Page 27 of The Alpha and the Baker
“Ooh, Felicia.”
I was reminded exactly where Arietty got so much of her sass from.
“It suits her.”
“Does it?” I mused even though I thought the same thing.
“Yeah. Definitely. It’s classy, but not stuck up. Like someone you could have fun with.”
“That’s a lot to get from a name.”
“What can I say? I’m insightful. It’s why I’m your beta.”
“You sure are,” I said with a light laugh. We continued to banter all the way to the public market.
Chris and I didn’t always do the runs to the city, but we were in the rotation. One of the nice things about being in a pack was that chores for the entire community were split amongst large groups of people, so it worked out that he and I only made the journey to the city about once every two months.
Obviously, anyone could go to the grocery store if there was anything their family particularly needed or wanted. Goodness knew I’d made plenty of late-night trips to get brie, camembert, and crackers when the mood struck me or my mom. But it was nice to do the bulk shopping with a truck while also supporting other growers.
We grew a lot of our own food and hunted—sustainably, of course, with us hunters sometimes traveling quite far to where there were reports of deer or other animal overpopulation—but there were some things our climate didn’t allow, or we couldn’t keep up with. Like strawberries. No matter how many of our gardeners had their own patches, there was never enough between the jams, the pies, and hungry helpers eager for a snack. Then there was the citrus and avocados. I didn’t know what itwas about being a McCallister, but we had a wild love for pretty much all citrus and avocados. I would say that maybe we had ancestry south of the border, but we were about as Irish as could be, with the only genetic variance coming from people who married into our pack.
Honestly, if some of the teenagers had their way, we’d be making a run twice a week for avocados, but there were strict rules about that. Since the market was in human territory and a place for social events, part of our treaty with the fairies was that our pack could only go to the market on the first and last Sundays of the month, and Wednesdays in the middle two weeks of the month. That way we wouldn’t run into any members of the Ramirez pack, our centuries-long rivals and occasional enemies, and cause a scene in front of humans.
“You wanna take the outdoor section, and I’ll take the indoor?” I asked once I found a parking spot, which was fairly difficult to do at five a.m. in the morning.
“Yeah, thanks,” Chris said, already hopping out of the truck. I knew he hatedthe indoor part of the market because of how crowded it was, so I didn’t mind taking the hit. While the scents were intense with so many people and things crammed into one long building, I could get through it just fine if I concentrated hard enough. “Meet you at the cheese stall?”
Despite the veritable feast we’d had just the day before, my stomach rumbled at the thought of farm-fresh cheese. Although we did a lot of things on our land, cattle wasn’t one of them. The poor things always seemed so stressed around us wolves, no matter how lovingly we treated them. We couldn’t really blame animals for their natural instincts, so we chose not to keep them and instead just support other farmers who went to market.
Goats, however, didn’t give a single fuck, so we had lots of dairy from them, but sometimes cow cheese was just necessary. Like on taco night. Or with mac and cheese.
Chickens also didn’t care, but that wasn’t surprising considering they were mini-dinosaurs. Heavens knew that if they were human-sized, they would probably give us shifters a run for our money.
Thankfully, none of our roosters had the ability to be alphas, so we were safe.
I had to admit, I did get kind of lost in thought about a world where were-poultry was a thing, so I wasn’t really paying attention as I made my way through the building. I managed to get everything off the communal list we kept on a grocery app, but it took me about fifteen minutes longer than usual.
Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but normally I wouldn’t walk out of the building to see Chris surrounded by four members of the Ramirez pack.
Shit.
While we weren’t mortal enemies anymore, it was only a couple of generations ago that we’d quite literally been at each other’s throats. Land disputes. Mating issues. Not to mention the inherent racism of humans that favored our pack greatly. I liked to think we’d come a long way since those days, but there was no denying that the reason my pack had so much land was due to a whole lot of swindling and unfair dealings that happened a hundred years earlier.
The Ramirez pack had immigrated up from Mexico centuries earlier, but only because they’d been pushed out by Europeans coming over and making life a living hell for the Native people there. And the reason they’d come up to the Midwest was because the local tribe of their sister-nation of Arapaho had invited them up to join them. For a while, they’d known peace together, but then Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears, and the kidnapping of many Native children eliminated nearly all of the Native American shifters, leaving only a dozen-and-a-half of theoriginal Ramirez pack left. They’d survived by getting jobs as “China men” to make the great railroad out west.
Needless to say, things had never been hunky-dory between us, but when the fairies suddenly swept in with their magic and legalese, our ancestors found themselves tricked into a peace that had awhole lotof stipulations. Like the one dictating when we could occupy human spaces. Apparently, it was supposed to be for the protection of all, and I kind of got that, but sometimes it felt a littletoooppressive. After all, we’d all grown a lot and become much more informed in the past couple of centuries.
“What’s going on here?” I asked as flatly as possible, trying to keep the subharmonics completely out of my voice. Difficult to do since my wolf was bristling, but he was willing to stand down and listen to me.
“Just having a bit of a chat,” Chris said, his expression much harder than his usual amiable grin. “Surprised to see each other, that’s all. Especially since this isn’t your day, is it, fellas?”
“No, it ain’t,” the biggest of them groused. “Just wanted to support Daniella’s school fundraiser.” The large—even for a shifter—man pointed to a table just across the way, where I saw a group of young girls all dressed in catholic school uniforms and selling what looked like baked goods and tea. “We didn’t pick the day, and they wouldn’t move it. Hard to explain given it’s a human school.”
He wasn’t lying. I recognized the uniform from the other school for the gifted that Arietty had almost been placed in. However, she went to the one with more emphasis on technology, while the other school was more about the hard sciences.
“Which one’s Daniella?” I asked.
“Yellow ribbons in her pigtails,” another answered begrudgingly, which I appreciated. They could all decide to playhardball with me, but that would have made the situation much more difficult.
