Page 28 of The Alpha and the Baker
Scanning over the girls, I saw the yellow ribbons, as well as the gap-toothed smile as she happily handed a bag of cookies to an elderly couple. She reminded me a lot of Genevive, who looked to be around the same age and had the same missing tooth, except with bright auburn hair instead of the chestnut brown curls Daniella had.
They were risking a lot to show support for one of their kids. I liked to think that if I was in the same situation, I’d do the same.
“Looks like she’s doing a good job,” I said, relaxing my posture. In response, the four echoed my body language. While I wasn’ttheiralpha, they all recognized that I was an alpha, and with that came a certain level of respect, even if they hated my pack.
“Of course, she is,” the biggest one said proudly. “She’s the top of her class and may even skip a grade next year.”
I grinned at that. Although the guy could probably rip my head off, he reminded me so much of Chris when he was bragging about his daughter.
“I believe it,” I said with a firm nod before putting my free hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Considering the occasion, I don’t think there’s any reason to draw attention to this. After all, it’s for a good cause, right?”
“Right,” two of the four agreed, although I could hear suspicion in their tones.
I couldn’t really call them out on that. Alpha Barris had started to go hard on pushing into their territory when he lost so much of our land to the fairies.
“Glad we’re in agreement. Now, if you don’t mind, me and my beta here are gonna finish our shopping right after we make our own donation.”
Chris’s eyebrows shot up nearly to his hairline. “We are?”
“We are.”
With one last nod to the tense group, I headed over to the table. We didn’t really need desserts—Lord knows we’d had enough goodies the day before—but a bag of cookies and a pie wouldn’t ruin any shifter’s waistline.
The girls were elated with my purchase, and Chris and I finished up the rest of our shopping as quickly as we could. We had to make three separate trips to the truck to put our stuff in the hatch, but once everything was said and done, I let out a long sigh of relief.
“You handled that pretty well back there,” Chris said once he was sure we were out of hearing. That was the downside of having enhanced hearing as shifters; our biggest rivals had it too.
“Did I?” I murmured, very much in my head about the whole thing. While I understood where the Ramirez pack was coming from, and Ireallydidn’t want to incur the fairies’ wrath with a fight in a human area, it could be just as dangerous to appear too soft. Pack dynamics were complicated like that.
“Yeah, for a moment there I thought they were gonna do something, but now I think they were just trying to intimidate me into staying quiet. You know how they are.”
That piqued my curiosity. While I liked to think we’d come a long way, sometimes old biases were hard to overcome.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, hoping my friend wasn’t repeating old rhetoric.
“You know. Fiercely protective of their young. I’d never want to throw down with a Ramirez if they thought one of their pups was in danger, even one half my weight.”
I relaxed internally, reprimanding myself for being so on edge. “Yeah, they’ve done some incredible things to survive into the modern era. Not many old packs are so lucky.”
“Exactly.”
My phone buzzed with a text. I was all set to ignore it—even though we were at a red light—but Chris picked it up and made a surprised sound.
“It’s that baker lady!”
Felicia
A Helping Hand for a Hangover
Oh yeah,I was absolutely right about that hangover. For a while, I was sinking in the blissful nothingness of a hard-earned sleep, but then I was suddenly rocketing upward into what could only be described as pure agony.
Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little, but it truly was only a little. From the moment my eyes struggled to crack open, I realized I was about as dry as a desiccated corpse, and my head was doing its own impression of an entire drum line.
I somehow made it to my bathroom and downed possibly an entire ocean’s worth of water straight from the faucet. It wasn’t the most dignified thing I’d done, but that and a few splashes to my face made me feel half human again.
But one thing was for certain, I was never touching alcohol ever again.
Or at least for another ten months.
