“She was dialing before we hung up. I could hear it in her goodbye.” I pull my knees up onto the stool, which is not built for it, and balance there like a gargoyle. “That's not paranoia, Lil, that's data. The woman had my cousin's engagement on the family chat before the ring was on. She's had nothing to report about me in six years. Six years of telling Aunt Deb I'm focusing on my career. This is going out like a wedding announcement.”
“Okay.” Lily claps once, softly, the way she does at the start of craft time. “Two options. Option one, you call her back and tell her the truth.”
“I can't.”
“You can. People do it constantly. 'Mom, I panicked, there's no pack.'“
“You didn't hear her, Lil.” And the soft spot opens up, right where it always sits. “She cried. Happy cried. She called for Dad. I've been the thing she worries about at book club for six years, and for one phone call I wasn't. If I call back now, I don't just take away the pack. I hand her back the worry with interest. She'll do the brave voice, the 'of course, sweetheart, as long as you're happy' voice, and then she'll worry twice as hard forever. Because now I'll be singleanda liar.”
Lily looks at me for a long moment.
“You know that's deranged, right? Lovingly. As your best friend. The math you just did is deranged.”
“The math is airtight.”
“So that's option two, then.” She pulls her chair closer, and the delight is back. The terrible delight. “You find three alphas willing to fake-pack you for one family reunion.”
“When you say it out loud it sounds insane.”
“Itisinsane. It's also the plot of every movie I've made you watch since 2019, and you're going to do it, because I just watched your face do the math and pick this.”
She's already reaching behind her for the craft cart. She comes back with a clipboard and the fat purple marker, the one that's supposed to smell like grape and smells like regret, and writes across a sheet of construction paper in teacher-perfect letters: PACK CANDIDATES.
“Lily.”
“Criteria first.” She underlines it. “Single. Actually single, not Huckleberry single, because if you borrow someone's situationship for this, Dottie will have it on the specials board by Friday. Plausible, meaning no one who flinches when you touch their arm. Discreet, because this town runs on gossip the way other towns run on water. And willing to stand in your parents' backyard and lie to your entire family, including your mother, who interrogates like a sweet-faced fed.”
“And here's the one thing you've actually got going for you.” She taps the marker on the clipboard. “Your whole family's in Pine Valley. Forty minutes might as well be the moon. Your mother couldn't pick a single Hollow alpha out of a lineup, so whoever we choose walks in as a total stranger. Clean slate.”
“That's the first encouraging thing anyone's said to me today.”
“I'm very supportive.”
“You forgot 'able to act.'“
“That's what plausible means. Keep up.” Marker poised. Then she lowers it, and her whole face changes. “Oh no.”
“What.”
“Touch.” She says it the way other people sayiceberg. “Josie. Think about Cara and her pack for one second. They don't perform anything. He hands her coffee before she asks. She fixes his collar without looking. They kiss her cheek on the way past like it's breathing. That's what a real pack looks like, and it can't be faked cold. Your family will clock three strangers who don't know how to touch you inside of two minutes. A whole backyard of them, watching, and three alphas hovering around you like coworkers at a retirement party.”
My stomach drops, because she's right, and I should have gotten there first. I was picturing three alphas standing near me. My mother is going to be watching for three alphas who love me. Those are different shows entirely, and she's seen the real one up close for thirty years.
“So we'd have to practice,” I say slowly.
“Weeks of it. Coffee orders, inside jokes, how you like your eggs, which one carries your bag. And touch. Hand-holding, cheek kisses, the arm around the chair, all of it on autopilot before you get anywhere near that driveway.” Lily delivers this with the solemnity of a doctor who is enjoying herself enormously. “Three alphas. Rehearsing how to love you. Daily. For accuracy.”
“For accuracy,” I repeat.
I'd love to report that all of me hates this plan. But I'm an omega who hasn't been touched past a handshake in six years, and some low, traitorous part of me has already leaned into the hypothetical cheek kiss.
I ignore it. I've had practice.
“Go,” Lily says, tapping the paper. “Single alphas. Every one you know.”
And this is where it gets embarrassing, because we both go quiet, and the quiet stretches long enough that the fish does a full lap.
Huckleberry Hollow is not a big town. It's a wonderful town. The diner knows your order, the creek babbles like it's showing off, everyone waves. But the single-alpha population is small and closely monitored, and we burn through it in under a minute.
