unless you’re dealing with disgusting granola bars?”

He grins at me. “Yep.”

I take the Band-Aid from him, unwrap it, and sink to my knees beside him to put it on his cut.

I’m not surprised it’s still bleeding, though a little sluggishly than it was before.

He’s a slow healer, like most humans. If I had a cut like this, I’d have healed while I was still fighting to unwrap the Band-Aid from its paper.

His breathing slows significantly as I lean closer to press down the edges.

“Did he take you hiking a lot?” I ask, trying to ignore the hungry way he’s looking at my mouth.

“Whenever he could. He owns the grocery store in town. That means working weekdays and weekends. Doesn’t leave him with a lot of free time to take me on hikes like he did when I was a kid.”

He’s sad about that. He’s doing his best to hide it behind a smile, but he misses those hikes. Or maybe it's spending time with his dad that he misses the most.

“Did he always own the store?” I’ve finished with the Band-Aid, but my fingers keep smoothing out the edges, and I’m reluctant to take my hands off him.

He probably thinks I’m crazy, maybe even some wild girl roaming the national forest in bare feet and a dress with sleeves that keep slipping down.

Even though he must be wondering why I’m messing with his Band-Aid, he isn’t telling me to stop touching him.

The opposite is true. He’s leaning into my touch.

He nods. “The grocery store has been in the family for a couple of generations now.”

Someone else must have been around to watch the store while he went on hikes with his dad—probably his mom. And if the hiking trips stopped, she’s not around anymore. That’s the only reason I don’t ask.

Losing family is a special kind of hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Talking about it hurts, so does thinking about it, and not talking about it, no matter how many years they’ve been gone. I don’t want to hurt Fisher by asking a question I suspect I already know the answer to.

“And will you take over one day?”

He releases a sigh so small, it’s clear he doesn’t want me to hear it. “Probably.”

“It’s what he expects, so you’ll do it?”

He nods.

“So you help him?” I know he does. I saw him outside wearing a blue apron, smiling and waving goodbye to a customer after he had loaded boxes of food into his truck.

“I do.”

He’s in his mid-twenties, and the men I saw at his age were out dating, drinking, or hanging out with their friends, not working all the time like Fisher seems to do. “Don’t you have other stuff you want to do more?” I ask, recalling that quiet sigh.

“Sure, but he needs my help.”

My eyes remain fixed on the Band-Aid that I keep fiddling with. When I look at him, I remember the couple laughing by the lake, and how the guy looked at the girl before leaning down and kissing her.

Fisher’s fingers graze my jaw, so light, I barely feel it. But I do feel it.

“Thanks for the Band-Aid, Averie.”

Before, I thought he wanted to kiss me. Now I know he’s going to.

Clearing my throat, I try to think of something to say. “You shouldn’t keep it covered all the time, or it won’t heal.”

His eyes are on my mouth when he says, “I know.”

I wanted Fisher to kiss me, but when he moves toward me, I scramble to my feet, backing away from Fisher and nearly into the fire. “I have to go,” I stammer.

“Watch out.” Instantly, he’s alarmed. “I’ve scared you.”

“No,” I deny, making myself into a liar by retreating as he gets to his feet. “No. I just…”

He waits patiently.

“I have to see someone.” I blurt out the first thing I can think of.

His alarm morphs into something else. Something I wasn’t expecting.

Jealousy .

“You’re here with a boyfriend,” he says, retreating.

“Not a boyfriend.” I remember how little water he had in his pouch and that he hadn’t hunted for any food. I can’t let him eat another one of those disgusting granola bars that taste like sawdust. He might choke on it. “Will you be here later?”

He cocks his head, curious. “I’d planned on it. Why?”

I hesitate. Staying is not a good idea. Being this close to the Blackshaws isn’t just dangerous; it’s suicidal if they catch me.

“I might come back later.”

His mouth kicks up in a half-smile. “To see me?”

“You’re very easy to talk to.”

He sinks back to the ground. “Then I’ll sit here and I’ll never move again.”

I curl my toes in the dirt, hesitant to leave him alone. Or maybe I’m the one who doesn’t want to be alone. “Don’t you have a home to get back to?”

Picking up a stick, he pokes the fire with it. “Doesn’t seem so important now.” He looks up at me. “If you want to come back sooner, I’ll still be around.”

He says it in a way that makes me think he knows I’m lying about having to see someone at all. As if he knows I’m up in the mountains by myself.

“I’ll see you later.” I walk away from him, feeling his gaze warming my back.

As soon as I’m positive he hasn’t followed, I slip out of my stolen dress and stash it in the trees so an animal can’t find it and run off with it.

I’ve gotten used to hiding and to retreating from my loneliness by being a wolf. I always look forward to the moment of being a wolf again.

Except this time.

This time, I peer over my shoulder toward the man I left sitting by the fire, and I want to go back and ask him more about why he’s alone in the mountains.

Shaking my head, I whisper to myself, “You know how this ends, Averie. He’ll talk to you for a bit, then go back to his life in town and the girlfriend who’s probably waiting for him. And you… you go back to being alone.”