Page 2 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

I read them. It isn’t a decision I make. Harper has nothing left on her list until six and it shows in her shoulders. Lyanna is amused and hiding it for reasons of her own. Kari is enjoying herself, which she would deny under oath. Scarlett is running this whole porch and has no idea she’s doing it. Under what each of them chooses to show me, the truth sits right there, easy to reach.

I keep my own power folded down small. I’ve done it every day for as long as I’ve had it. Let it all the way out and I’d have every one of these women down to the parts they’d never hand me.

So, I sink into this instead. The voices overlap. The pages rustle. I keep both hands around the mug. The tea in it went cold an hour ago and I hold it anyway, because my hands run colder than the tea does, always will. The sun has been on my arms all afternoon, it does nothing to me either. Whatever the stories say, my kind walks in daylight. I came to Ash Hollow to read signatures no one else could and advise Dane on what he couldn’t see coming. I meant to leave when the work was done. These people made room for me instead. I stayed. I went most of eighty-nine years without anything like it. Some part of me still expects someone to walk over and tell me the seat was never mine to keep.

The books are Skylar Cassidy’s. The Celestial Bonds set, four of them, dog-eared and worn, traveling down this rail since noon. These women have been arguing about them for months. Scarlett has book four open against her knee. Nobody has managed to interrupt her in ten minutes.

“I’m just saying, some of these men have their priorities in order.”

“Some of these men need a restraining order,” Kari says.

“That’s Christmas-morning behavior.”

“It’s August.”

“Christmas isn’t a month, Kari. It’s a personality.”

I let it run around me, not really listening. I’m near it, which is most of what I want out of today.

Kari lands a line I don’t catch. Harper laughs into her mug hard enough to spill.

I’m laughing too. Somewhere in the middle of it I sweep the edge of the compound, the small count of who’s where that I take every hour out of long habit. He’s there. Just inside the trees, where the light stops. He’s stood at the edge of our forest on and off for months now. I know exactly what he is. That’s never been the problem. The problem is the man. I read everyone else on this property, whether I mean to or not. With him, I get his nature, plain and immediate. The man underneath it, I can’t reach.

I bring myself back. To the table, the book, Scarlett’s hands moving while she talks. The man at the treeline is not my problem this afternoon. I’ve decided that. I keep both hands wrapped around my mug. Harper and Lyanna are disagreeing about chapter nine. For a few breaths it holds.

“That’s supposed to be the good one?” Kari says. She hasn’t looked up. “I’ve had better on a Tuesday.”

“It’s romantic,” Scarlett says.

“It’s fiction.”

Harper loses it entirely. Lyanna puts a hand over her mouth, which is what she does instead of laughing where anyone can use it against her.

“Rafe carried me once,” Kari says, when she can. “Half a mile. I complained the whole way.”

“That is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said on this porch,” Scarlett says.

Kari turns the page. Her right hand opens and closes once at her side, small, then stills. She’s already reading ahead. I drink my tea.

He pulls at me again, worse for having been ignored. I try to settle it down. It doesn’t go. Every other person on this property gives themselves up to me whether they intend to or not. He stays shut. I keep coming back to it while I hold my face easy enough that none of it reaches this table. So, I stop pretending and read him on purpose. It’s a deep read. His nature arrives before I’ve finished aiming it, the same as the first day. Ancient. Divine. Asleep. A thing that presents as a wolf who cannot shift and is nothing of the kind.

The man inside it stays closed. He’s the only person I have ever failed to see into. So, I use my eyes instead. He stands just inside the treeline where the shadow starts. His shoulders are square. He isn’t leaning on anything. He hasn’t moved in the time it took me to look at him twice. He isn’t relaxed. He’s holding himself still on purpose. It takes effort, and he’s doing it out there in the shade while everyone else drinks cold coffee and argues about a book.

I’m staring. I know I’m staring. I keep doing it, because watching him is the only read he gives me. I’ve told no one what he is. Not Dane. Not my brother. If I say it out loud, it stops being mine to watch. It becomes the pack’s problem to act on and I’m not ready for that.

“Right.” Harper puts her mug down. “We’re picking a favorite. Best of the four. Scarlett.”

“One.”

“Kari.”

“Two.”

“Lyanna.”

“Three.”

Harper sets her own mug down. “Four. One vote each. We’ve achieved nothing.”