Page 25 of The Alpha and the Baker
“It really was no problem.”
Neither of us moved, as if she wasn’t ready to enter her apartment yet and I wasn’t ready to go. I wondered if I should lean in and kiss her. No, that felt like far too much far too soon with someone who wasn’t sober, so I didn’t. Maybe that was a mistake, but I preferred my partners to be completely aware for something as important as a first kiss.
Not that she was my partner, but still.
“Goodnight,” she said finally before opening her door and stepping in.
“Goodnight,” I answered, my voice full of fondness.
And then she closed the door. I was all set to leave when the door opened again, and Felicia pointed at me.
“Hey, you!” she said, all grins.
“Hey me? Did I do something?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean… I just wanted to tell you that you should hang out with Gammy McCallister and Auntie Hellier more often. They’re cool.”
“You mean Claudia?” I asked after a beat.
“Yeah. Claudia.”
“Haha, okay, I will.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.” I meant it. Considering some of the horror stories I’d heard from traveling shifters, the elders in our pack were incredibly cool. Sometimes, I got so wrapped up in the day-to-day responsibilities of being an alpha that I forgot to slow down and enjoy what it meant to be part of a pack.
“Good! Okay, goodnight part two.”
“Goodnight part two.”
With a lackadaisical smile, Felicia went inside again, closing the door behind her. I went around to the front of the building and waited until I saw a light turn on upstairs, then I strolled off, hands in my pocket and whistling a tune.
When was the last time I had been so surprised by something that turned out to be so incredibly lovely? It felt like it had been a while. While I loved my life, and I loved my pack, most surprises were either complicated or awful. And Felicia was the opposite of those.
I waited until I was at the edge of a park a couple of blocks away from the bakery before I ducked behind some bushes and shifted into my wolf form, fur rippling up my frame as it expanded and shifted.
Shifting could be painful, especially when one was new at it, but my wolf and I had been together so long that we’d managed to streamline and smooth out the process as much as possible. There were still aches, still cracks, but they were few and far between, and within a few moments I was trotting out of the bushes back toward home.
It wasn’t my first time in the city, so I knew which paths had the most cover. It helped that it was dark. It would have been much more complicated to run around in my wolf form in broad daylight.
Arietty and many of my pack members were small enough to come across as very large dogs, but I wasn’t. Not even close. No,I stood taller than a Great Dane, taller even than a wolf. I was nearly five feet from my paws to the tip of my ears, and six and a half feet long.
I wasn’t the only massive wolf in my pack—McCallisters tended to arrive right out of the oven jumbo-sized—but as an alpha, I most certainly was the biggest. If I was ever lucky enough to take a mate, she certainly wouldn’t have an easy time with our pups. But having children wasn’t a priority for me, so I didn’t worry about it. My pack wasn’t desperate to increase the population, so as long as I was taking proper care of them, I was content.
But it was nice to daydream. Especially about raven-haired bakers who smelled like pomegranate.
I took a bit longer to get home than I normally would because I was dilly-dallying. I felt no need to rush, even though I was missing some of the night-time festivities. Honestly, it was nice not to have anyone ask anything of me while I trotted along, recalling all the lovely memories of the day—and some of the stressful ones that now, in retrospect, were actually kind of funny.
But I did pick up my pace once I reached the woods at the edge of the city. And then, when I began to scent my pack and heard the faintest notes of music, I burst into an all-out run.
My wolf loved that, of course. I was incredibly lucky that he’d always been measured, and even as a teenager, we’d had a very clear understanding of each other. We were both the same person, two halves of a whole, and yet we are separate enough that we needed to choose to work together. I’d heard some terrible tales of other alphas who had to work to rein in their wild instincts, so I had always been grateful to my wolf for being just as dedicated to being a good alpha as I was.
When I broke through the trees, I wasn’t surprised to see a good half of our pack cutting up a rug, jumping around, anddancing in the field. Normally, I would have retired by now, my social battery completely drained, but I felt invigorated in a way I hadn’t in a long time. So, I joined in the dancing and let myself cut loose, bolstered by all the good feelings from the day.
Once the music faded, a good twenty or so of us went on a midnight run. I knew that when I eventually fell into my bed, I would sleep so damn good. Better than I had in months, maybe.
As I made my way to my cabin once all the perishables of the party had been picked up and packed up, Chris jogged up to me sans Arietty. The only thing I would’ve changed about the day was getting to talk to my best friend about everything that happened. After all, his only child, his beloved daughter, had experienced her first shift really early. That was a huge deal.
