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Hesitantly, I move back toward the table, sitting across from her. Yet, her next words nearly make me choke.
“I’m dying, Elena. I have terminal cancer. I found out a week before Floyd passed,” she tells me.
“No.” I shake my head, refusing to believe her. She can’t be dying. It isn’t fair, not after everything she has done to help us. Sondra leans over, grabbing my hand.
“It’s okay, dear. But I have one request.”
I try to wrap my head around the news. My stomach sinks like a rock plunged into its depths. Blinking back tears, I nod, waiting to hear her request.
“Don’t tell the women. I don’t want to spend the last of my days watching them worry. I just want to watch them flourish. Not with them upset over something they can’t change. But all your lives, that is something I can change. Which is why I had the deeds and titles changed over to you.”
I chew my lip to stop it quivering; she has already given so much, and I go to tell her that when she raises a hand to stop me.
“Over the last couple of weeks, one thing I have noticed is you’re more of an Alpha than any man I have ever met. An Alpha I would be glad to submit to if I were one of your pack members. This shop, the ranch, it’s all I have left of this life, yet yours is just beginning, as is theirs, so take it. Make something of it, if not for you, for your pack.”
Chapter
Fifty-Five
Elena
A week later
“And that would be our favorite mailman,” Lexa chimes, making me look up.
Micheal, the local mailman, steps into the bakery, a letter clutched under his arm as the bell above the door rings. I can’t help the smile that splits onto my face. I love the locals here and know most by name now.
It is also obvious they know exactly what I am, but never say anything, which just proves everything Jake had been telling the women was a lie. They don’t care as long as we aren't causing trouble.
“Hey, Elena.” He smiles softly.
Micheal is around my mother’s age. Every day I am working at the bakery, he stops in to buy some of Sondra’s mini cheesecakes. Smiling, I get up from my stool behind the counter. The boys are asleep in their rockers by my feet, and Micheal peers over the edge of the counter.
“There they are,” he coos.
I smile, getting his usual order ready.
“Sondra not in today?”
“No, she said she was feeling tired today,” I tell him, passing him the paper bag with the two lemon cheesecakes that he usually gets.
He takes the bag, passing me over the A4 envelope. Yet, as I go to set it down, I notice it has my name on it, not hers.
“Well, tell Sondra I hope she feels better, and I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe. I’ll let you close up,” he tells me, glancing at his watch.
I glance at the clock, noticing it is nearly time to close. Thank god because the boys have slept most of the afternoon, and my breasts are killing me. I still need to pick up another tin of formula on the way home, too. I know I have plenty of milk with the way they’ve slept all afternoon. I breastfeed every chance I get, yet sometimes my supply is low, so I’ve resorted to mixed feeding.
“Do you think Mom is alright?” Lexa asks me as I turn the sign to Closed on the door.
We had hoped she would call. We haven’t spoken to her for a week, and each day I am becoming increasingly worried.
“I don’t know, but I am starting to worry.”
“She said not to call her. Axton is watching the phones,” Lexa replies. She has been reminding me every time I picked up the phone that mom said she would call us and not to call her. Yet, I have this sickening feeling that something is severely wrong.
“Maybe?”
“No, Elena, if Axton is watching the phones…”
