Page 11 of Alfie

“I’m happy for you both,” Alfie said. His phone buzzed and he saw a text from alpha Joss asking him to come down to the conference room near the market for a quick meeting.

“Something up?” Mercer asked.

“Meeting.”

“I gotta run anyway. Good luck tonight.”

“Thanks, see you.”

Mercer left and Alfie put away the items, setting the bag of popcorn tied with a gingham ribbon on the counter so he didn’t forget it. Then he headed out of the apartment and hurried across the park to the employee cafeteria, taking the stairs underground to the large conference room.

He found all the alphas around the table, along with several of the higher-ranked males from the groups, and suddenly he felt like something serious was about to happen.

“Come on in, Alfie,” Joss said, gesturing to an empty seat at the long oval table.

He pulled the chair back and sat, his wolf letting out a curious grumble in his head.

“You can relax,” Marcus, the bear alpha, said with a smile. “You look like you think something terrible is about to happen.”

“Sorry,” Alfie said. “You have to imagine it from my point of view.”

“We just want you to know that we’re all on the same page,” Joss said. “We were meeting up to discuss park issues, and needed to talk to you about one of those issues.”

“Which is?” Alfie asked.

“Your soulmate is human,” Caesar, the lion alpha, said. “And first off, we’re thrilled that you found her.”

“We are, congrats,” Alistair, the alpha elephant, said. “We’re always happy when one of our people finds their forever person.”

Alfie was glad to hear they were happy for him, but he still hadn’t relaxed, no matter the pleasantries. He definitely felt like the proverbial other shoe was about to drop.

He waited, and the silence in the room stretched for a moment, and then Joss cleared his throat and drummed his fingers on the shiny surface of the table. “Every time one of our people finds a human soulmate, something inevitably happens that makes us have to evaluate how we handle things, as individuals, groups, and the community as a whole. The first time a shifter spent the night outside of the park with his soulmate, Win fell asleep with Lexy and shifted while he slept. It was incredibly dangerous in many ways for him, her, and our people. So we declared no more sleeping away from the park overnight and had the apartment complex built to give our people a place to stay.”

Atticus, the gorilla alpha, nodded. “And then most recently, Mercer fell asleep with Rhomi in the apartment and shifted and scared the hell out of her.”

Caesar grimaced. “If that had happened during park hours, I don’t want to imagine the problems we would have encountered. Imagine, a screaming female and a rampaging lion trying to get to her. It would have been an unmitigated disaster.”

“Thankfully, it happened after hours,” Joss said. “But now that you’ve found your soulmate, and she’s human, and we all understand the pull to be with our soulmates, we’re setting a new rule in place in regard to overnight situations.”

Alfie’s chest tightened, his mind turning to the apartment he was moving into just before the call to this meeting.

Marcus tilted his head slightly, his eyes shining in understanding. “No overnights, period. Once you and your soulmate have mated properly and she knows the truth, then things can change. We still would not encourage overnights outside of the park, and considering your female appears to be quite close to her family, the apartment is a good idea. It gives you a place she can eventually bring her family to, to show them her ‘home’.”

“I understand,” Alfie said. And he really did. The secret of shifters had to be protected at all costs.

“Sorry to put you on the spot,” Joss said. “But we’re going to put out a bulletin to everyone about the new rules, and we didn’t want you to think we were singling you out. It’s something we’ve discussed since Mercer’s incident, but we didn’t implement the no-overnights with Indio and his mate Reagan because frankly she was pregnant already when they met up again, and there’s no way a shifter would shift while sleeping in the same bed with his pregnant soulmate.”

“I get it,” Alfie said. “I’m taking her out tonight, so I’ll need an escort. And I won’t bring her back here, or stay overnight at her place. Not until she knows the truth.”

“Thanks for understanding,” Atticus said. “Good luck winning her heart.”

“I’ll grab some people for you,” Jupiter said. “You can take one of the SUVs on your date from the employee lot.”

“Thanks,” Alfie said. He pushed back in the chair and stood up.

Alfie left the conference room and strode down the hall. He chuckled to himself, thinking how weird it was that the alphas had been sitting around essentially talking about his sex life.

Well, he may not be able to bring Myla back to his apartment tonight, but then again, he wasn’t sure what the night would bring. Maybe they’d just kiss, or maybe more. All he really cared about was spending time with her and getting to know her. The texts they’d shared throughout the day had not been nearly enough to satisfy his need to be around her, and it couldn’t be six o’clock fast enough.