Page 8 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

Anger heats the back of my throat at a pack of nine-year-olds drawing up a list, deciding who counts and who doesn’t. I keep my face even.

“Maybe your invite just hasn’t come yet,” I offer. “Sometimes they show up late.”

She shakes her head against my chest. “Chloe said Emma made the list at lunch. I’m not on it.”

I’ve faced down men twice my size on the field, and I don’t have a single thing to say to a little girl who found out at bedtime she got left off a list. My niece is a shy little thing. She’s quiet in class, slow to warm to new kids, and being what she is among human children only widens the gap. She can’t shift yet, won’t for years, but the human kids feel the difference in her without knowing its name, and they keep their distance. I’ve watched it happen since kindergarten, helpless to do anything but hold her afterward.

“You know what?” I tilt her chin up so she has to look at me. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”

She sniffles. “What?”

“One day you’re going to have so many friends you won’t know what to do with all of them. They’ll be lined up at the door. Calling the house at dinner. Showing up wanting to sit with you at lunch.” I tap her nose. “You’ll get so sick of them you’ll come hide in here with me for some peace and quiet.”

A wet little laugh slips out of her. “No I won’t.”

“You will. You’ll be begging me, ‘Uncle Marc, make them go away, there’s way too many.’”

“That’s silly.” She’s smiling now, the gap where her front tooth used to be on full display.

“It’s true. You’ll see.” I give her a squeeze. “Hey. How about this? You and me, this whole weekend. Movies right here in the living room, all the junk food your stomach can hold, sleeping bags on the floor. We’ll build a fort.”

Her eyes go wide. “Really? A fort?”

“A huge one. Couch cushions, every blanket in the house, the works.”

“Can we watch the dog one? With the puppies?”

“We can watch the dog one four times if you want.”

She throws her arms around my neck, fierce and warm, braids whipping into my jaw. The anger in my chest eases at last.

“Thank you, Uncle Marc,” she whispers into my neck.

“Anytime, Bell.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Now. Bed. Forts don’t get built by tired girls.”

She groans the whole way up, but she goes, padding off down the hall with her blanket dragging behind her. I sit alone in the blue light of the paused cartoon, and I should feel settled. The kid’s okay, the weekend’s planned, the house quiet around me.

Instead my thoughts slide straight back to a dead Ford on the connector, to the woman who screamed at me through the rain. The wolf wakes again at the memory of her scent.

Her keys are still in my jacket pocket. I’ll have to return them, which means I’ll have to see her again. The thought shouldn’t please me. She’s married, prickly, and wants nothing to do with me.

I push off the couch and pad down the hall. Bella’s door sits ajar, her nightlight glowing softly against the wall, and I find her burrowed deep under her blanket with one arm hanging off the edge of the mattress. She’s out cold, braids half undone on the pillow. I ease the blanket up over her shoulder and stand there a while, listening to the small, even sound of her breathing. Whatever Emma’s birthday list took from her tonight, I’ll find a way to hand it back this weekend. I pull the door to and leave her to sleep.

The house is quiet behind me when I slip out the rear door into the trees. The rain has thinned to a fine drizzle, and the cold comes off the wet leaves in waves. I strip my shirt over my head and drape it on a low branch. The rest I shed and leave hanging on the bark for afterward. Cold bites at my skin, and I welcome it. When I let the change take me, bone reshaping under fur, the world drops low and widens, color bleeding out while scent floods in. Then I’m on four legs and gone.

I run.

The forest tears past, wet earth flying under my paws, branches whipping at my flanks. I push harder, faster, until my lungs scream and there’s no room left in my skull for anything but the next stride. This is the only quiet I ever get. The wolf doesn’t grieve. He just runs. For a while I get to be only him: four legs, breath, the dark. Daniel’s face tries to surface. Hannah’s. The things I walked into ten years ago. I can leave all of it behind me if I run fast enough.

But my paws know this ground better than I do, and they take me where they always end up.

I slow at the tree line, and I stop.

The house waits in the clearing ahead, half swallowed by ten years of growth. Vines have climbed the porch rail and split the steps. The windows are dark, empty holes where the glass used to be. Grass stands waist-high where Daniel used to park his truck. The path to the front door has vanished under weeds and moss.

I’ve never set foot inside, not once, not since that night.

I stand at the edge of the woods with the drizzle beading on my coat. I look at the house, and everything I outran catches up at once. Ten years, and the loss still sits in my chest like the night it happened. I can’t make myself cross the clearing. I never can.