Page 42 of Sold Bullied Mate

But when I descend the steps and walk into the kitchen, Dorian isn’t there. I walk to the front door, pull aside the little curtain on the half-moon window, and realize his car is gone.

What time did he leave this morning? And he didn’t even say goodbye?

I stop, take a deep breath. Dorian is the Alpha leader of the pack—he might have to leave sometimes.

But he could have at least said goodbye. I check my new smartphone—only recently taken out of the package and set up, the screen still shiny—but there are no texts from him.

For the next hour, I wander around the house, trying to figure out what to do with myself. I’ve been wanting to make a pull-apart garlic bread, but when I stare at the ingredients, I just can’t get myself to do it.

I sit in front of my sewing machine, staring at the pattern I got out yesterday, but I don’t even turn the machine on.

I’m saved an hour later when there’s a knock at the front door.

Of course, I know it’s not Dorian—he wouldn’t knock, he would just come right in. At first, I think it might be Beth, back sooner than she said to go through more premonition training with me, but when I open the door, it’s neither of them.

“Hey, stranger,” Ash says, voice monotone as she grins at me. “Figured I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”

Without meaning to, or thinking enough to stop myself, I lunge forward, wrapping my arms around her. She lets out a surprised breath, and I realize she is the first person I’ve touched other than Dorian in a long, long time.

“Whoa,” she says, pulling back and looking me in the face, scanning me the way her brother does, as though looking for injury. I wonder if it's something they got from being raised by their grandfather. “Everything okay?”

I swallow and glance inside, toward the empty house. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Just lonely. Dorian left this morning without saying goodbye.”

Ash raises an eyebrow. “Can I come in?”

“Oh,” I back away from the door. “Of course you can.”

Five minutes later, we each have a glass of lemonade, and we’re sitting on the deck, staring out at the landscape. In the distance, shadows blanket the red dirt, spotting over the stretch of land and moving slowly, like whales in the sea.

“I hate to say it,” Ash says, glancing over at me. “But you’re probably going to have to train him.”

“Train him?”

She shrugs. “You want him to say goodbye to you? You’re probably going to have to tell him that. Our Gramps was … very direct. Taught us a certain way of doing things. Dorian does something that makes you unhappy? Just tell him not to do it again. Explain how it affects you, and he’ll fix it.”

“Now that you’re saying it out loud,” I say, voice quiet as I stare at the ice bobbing in my glass, “it seems pretty obvious.”

“Your relationship is tricky, though, right?” Ash is leaning back in the chair, looking like she doesn’t have a care in the world. “Sometimes you need someone with an outside perspective. Dorian has his moods, and he might get really in his head about being the alpha leader. The moment I realized he’d brought you here, I knew this was going to happen.”

“What do you mean?” I lean forward, set my lemonade down, turn to look at her.

“Gramps didn’t want there to be any more fighting about the alpha leader,” Ash says, fixing her bright blue eyes on me. “So he decided to train Dorian for it. Never been done like that before, right? We’d always just waited for the old alpha leader to get old, then guys would fight for it. Or someone would claim it, and the old alpha would step down. But Gramps thought it would be better if someonepreparedfor the role, you know?”

“I remember,” I say, because I do—Dorian training every day after school. Studying outside of our normal classes. He was busy bullying me, but I noticed every single thing about him.

“Well, I think all that pressure Gramps put on him was good and bad. Good because, obviously, it made Dorian into a good leader. His head is with the pack. But it’s bad because in the end, it was stillpressure. And that responsibility to the pack makes him get tunnel vision sometimes. So he might do things like taking off early in the morning without saying goodbye.”

“Do you know why?” I ask, and when she looks at me, I realize I haven’t been clear. “Why did he leave today, or what’s going on?”

“No,” she says, laughing. “Dorian does not keep me updated on that stuff—I’m not on the council, and I don’t want to be. I did see a bunch of vehicles up at the pack hall, though.”

My heart starts to beat a little faster at the thought of him there, dealing with whatever issue got him out of bed early this morning. I’ve been here by myself for a lot of the time, but this is the first time I’ve started to feel left out.

I know the luna of a pack usually focuses on helping out with the kids and running programs, but I have the strangest urge to talk to Dorian about being on the council too, so I can take part in the decision-making process.

“Just talk to him when he gets back,” Ash says, clapping a hand down on my shoulder and standing, a groan rolling through her body when she does. “I have to get home—I’m tired from fishing this morning. But … Kira?”

“Yeah?”

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