Page 21 of Fated to the Alpha

Kimberly felt her face burn. Not with embarrassment, but outrage. “It’s none of your business who I have the hots for. You lost the right to know anything about me when you made the choice to—”

“I had no choice!”

Shane’s eyes turned gold and it was a good thing he was facing away from the front door. No less than three intense seconds ticked by when Kimberly’s first pickup for the day walked into the lobby.

The intrusion of a human knocked some sense into Shane. His wolf receded, giving way to the honey-brown eyes she still loved after all these years. He turned away and resumed working on the flower bucket rack. Kimberly remained a little flustered while she retrieved Mrs. Johanson’s bouquet for her granddaughter’s birthday. The cool of the storage refrigerator did some good to calm her, but Shane’s words continued to bounce in her head. What the hell was he talking about? What joke did Gage make? Why was Shane getting so bothered over whether she had a thing for her alpha?

Then, she remembered something from her past that confirmed what was going on. Once upon a time, one of Shane’s friends made a pass at Kimberly. He cat-called her just before the pack went on one of their annual runs. She and Shane had been dating for some time, and at the next opportunity to get her alone, Shane peppered her with questions about why his friend would act like that. Kimberly wasn’t the one to be asked, and she told him as much. It wasn’t a fight, but it was a moment that tested their relationship, their trust.

Shane was jealous of his friend in Warrington, and it would seem that he was jealous of Gage now.

After Mrs. Johanson paid and left, Kimberly walked around the counter to stand near Shane, heedless of whether she would be in the way. Just like when they were kids in Warrington, Kimberly decided to take a gentler approach.

“I’m not into Gage,” she said firmly. “He’s like a brother to me and always has been. I followed him to Tolstone for the same reason your pack followed you. Loyalty. Loyalty not through manipulation, self-preservation, or because I was forced. It’s not your dad’s kind of loyalty. It’s loyalty based on trust and friendship. Maybe that’s something you’ve forgotten in the last ten years, but plenty of us still think that way and choose to live our lives by those principles.”

Shane paused in his work, but he seemed to have no comeback. He didn’t even turn around to look at her. He simply let her finish her speech, and after a few beats to wait for more, he went right back to putting together the rack.

Kimberly wanted to bark at him, demand that he acknowledge her. Instead, she turned sharply, her long ponytail whipping with the motion, and stomped to the back room. If he wanted to act like a child and ignore her, then she’d do the same.

Maybe it was stupid to think that she could have rekindled any sort of connection with Shane. Too much time had passed, too much had happened, and both of them were still bleeding from wounds they couldn’t talk about. Losing a fight to a beta and most of his pack turning their back on him had to be rough, especially if Shane had let anything of his father’s old ways sink in.

Kimberly probably wasn’t the one he’d ever trust with his healing, but as she dropped into the office chair to finish her inventory order, part of her wished she could be the one for Shane. She wanted to be the one he ran to when things were too much to handle, the way he used to. A tightness constricted her chest and her eyes stung with tears she refused to let fall. She had such hope for today and Shane had to go ruin it by being dumb and jealous. Maybe he was right. Maybe people did change too much.

Chapter Five

Three hours later, Shane stood back and looked at his work. Years of working with wood were far from wasted, and he felt a little proud of how well this flower bucket rack came together. What he couldn’t be proud of, however, was how he treated Kimberly.

She had turned back into the ice queen after he all but attacked her and accused her of things he knew were wrong. Gage wasn’t Kimberly’s type. At least, he wouldn’t have been when they were younger. Part of him wanted to know how she’d react to hearing that her alpha had made remarks about her dominance behind her back. Another part truly wanted to probe and poke the bear to see if she’d confess something. If she didn’t like Gage, did she like someone else? He could sense that she wasn’t mated because all wolf shifters could sense that spiritual bond between shifters. But he couldn’t tell if she was in a relationship with someone. If she tried to defend herself, to say that she wasn’t interested in Gage, perhaps she’d admit she was interested in someone else.

That, knowing she was taken, might have been the only true antidote to his obsession over her. But the way he jumped into that topic was all wrong. He had been too raw from her questions about what happened in Warrington. Shane hadn’t even realized how sore he still was over it. He could explain away why it happened and how it happened, but processing through the events didn’t heal his ego any faster. He turned into a snappy rattlesnake that had been stepped on, and Kimberly didn’t deserve to be spoken to like that. Now, she probably hated him even more for insinuating that she’d have shallow motivations for staying with such a small pack and an immature alpha.

Shane knew exactly what he had to do, what his gut begged him to do for the sake of any opportunity left to get closer to Kimberly. He had to apologize.

Yet, over the mechanical scream of the drill, he heard his father’s voice in his head, growling with absolute menace.

Alphas don’t apologize. They mean what they say. You will not stoop so low to ask forgiveness from a worthless shifter.

Without hesitation, without a moment’s doubt, because he knew that earworm was pure, one-hundred-percent Isaac Snyder, Shane rejected those words. He would apologize, because Kimberly was completely worthy of it.

All morning, Kimberly had attended to customers, taken orders, passed off orders, and spent the rest of the time in the prep room. His ears were attuned to her movements, guessing what she could be doing, and a little thankful she wasn’t listening to the same music from Saturday. Today, it was all modern pop that Shane barely recognized.

He packed up his tools and stepped up to the entryway to the prep room, edged by curtains held back by tasseled ropes. For a few seconds, he stood there, watching her arrange a new order. He studied the way she treated each flower and piece of greenery with the utmost care.

Shane cleared his throat. Kimberly slowed but didn’t stop or look his way.

“I’ve got to clean up some,” he said. “Do you have a broom?”

Kimberly jerked her thumb to a broom and dustpan leaning up in the far corner of the room. Shane left his bag in the entryway and fetched the broom, never taking his eyes off her, with hopes that she’d lift her gaze. She never did.

After he cleaned up the wood dust from around the rack, he came back to the prep room and decided to take the plunge.

Shane stood across from her at the prep table, put his hands on the edge and found the table was unexpectedly wobbly. By the way it tilted, he knew one leg had to be shorter than the others by a fraction of an inch.

Kimberly recoiled, eyes blazing and teeth bared like she was ready to growl but didn’t show the fangs for it. “Watch it!”

Shane quickly raised his hands in surrender. “My bad.”

Face pinched with disdain, she went back to her work, and Shane did too. He leaned down and inspected the situation with the worktable. He found the culprit and went to his tool bag. With a few slivers of wood in one hand, a tube of wood glue, four nails, and a hammer, Shane knelt by the table leg just to Kimberly’s right. Without understanding why, he felt a twinge of lust, being this close to Kimberly’s legs. If he wanted, he could have slipped his hand right under the hem of her long skirt to feel for her soft, smooth skin. Trailing up, he’d rediscover her curves, like walking an old path he used to know by heart.