Page 41 of The Alpha and the Baker
Maybe…
No.
I had to be taking crazy pills, because what I was thinking literally wasn’t real. Clearly, I’d read far too many of my mother’s paranormal romance books since she’d passed.
But still, maybe I needed to do a little research. After all, it never hurt to be informed.
To the internet!
Castiel
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
I’d never hada week go by so slowly in my life, and I was certain it was a personal trial to test my patience.
Never in a million years did I ever think that I would go on a date with a human, let alone that my pack would be all for it, but the both of those statements were absolutely true.
I hadn’t planned on anyone knowing about my date. It wasn’t that I kept my personal life a secret, but it wasn’t necessary information for anyone beyond maybe Chris.
I should have known better. I went to bed excited about the prospect, woke up the next morning still excited about the prospect, only to receive about a dozen texts by noon. Before the end of the workday, several excited aunties had cornered me about it. It hadn’t been hard to put two-and-two together about who was responsible for the leak, but I couldn’t exactly be mad at them. They were kids. And they were excited about something good happening for their alpha. Even if it was a bit awkward, it was nice to be so supported.
I could have used a little less support, I thought, as my phone had buzzed with at least twenty different texts all saying different variations of good luck.
“You doing okay?” Chris asked from the couch. Arietty sat on the floor in front of him so he could braid her hair. That didn’t happen often, but I figured they were celebrating her first full week of wolf-hood as well as letting her show off a little on her first day back in her human school.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered.
“I’d like to believe you, but it’s not that convincing when you’re pacing a trench into my living room floor.”
Oh, was I?
Ihadbeen walking back and forth for quite a while. I was itching to rush to the city and see Felicia, but if I left now, I would be way too early. And I also knew that I would rush through getting ready, so I still had another fifteen minutes to hang out with my best friend before I could get going. Because yes, while being punctual was a good thing in my book, I knew better than to show up too early to pick up a date.
“Sorry about that.”
“No apologies needed. If you need to talk about anything, I’m here. I know this is your first date in a while.”
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Arietty said with all the confidence that came from being a preteen and thinking you knew everything about life. Sometimes I really missed those days. “She really liked you. I could smell it.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “And what about the fact that she’s human?”
I didn’t hate humans, or discriminate against them like some shifters, but we were quite literally from different worlds. She likely had no idea about fairies, or shifters, or any other of the various Wild Folk that had inhabited the earth long before her kind. If we were going to have any sort of relationship, I would either have to hide a huge part of myself and lie to her for the duration, or I’d have to tell the truth and shatter her entire perception of reality.
Then there was also the risk that she would take itextremelybadly. Although I didn’t think she was the type, one could never truly tell. And I was pretty sure that every shifter in existence had heard horror stories of a “nice” human either turning into a Wild Hunter after finding out about shifters or trying to expose us to the fairies.
Because that would be thebiggestviolation of the peace treaty that allowed us to keep our ancestral lands. The fairies saw themselves as protectors of man, the Wild Folk, and the peace. If we threatened all that by revealing our existence to the wrong person, it wouldn’t be entirely out of the realm of possibility for them to magically nuke us off the face of the earth.
So yeah, I was taking a huge fucking risk. That was why everyone’s support mystified me. Sure, Felicia was beautiful, charming, and kind, but not a single one of them seemed concerned that she could possibly pull an about-face.
Maybe I was being too much of a worry-wart, but that was my job as an alpha. What kind of leader would I be if I didn’t care about the possible extinction of my people? Even if I really,reallydidn’t believe that Felicia would do that.
“Who cares?” Arietty shot back, pulling me out of my clouded thoughts. “Everybody knows a human or two who’s married to a shifter. It’s not like it never happens. You just gotta find the right one. A safe one. Ya know?”
While it would have been easy to dismiss her and all of her preteen perspective, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Besides, I hated when adults automatically assumed they could dismiss what kids said. There was a reason there was a phraseout of the mouth of babes and fools.I liked to think that sometimes not being trampled down by the realities of adulthood gave youngsters a different sort of insight.
“Thanks, Arietty. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. We still have to actually get through our first date.”
“Where are you taking her, by the way?” Bethany asked, coming in from her office. The members of the pack had all sorts of jobs within the pack, but Bethany worked from home as a voice-over artist. We had a community bank that gave every household a basic income, but it wasn’t usual for at least one person in each family to have a job outside of our little community.
