by J. L. Wilder
“You know, I don’t feel so well,” Charity said. “I think I’m going to head home.”
“What! Already!” the three of them protested as one.
“We’re still only at the first stop!” Hallie said. “That isn’t even a pub crawl. That’s just...that’s just a pub.”
“Just a pub will have to do it for me for tonight,” Charity said firmly. “I have to open in the morning. And that shot didn’t settle so well.”
“You’re getting old,” Bethany mourned. “Going home after one drink!”
“Bethany, she’s like three months older than you are,” Kate scolded. “Are you going to be okay, Charity? Do you need us to help you get a taxi?”
“No,” Charity said. “It’s only a couple of blocks to my apartment from here, I can manage.”
“Okay,” Kate agreed. “We’ll see you at work tomorrow, then.”
“See you. Have fun the rest of the night. I’ll want to hear all your stories.” She wouldn’t, actually, but she didn’t want them to feel ditched. “Tell Isa and Angela bye for me.”
“We will,” Hallie agreed.
Charity picked her way through the crowd and out onto the sidewalk. As soon as she was alone, she started to feel a little bit better. Sometimes just being around people who weren’t her pack was enough to make her feel painfully out of place. It was a sharp reminder that no matter how long she lived in the human world, no matter how hard she tried to adjust to life as a human, she was denying what she really was, and it would never quite fit.
She decided to take the long way home, winding through the hilly streets instead of along the main thoroughfare that would take her back past the restaurant where she worked. It was a nice night, just a little bit of chill in the air, and the moon was bright overhead. The single shot she’d drunk had begun to settle nicely, setting her head swimming just enough to be comfortable. She wandered slowly up one hill and down the next, making her way gradually back toward home.
A large black van pulled slowly to a stop beside her. The door opened and a large man got out.
“Excuse me,” he called.
She couldn’t see his face in the shadows. Nerves gripped her suddenly. “Can I help you?” Maybe he just wanted directions.
“Do you live around here?” he asked. “I’m looking for someone.”
“No, I don’t,” she said, even though they were now within a couple of blocks of her apartment. The last thing she wanted was for this stranger to know where she lived. Why had she walked home through a residential area! If only there was a store nearby, she could duck inside and wait for him to go away.
“Wait,” he said. “Come here. Let me get a look at you.”
Terror seized Charity. She turned and ran.
The van roared to life behind her, following her, filling the air with exhaust. The man’s footsteps beat the cement. She had hardly gone three yards before his hands were on her.
She couldn’t even scream. Her throat seemed to swell shut as the fear took hold of her.
Her feet left the ground. He lifted her bodily and the back door of the van swung open, allowing him to toss her inside. He slammed the door behind her, plunging her into darkness.
A moment later, she was pitched over sideways by the momentum of the van as it sped off into the night.
Chapter Five
WESTON
The one good thing about having Hawk as an alpha was that they’d all been allowed to get cell phones. Hawk had actually taken a considerable amount out of the pack’s savings in order to fund the purchase, which Weston couldn’t approve of—there had been very little money going into savings since Hawk had taken the reins of the pack. Weston was expecting to hear that they were broke any day now.
Still, it was good to have a phone, especially when they were split up around the city and hunting for Charity.
Weston couldn’t believe that she might still be in the area. After a night’s sleep and thorough consideration of the idea, it seemed incredibly unlikely. There was a whole world out there. Charity could be literally anywhere. Why would she still be within thirty miles of the pack she’d run out on all those years ago?
So, Weston had decided not to waste his time joining in the hunt. Why get his hopes up for no reason? Why waste hours combing through the city when the odds of finding her were so low?
He had to admit that he was surprised at himself. When he’d first heard about the hunt for Charity, he had been so intent that he should be the one to find her. But after sleeping on it, everything seemed to look different. She obviously didn’t want to be found. And Weston wasn’t sure, if he was being honest with himself, that he wanted her found either. How would it feel to see her again after all this time? How would it feel to be responsible for hauling her back home when she’d run away from him?
No, he wanted no part of it. And, thank God, Hawk had issued a request instead of a command, and Weston was blessedly free to ignore it.
Not that he could let Hawk know what he was doing. He rode into town with the others, bikes clustered around the black van that Hawk had rented for the occasion, but as soon as they hit the city limits, he forked off and sped away from his brothers.
He would find a bar, he decided. He would spend the day hiding out in some little hole in the wall place, drinking beer and trying not to think about Charity. And then, when they returned home, he would simply report that he hadn’t found her. And that would be the truth.
It was the phone that made it all possible. Since they were separated, he knew that Hawk would be calling or texting when he wanted everyone to return home. That meant that Weston would be able to wrap things up and head back to the cabin as soon as he was wanted. He wouldn’t be missed. There would be no conspicuous absences on his part, and nobody would ask any questions as to his whereabouts.
The bar he eventually located was dark and tiny, with wooden walls that were bowed and warped by too many years of rain and not enough treatment to protect them. He parked his bike, went inside, and claimed a tiny table in the farthest back corner. He took his phone out of his pocket and placed it on the table in front of him.
The bartender came over. “What can I getcha?”
“What’s on tap?”
“Duck’s Pale Ale.”
Weston stared. He was no stranger to beer, but... “What the hell is that?”
“It’s imported.”
“Imported from where, Iowa?”
The bartender frowned. “Do you want it or not?”
“Yeah, I want it.” Weston would have dearly loved to laugh in this bartender’s face, but he did want a drink, and he couldn’t afford any of the top-shelf liquors that gleamed in the glass-fronted cabinet behind the bar. Besides, beer was the best thing to drink without getting so drunk that he wouldn’t be able to drive home safely.
The bartender disappeared and returned a few moments later with a pewter mug. He set it down harder than was necessary on the table in front of Weston.
Weston handed over a few bills. “Could I get some nuts or something?”
The bartender rolled his eyes but went off again and returned with two bowls—one full of peanuts, the other empty. “Shells in there,” he said roughly.
“You got it.”
The bartender stalked off. Weston shrugged off the encounter. The guy was moody now, but after Weston had spent all his money here, he’d feel better. Weston turned his attention, instead, to the Duck’s Pale Ale. He raised the mug to his lips and sipped cautiously.
To his surprise, it actually tasted pretty good. It was just hoppy enough and carried a smack of citrus. He took a deeper swallow and sat back in his seat, extending his legs out long in front of him. This bar, he decided, was the perfect place to hide out for the day. At first glance, he hadn’t even known it was a bar. The sign outside was small and wooden and barely visible from the street. The place had no windows, making it look more like a shed than a bar. And it was completely empty apart from Weston himself. This
wasn’t the sort of place that saw a lot of custom, he thought. Maybe that was why the bartender was in such a bad mood.
It was really too bad, he thought, because the beer was growing on him. He shouldn’t have been so quick to mock it. It was pretty decent stuff. Could you buy Duck’s Pale Ale in stores? He considered asking the bartender, but the man didn’t seem like he’d be likely to answer any questions. Helping Weston out was probably the last thing he wanted to do. Maybe he’ll be in a better mood in a few hours, when I’ve emptied my pockets into his register, and I can talk to him about it then, Weston thought. Or maybe he could simply do a search online for the stuff.
He picked up his phone. Unsurprisingly, the service here was crap. He wondered if he’d even be able to receive messages from Hawk. He’d better check, he decided, and fired off a quick text to Robbie. Any luck yet?
The response was quick. Nothing. How about you?
Nope. He hadn’t told Robbie he would be spending the day in a bar for a few reasons. First of all, when disobeying his alpha, it was always better to involve as few people as possible, Weston had found. He didn’t want Robbie to be put in the position of having to lie for him, of course, and it was also possible that Hawk would suspect something and order Robbie to give up the goods on Weston. It would be far safer if Robbie just didn’t have any goods to give up.
He’d also wanted to prevent Robbie from coming along to the bar with him. He knew his friend wasn’t invested in the search for Charity—Robbie was far more concerned about Weston’s wellbeing than he was about bringing Charity back to the pack. He would have liked to sit here with Weston and talk through Weston’s feelings about the whole thing.
In fact, he had tried to initiate just such a conversation the night before. He’d followed Weston up to his bedroom after dinner and perched on his desk chair, looking at Weston with such concern that Weston had started to feel uncomfortable.
“What is it?” Weston had asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Robbie had said. “I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“Well, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Come on, man. I know how you felt about her. And you were a mess after she left.”
“I was not a mess.”
“You were, though. You barely talked to anyone for weeks. You didn’t eat. You spent most of your time in the woods, as a wolf, and we both know why people do that. You were trying to escape from the way you felt about it.”
Weston had sighed. “It all happened so long ago,” he’d said. “I don’t even think about her anymore.” That was a pure lie. He thought about Charity far more than he’d like to. She came to him in his dreams. In the pleasant dreams, she took his hands and stood on her toes to kiss him as he leaned back against one of the broad oaks in their woods. In his nightmares, though, he always found himself running after her, howling in pain, trying to convince her to come back. He woke from those dreams drenched in sweat, heart pounding, unable to catch his breath.
“I’m just saying,” Robbie had pressed on. “That really messed you up when it happened. And I think it made it worse for you that nobody really knew what was going on. Maybe you should actually just tell Hawk about it.”
“Tell Hawk? Are you crazy?”
“Maybe he’d drop the whole thing if he knew,” Robbie said. “I mean, doesn’t it sort of prove that she’s not an omega, if you two were together?”
“Of course, it doesn’t prove that. It doesn’t prove anything of the kind. We used to worry about it all the time, Robbie. It was one of our greatest fears.”
“But if she was an omega,” he’d said, the gears clearly tumbling in his head, “wouldn’t she have been automatically drawn to the alpha? Isn’t that how it works?”
“Maybe she was. Maybe that’s why she left.”
“But if she is the omega,” Robbie had persisted, “and she comes back now, she’ll be with Hawk. How could you stand it?”
“What can I do about it?” He hated the conversation they were having. He hated having to face these potential outcomes, to think about Charity belonging to Hawk. It was excruciating. “Hawk isn’t going to move on from her because he knows I...”
“Loved her?”
“Had a thing with her.” He wasn’t going to give it that label. He wasn’t. “He’d just flaunt it even more, to punish me.” He couldn’t take anymore. “I’m going to sleep. Leave me alone, will you?”
He knew he’d sounded rude, but Robbie had been kind and had taken his leave without pushing the issue any further.
But if he’d come with Weston to the bar today, he’d have wanted to continue the conversation, Weston was sure of it. Robbie was the sort who believed that every problem had a solution and that it was just a matter of finding it. Weston had accepted a long time ago that he and Charity could never be together. It still pained him, and he still resented her for running away from the pack without him. But she had made her choice. She clearly hadn’t wanted him enough to include him in her plans. That was all there was to it.
This was awful. Having to think about her again after all this time, knowing that the rest of his pack was thinking about her too...it was absolutely excruciating. Weston felt as though he couldn’t bear it. But he could, he told himself firmly. It wasn’t as bad as when she’d actually left. Nothing would ever be as painful as the morning he’d gone down to breakfast only to learn that Charity had vanished. Nothing would ever weigh as heavily on his heart as the accumulation of days following that first one, when it had become clear that she was gone for good. That he would never see her again.
This, though...this would have an end. This search couldn’t last forever. Hawk didn’t have the attention span for that. Eventually, he would move on to something else, something that would cause everyone to just forget about Charity. And Weston would be able to relax.
He had to laugh a little at the thought. He’d never thought he would be nostalgic for the days of liquor store hold-ups. But he had to admit, he’d much rather have been working that kind of job than engaging in the search for his long-lost girlfriend.
Enough was enough. Intent on shaking off the thoughts of Charity, he took his tankard up to the bar. The bartender was wiping the counter down with a rag, but he paused and looked up at Weston.
Weston slid the mug across to him. “Same again?”
“Good enough for you, was it?”
“Yeah, I judged too quickly.” Weston had no problem admitting he’d been wrong. “Listen, I was wondering,” he said suddenly, surprising himself. “I’m looking for someone who might be living in the city, and I thought you might know her.”
“Lot of people in this city,” said the bartender.
“Okay, sure,” Weston agreed, then rested a hand on his wallet.
The bartender took in this gesture. “Who’s the girl?”
“Her name’s Charity,” Weston said. “Charity Green.” If, in fact, she was still even going by that name. There was every chance she might have changed it.
“What’s she look like?” the bartender asked.
“I haven’t seen her in a few years,” Weston admitted. “She was about five feet two inches when I knew her. Sort of honey-colored hair. Blue eyes.”
“Charity, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“There’s a girl like that working at Quattro Formaggio on Randolph street,” the bartender said. “I don’t recall her name exactly. Might’ve been Charity. Might’ve been Chelsea.”
Weston felt a knot settle into his stomach. He had been sure, somehow, that the bartender would say he didn’t know Charity. He had expected this conversation to give him increased confidence in his belief that Charity wasn’t anywhere near here. But if the bartender was right, she might be.
“How do I get to Randolph Street?” he asked.
“Two blocks up and take a left,” the bartender said, pointing.
Weston threw a handful of cash down on the bar and was out the door without ev
en drinking his second beer.
He didn’t bother with his bike. Who knew if there would be a place to park? He could always come back and get it later. For now, it seemed urgent that he get to this Quattro Formaggio place as quickly as possible. It felt time-sensitive somehow, as though the business would turn into a pumpkin if Weston didn’t run fast enough. It felt like a window had squeaked open, allowing him to pass through and reach the world in which Charity lived. But surely that window wouldn’t stay open for long.
The strange thing was, he realized as he ran, now that finding her seemed possible, he felt no doubt whatsoever. No uncertainty at all. If there was a real chance of seeing her again, Weston was damn well going to take it.
He covered the two blocks’ distance in what had to be record time and hung a sharp left. Almost immediately, he found himself under a red and white striped awning, looking up at a sign that read Quattro Formaggio Italian Eatery.
His heart leaped.
And then, almost as quickly, it dropped.
There was a CLOSED sign on the door.
Of course, it was fairly late in the day. He’d forgotten. Hawk had insisted that the search for Charity should begin in the evening— “We’ll be able to poke around town without anyone thinking we’re being weird or suspicious,” he’d said, although Weston hadn’t thought that made too much sense. Surely, strangers were regarded with more suspicion at night than during the day. But he hadn’t had the energy for an argument. And while he’d been in the bar, he had completely lost track of time. The lack of windows had certainly been no help on that score.
He examined the restaurant’s hours of operation. Closing time had been just an hour ago. He had just missed her. If he had asked the bartender about Charity first, instead of sitting and drinking that stupid duck beer...
A slim man in an apron emerged from what was probably the kitchen. Weston knocked on the glass.
“We’re closed!” the man called.
Weston nodded and beckoned him over.
The man came to the door, fiddled with the lock for a few moments, and then pulled it open. “Can I help you?” he asked.
