AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t I know it,” Perdita muttered. “My fridge is already overflowing with food donations. You would swear nobody had ever been pregnant before in the history of the world.”
“They mean well,” Byron said fondly.
“I know,” Perdita said. “But it’s a little suffocating sometimes.”
“I can talk to them if it’s too much.”
She waved a hand. “I’ll have to deal with it myself. Ryan, is Micah coming back with the girls or are he and Rachel off again?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ryan replied. “I only ever know when they arrive. She’s too young to settle down anyway.”
“That’s such a dad thing to say,” Perdita teased, leaving Ryan beaming.
Micah was pretty quiet, but Ryan’s daughters were both outgoing. Rachel was a werewolf and could have a temper, but she had always made a point of being nice to me. Even still, Mara had always been wary of her. I could never make out why.
Thinking of Mara hurt. Sometimes I forgot she was dead, and then it would hit me all over again. She would have been so happy that I was staying with the pack. She’d worried about me being kicked out almost as much as she worried about herself. I wished she could have been around for my birthday. So much had happened lately that she would barely recognise the pack.
Night came too fast. Nathan and I stood outside the pub to greet everyone for a while. A surprising amount of pack members arrived at the party, all of them greeting me warmly. I had half-expected the presence of townie guests to put them off.
Once Margo arrived, I only had eyes for her. She approached the pub alone, acting shy. “You look beautiful,” I told her, meaning it. Her dress reached her ankles and her hair had been piled onto the top of her head in an elaborate braid-like structure. I didn’t know what it was called, but it looked cool. “You don’t even look real,” I added.
Laughing, she wrapped her arms around me. “Happy birthday." She gave me a chaste kiss, leaving a veil of sticky gloss on my lips. She wiped it away with her thumb. “Sorry.”
“I’m good with it. I missed you all day.”
“I was getting ready. It takes time to look this normal.”
“You don’t look normal,” I scoffed. “And why would you want to anyway?”
She grinned, eye to eye with me in her heels.
“Thanks for helping organise this,” I said. “Perdita said you did a lot.”
“Not really. Amelia kept taking over. There’s a lot of people waiting already. Don’t you want to go inside?”
“I’m a little nervous,” I admitted. “I’m not sure why. All of a sudden, I can vote and drink alcohol, but I’ll still have to get up for school after the holidays.”
Nathan cleared his throat behind us. “Are we going in or what?”
“I forgot you were there,” I said with a sheepish laugh. “Let’s go in.”
We headed inside. Lots of townies were on one side of the room, while pack members gathered together on the opposite side. No tension though. Hard to be tense in a room full of brightly coloured balloons.
“Go mingle.” Nathan waved us off. “I need to make sure Perdita isn’t getting swarmed.”
“I don’t know half these people,” I said when he left us.
“Looks like everyone brought a friend,” Margo said. “I hope it won’t get crazy later.”
The alpha was there, holding court in one corner of the room. Everything would be fine.
“Where do you want to start?” Margo asked, squeezing my hand.
“Do I have to start at all?”
“People are here to see you. It’s your birthday.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
