Page 24 of Fated to the Alpha

Stacy patiently listened and Kimberly sensed some movement. The tap of a spoon on the sides of pots, the shuffling of feet. But no words yet.

Only when she was finished, concluding with the fact that they were planning to meet up for dinner later that week, did Stacy speak. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, honey?”

The question caught Kimberly a little off guard, but it wasn’t a totally unexpected reaction. Kimberly knew her mom well enough to read between the lines.

“Sure,” Kimberly replied, drawing a tiny spiral on the countertop with her fingertip. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, I can’t forget how devastating leaving Warrington was for you. It took ages for you to pull yourself together. I can’t imagine what seeing him has done after all this time. Are you all right?”

That was a loaded question. “Yeah, I think so. I mean, it was weird and a little scary to see him again, but I’ve seen him enough and talked to him that I feel pretty okay about it now.”

Fixing her wolf was her priority, and she felt hopeful spending time with Shane would do that. Everything else was pure gravy.

“And what about when one of you leaves Tolstone?” Stacy asked, worry so prevalent that Kimberly wondered if this was bothering her mom more than it bothered her. “How are you going to handle separation again?” Then, there was a gasp. “Wait! Are you considering joining his pack?”

A shock went through Kimberly. “What? No! Absolutely not. Gage is my alpha. It would take an act of God to change that.”

“All right, all right. But, seriously, how are you going to feel if you two get close and then you or he has to leave?”

The thought made her inner wolf sadly settle its head back between its paws, and Kimberly wanted to lash out at her mom for reminding her of the cold, harsh reality that awaited them. Yes, Tolstone was a temporary home. Yes, Shane would need to take his pack to a new territory. Any time they spent together would be lost in a matter of weeks or a couple of months at most.

Kimberly let out a long breath. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

Some of the noise dimmed on Stacy’s side of the line, as if she were walking away from the kitchen to a quieter place. “I want you to promise me something, sweetheart. If things become too much or you need us, please come straight home. We have more than enough room and it would be good to see you again, under any circumstances. If whatever you start with Shane goes south, promise me you won’t suffer through it alone?”

What Stacy didn’t know was that Kimberly had suffered through plenty without her parents’ help. The death of her alpha, the attack, her nearly comatose wolf, all the anxiety and self-doubt surrounding her lack of dominance, she had gone through it all without running home to Mom and Dad. Kimberly was sure she could survive another heartbreak at the hands of Shane Snyder, if it came to that.

But, for her mom’s sake, she replied, “I promise.”

*

Shane readjusted his earplugs as the high-pitched grind of the saw ripped through the construction site. The cutter might have been on the other side of the partially built house, but Shane’s heightened senses might as well have put his ear an inch from the whirling blade. He was no stranger to the banging, popping, rumbling, and zipping of power tools, but that didn’t make the jobsite any less uncomfortable for a wolf shifter.

His mind was only half-focused on measuring out the skeleton frame of an interior wall destined for one of the bedroom closets. The other half of his brain was split between all the details of the towns he had been researching over the last week. He reexamined each one, going over the flaws and benefits. Some had good schools, which was a boon for both John Matthews, since he was a teacher, and for his kids. Another was close to a college or university, which was helpful for Trent, the youngest of his pack and looking to enroll as soon as they were all settled. Shane made a point of bypassing major cities or capitals, sure that they would already have a shifter pack that claimed the area. That, and his pack was used to rural, small-town living. Dropping them into a place like Dallas or Chicago would have made it impossible for them to reconnect. A smaller suburb of those bigger cities might have worked, but Shane wanted to keep this search as simple as possible.

Then, whenever his brain floated on autopilot, it drifted to a more complicated topic. Kimberly.

They looked at their schedules and decided on Friday night. He’d bring the food, and she’d pick the movie. To say he was excited was an understatement, but he couldn’t afford to get too worked up or distracted. This was to hang out, just to test the waters and see if there was anything still there. His temptation to lure her away from Gage’s pack was still festering in the back of his thoughts, but that wasn’t the goal of the date. It was to take a short break from life, from expectations, and just be Shane and Kimberly again, the way it used to be.

He wasn’t so dumb to think that anything would be exactly the same as it was before. Still, the feel of her hand in his, the softness of her skin, and the heat from her blush on his fingertips certainly made part of his old self reawaken to the possibilities.

The growl of an approaching truck engine broke through the background noise of the construction site, followed by the slam of the truck door. Dominic’s scent blew from the street. The Prime Alpha wasn’t worried about masking his arrival.

There were no other shifters on site, so Shane knew Dominic had to be there to see him. He waited on the back porch concrete slab until Dominic wove his way through the jungle of two-by-fours to step through the gaping hole that would be the back door. Shane plucked out the earplugs to give the Prime Alpha his full attention. He had shot a text to Dominic earlier that week to ask for recommendations for new territories. To that, the Prime Alpha said he’d have to do a little digging and get back with him. Shane assumed the visit was to talk that over.

They greeted and exchanged small talk about work and the house’s progress before jumping right into business.

Dominic pulled out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “Here are a few towns that I know for a fact aren’t claimed by another pack.”

Shane brushed off the dirt from his hands and accepted the note. As he unfolded the paper to read the list, he grimaced. None of these cities were part of his own research, meaning he might have done all that work for nothing, and other packs already took those towns he had found. Perhaps he should have waited on Dominic, but Shane couldn’t sit idle in his free evenings and not try to find a new home for his pack. It felt lazy and irresponsible, two things he strove not to be as long as he was alpha.

“All of these places were up for grabs the last time I checked, which may have been about six months.”

Shane nodded and they discussed how far away each town was from Tolstone. Part of him wanted to stay close by. Not because he thought they would need Dominic’s hospitality again, but because Kimberly was still there. On the other hand, if Gage ever moved his pack, there was no telling how far Kimberly would be yanked from him again. A niggling voice from the past told him not to make a decision based on his feelings for a girl. But it wasn’t just any girl. It was Kimberly. And if Friday night became the start of something more serious, Shane didn’t want to fuck things up with her again. Like he promised, he wouldn’t purposefully hurt her. To nourish a relationship only to move several hours away would definitely hurt both of them. He’d find a way to make it work if there were sparks in the end.

“There’s no rush, of course,” Dominic said. “Let your pack catch their breath while you do some homework on it.”

“What about that pack from Virginia? Don’t you need the room?”