by Rae Foxx
The pot fields.
Seemed a lot had changed about Silver Moon since I had left.
Everything about Silver Moon seemed the same, but one step around the Alpha’s house and you’ll see the spotty forest and farmland had been cleared to reveal rows and rows of green bushes that stretched over the acreage, the tallest of them coming just above my head. Thank goodness I was short, I could make out a few heads in the distance.
The closer I came to them, the more their voices drifted over to me. One, a woman who was taller than me, stood in the middle of all of the others. Her tone was kind, but firm, her back straight and her chin high.
Just hearing her give orders made my back straighten.
The Alpha.
Right next to her stood someone I barely remembered from my childhood. Luke.
Damn. The guy grew up. He looked like he belonged on the cover of a romance novel.
“Cami?” I asked as I approached them, but made sure to keep good personal space between us. My wolf was sure she was the Alpha, but we didn’t know what kind of Alpha.
I was new to her, though not new to the pack, and we hadn’t been properly-acquainted yet. Shifters could be touchy about those things and I wasn’t going to risk it.
“Lucy!” It wasn’t her who responded; however, it was Luke. The guy was grinning as he strode over to me and gave me the most awkward high-five ever. This was mostly my fault because I tried to shake his hand and ended up jabbing my fingertips into the palm of his hand.
“Hi! We’ve been expecting you!” Cami beamed, coming up right behind her mate, a smile on her face. “Welcome!”
Before I could stop her or even reciprocate, she had wrapped her arms around me in a hug that thankfully included less boobs than my sister’s.
These people were huggers.
“Damn girl, you grew up!” Luke beamed, thankfully not hugging me. I didn’t know exactly what to say to that. I was pretty sure he had grown up a
I would take that as permission to ignore him.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Alpha.” I bared my neck, as was protocol, only to be waved off while she groaned.
“Ugh, I hate that formal shit. Make sure you don’t do that again, okay?” She winked at me and began to walk, leading me further down the rows.
“I can do that. So, we grow pot now?” I flicked the leaf of a plant beside me.
She nodded. “Yep. It was Luke’s idea, long before I got here.”
Something was missing here, and I gave each of them a look in question, but Luke laughed and waved me off.
“It’s a long story and I am sure you will hear all about it after too long,” Luke said, still chuckling. “Amanda told me you were a shrink now.”
“A therapist,” I corrected him, restraining the need to roll my eyes. Nothing about Luke had changed.
“Good,” Cami said, turning to give Luke a smug glance. “Because there are more than a few people here who could use some mental reorganization.”
Luke chuckled and walked further down the row.
From what I knew of Luke, Cami seemed to be the perfect fit for him. It would be beautiful if it didn’t hurt so much. Thank the Gods this woman wasn’t going to pry about my mate and grieving, and all the issues that were like shotgun triggers for me.
Seeing them together was hard enough.
“I take it I’ll be seeing Luke?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation on topic.
“Luke?” she asked, waving her hand behind her. “Maybe. That’s on him. I do have someone I am going to send you though. One of the old Betas from like two Alphas ago. He hasn’t been exactly quiet about his displeasure in my new role.”
Crotchety old man who didn’t like women? Sounded like a patient if I’d ever had one.
She rolled her eyes and I clicked my tongue, she didn’t need to tell me any more than that. If I knew shifters, having a female in the lead was pissing more than a few of the Silver Moons off.
“Well, I’ll put him on my list. Once I find a place I’ll--”
“Oh! We have a building that’s been empty for a while. I’m sure you can use it. It’s over at the east side of the pack lands. It needs a lot of work, but I think I know just the guy to help with that.”
She grinned at me, but there was something in the dark of her eye that twisted up my spine.
This guy better have grey hair, an old lady mate, and have no interest in anything other than fixing shingles.
With the way she was looking at me though, I doubted it.
“Thank you. I’m sure it will work out fine.” That came out much stiffer than I expected, thankfully Cami respected the boundary.
“Silver Moon is an excellent place for a new start. We’re glad you chose to come back, Lucy. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate. You don’t have to make an appointment or any of that bullshit around here. Just walk in the house and knock on my office door. I’m not the queen Sam will make me out to be.”
I laughed. Men tended to think that any woman in charge wanted to be the queen.
“Thank you, Alpha.” She rolled her eyes at my formality.
“Good luck, Lucy. I mean it.”
I walked away with a new surge of hope. I could make it here. I could make a life here, mate or not. My heart would heal and so would I. One day at a time. That’s all I had to focus on.
Four
Emmet
I kept my eyes trained on the flames. There wasn’t much to do after a long day of work, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to sit in my cabin alone for the night.
That left me here with my ‘friends’.
Well, they used to be my friends. But now Emma was mated and dragging
And Noah, the bastard who was already trying too hard to be my friend.
Did I mention he was a bastard?
So much for one night of drunkenness to get over it.
I growled as he smiled at me and reached for another beer from the cardboard holder, deliberately ignoring the bottle he had been handing me.
“So…” Noah began, trying to recover from my snub by holding onto the beer he had offered me like he normally double-fisted cheap wine coolers. “So, you guys come here every night?”
Emma shot me a warning look and took his hand, the two of them sitting down on a log that she and I had shared on more than one occasion. Her glare faded as she turned to Noah, grinning at him like he was the only fucking male in the entire world.
Why were they here? Why was I here? I needed to get out of here before I did something I would regret.
Maybe find new friends.
The thought made me even crankier. I had been with these guys since we were pups.
“We started coming here in middle school, I think,” Sarah said, grinning at Noah and then at me. I wasn’t sure if she was shoving it in my face or flirting with me. Could’ve been either, I wouldn’t have cared anyway. “At first, we met here after school to blow off some steam, sneak some alcohol, and sometimes some pot. That was before we grew the shit.”
Noah listened to Sarah with open eyes, like he was soaking up every word. Why was he so interested? He didn’t belong here. Not with her. Not on these lands. Not sharing the same air as us.
“Isn’t that right, Emmet?” Sarah said with that sugar-sweet voice as I threw my first dart at the board that was already pockmarked with far too many of my missed shots.
“Isn’t what right?” I mumbled, swearing under my breath as the dart hurled far left and landed in the dirt. “That we were all a bunch of teenage stoners?”
“Well, that,” Cera giggled with the same shrill tone as Sarah. Those two girls had lost it. “But that was all on you and Emma. You were the first two to come here after all.”
And I missed my second shot.
“Fuck!” I swung from the board, r
eady to glare at Cera, but my eyes darted to Emma. For some reason, I hoped there would be some kind of regret there.
Like she knew she had made the wrong decision.
But she was staring at Noah, the two sitting forehead to forehead as they whispered and kissed about how cute it was that she was a ‘teenage pothead’.
Yeah, real cute. He wasn’t the one to hold her hair back when she puked her first time.
“Doesn’t matter anymore. Let the past die, Cera.” There was no fucking reason to try and give her the answer she sought. Wasn’t like it would change anything if I did.
I turned back to the board, seriously debating why I even came down here in the first place. But then Noah had to go and open his fucking mouth.
“Man, it’s nice how tight-knit you all are in this pack. It’s nice to be a part of it.”
Finally, my dart hit the bullseye, but I didn't care, I was already turning to Noah who looked like he was about ready to sing kumbaya.
Even my wolf wasn’t happy about the newcomer. He smelled funny. Smelled like he didn’t belong here.
“Except you aren’t,” I snapped, knowing full well the consequences of the shit storm I was about to start.
Why hadn’t I left yet? I needed to get out of here.
“Excuse me?” Emma asked as she jumped to her feet. Noah tried to pull her back down, but she wasn’t having it. She stepped forward, her eyes gleaming with the light of the fire that burned between us, making her anger seem even fiercer.
“I said, he’s not a member of this pack. You heard me, Emma.” Her name tasted like the sourest citrus on my tongue, even though everything that was her was saccharine.
She took a step forward, still fuming. Hell, she looked like she was about to explode
I knew better than to poke an angry beta. But fuck, I couldn’t stop myself.
“Do you need me to repeat myself? Because I will. You know I will.” I gave a course dry laugh as she took another step, closing the gap between us. “Hell, you know me better than you know him.”
I lifted my head, grinning, and Noah looked more hurt than angry. God. It was like I couldn't stop myself…
I opened my mouth to continue, but before I got a chance to stab deeper, Emma stomped around the fire and grabbed my arm, pulling me into the forest after her. She smelled like lavender and sunlight, and I felt my heart calm.
Too bad she looked like a bat out of hell when she turned to face me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Emmet?” She snapped, her voice snarling over the bark of the pines. The light from the fire still prickled against the wood, we hadn’t gone far and I didn’t need to look behind me to know everyone was listening.
“What’s wrong with me is that you came here with him, just expecting us all to welcome him with open arms. He’s not part of our pack. He doesn't belong here,” I said each word slowly, leaning into her to drive my point home. She didn’t even flinch. “Just a few months ago, he was the fucking enemy. Now we’re supposed to bow down because he drank a beer with us and is asking stupid fucking questions?”
“He’s my mate. That means he belongs here.”
I scoffed. “By default. Three months ago, any one of us would’ve bitten his head off for speaking your name.”
I didn’t bother to lower my voice. I snapped loud as I leaned into her, my heart straining even as I watched tears well up in her eyes. I knew I should stop, but I didn’t care.
“But you suck his cock down by the river and suddenly that makes it okay...”
“You know what? Fuck you, Emmet. I…”
She started to say more but I cut her off. “I wish you would. I wished you would for years. But now I can’t even be around you. I don’t want to be.”
I took two quick steps back watching her heart break before I shifted, letting my clothes shred into a thousand pieces. My paws hit the ground and my wolf took off. I ran away from Emma and Noah and their mating, and from facing the fact that any shred of hope I had left had just vanished.
Like a coward.
Five
Emmet
“Emmet, there you are!”
God, even from across the field surrounded by men covered in sweat, Cami sounded way too perky. Probably because she wasn’t doing any work.
I didn’t shift from my work, even though Rich, my picking partner, lifted his brows at me.
“You been kissing the big lady’s ass?” He chided, chuckling to himself.
I growled, letting my wolf snarl at him. “More like pissing off her beta.”
“Really? No way in hell I’m missing this,” he chuckled and shifted behind a larger push, eyes on Cami as she came up right behind me.
“Emmet!” Cami bounced, happy and fresh, and not covered with dirt. “You have a minute?”
“You are the Alpha, right?” I snapped. I didn’t even lift my eyes to look at her, I kept my focus on my picking. “Doesn’t matter if I have a minute or not.”
“Don’t be sour,” Cami sighed, not a drop of anger in her eyes. My hands froze and I turned. I had expected her to be furious over how I had treated Emma, but she seemed… excited. “I have a new assignment for you.”
Oh, that would be why. More free labor.
“A new assignment?” I asked, peeling off my work gloves. The things had practically melted onto my skin. I snatched a bandana out of my back pocket and swiped it over my forehead, the thing came away sopping wet. The sun was already scorching. It wasn’t even noon yet and I was toast.
“Yeah. We’ve got a new pack member and we need to clean up the building on the east side of the lands. I think it used to be a clinic or something?”
“Old man Musker’s Clinic,” I supplied for her, my irritation growing. There was only one member I could think of.
Of course she didn’t know. She wasn't around when that place was the only clinic on our lands. Now we had an upgraded clinic with all the latest gadgets thanks to the pot money we’d racked up since Luke had become Alpha before his mate. Seemed like decades ago.
Rich peeked out of the bush he had been hiding behind, kissing the air as he thought I was kissing Cami’s ass.
I wasn’t, for the record. I was still on the fence about a female Alpha, but in the meantime, I wasn’t stupid enough to be punished for insubordination.
Well, besides pissing Emma off, but I seem to have come out of that unscathed.
“Good. We need to get that building fixed up for her. I’m sure the roof needs shingles and whatnot.” She waved her hands to the side, making it clear she didn’t know anything that needed to be done.
“Her?” I asked, almost cutting her off.
“Yeah, her. The new pack member. Who did you think I was talking about?” And she was smiling again. She was way too happy about this. I guessed Emma had talked to her after all.
But perhaps not about Noah.
Once upon a time, I’d had dreams of running my own handyman business, but once I was put on pot field duty, picking and weeding, and all those other random jobs, that pipe dream quickly went down the toilet, along with my energy levels. Fieldwork was daunting and that was putting it politely.
I ignored her question about who I thought she was talking about. “I think that roof leaks, actually. I’ll get on that first. Doesn’t matter what kind of business this female is running out of there; it won’t work with a leaky roof.”
Cami put her hand on my shoulder. “Good. After that, just go over whatever Lucy needs and you two can move on from there.”
“Wait,” I said, stalling Cami from her departure. “Lucy? Like Lucy Chapman?”
Cami shrugged. “Think so. She grew up here. Now she’s back.”
I stared at her, rumors about Lucy were rampant after she had high-tailed it out of here, but no one had heard from her in years. My animal’s ears perked up at the name. His fucking tail was even wagging back and forth. The fuck?
“I appreciate your willingness to help, Emmet,” Cami continued before
I had time to recover from my shock. “Can you start in the morning?” I nodded. “Thanks!”
As she walked off, she flicked several of the marijuana plants like she didn’t have a care in the world.
“You got shit on your lips,” Rich taunted. “That was a lot of ass-kissing.”
He chuckled darkly and flipped the Alpha off, sure she wasn’t looking. This man had a deep grudge and didn’t know when to let it go.
“Shut up. I was just doing what she asked. Like it or not, she’s the Alpha. We all watched her win.”
He scoffed. “I bet she’s not even going to pay you for the job change. Just expects us to work for pennies on the dollar while she gets her nails done, or whatever bullshit females do.”
Cami wasn’t the type. Rich would know that if he paid attention instead of assuming she was acting like royalty.
One good thing about this new assignment, I wouldn’t have to listen to Rich go on and on, complaining. He was almost as bad as me, in my head, bitching about Emma. Almost.
Six
Lucy
I straightened my cream button-down shirt and gave myself one last look in the mirror. I’d decided against the navy suit jacket to match my pants. A run-down building on pack lands was a far cry from my old office and I was tip-toeing a line dangerously close to overdressing. Hell, I was probably already there when I had slid on the pumps that matched my shirt.
I could probably show up in overalls and a sports bra and still be okay.
I had barely hit the bottom step from my tiny apartment when my sister's squealing hit me full in the face.
“I’m so glad I caught you!” Mandy jumped out in front of me, sending my heart into next week and nearly making me piss my pants. Okay, I was a little on edge.
I put my hand over my heart to check if the damned thing was still in there. I could feel it thumping through my skin.
