Page 4 of Alpha's Secret Baby Girl
Then Lianne appeared. Her infectious six-year-old smile was beaming up at Gwen, looking exactly as Gwen did in pictures from when she was that age. Same wavy blonde hair. Same green eyes. Confident in ways her mother never was. Even her smile faded to horror, and she screamed, a silent, soundless scream that seemed to darken the fog even more.
Suddenly, it was gone. The headache disappeared. Gwen was kneeling on the floor, a crumpled receipt in her hand. Her chest heaved with the leftover adrenaline from those horrible images in her head. Quickly, she pulled herself upright. Her legs trembled, but when she glanced around, she didn’t see anyone staring. Nobody seemed to have noticed.
She took the cheque to the table, received payment, then headed into the back. The restaurant manager, Trevor Dump, was watching basketball on his TV, eating Parmesan fries, and drinking a Coke. The office was crammed full of his old High School sports trophies.
“Trev, I have a wicked migraine,” Gwen said, rubbing her temples, though they no longer hurt. “I need to clock out early.”
Trevor frowned at her. “Thought you wanted extra shifts.”
Gwen grimaced. “I do. But with this migraine…”
She trailed off. Trevor heaved out an annoyed sigh but waved her off. “Sure, sure. Let me know if you need tomorrow off.”
“Will do,” Gwen muttered. “Thanks, Trev.”
Her hands didn’t stop shaking until she was halfway home. The vision—no, the hallucinations—had been happening more often lately. She’d always had difficulty with them. Sometimes they came true, but usually it was only exhaustion talking. She shouldn’t even be thinking about that old pack. They were nothing to her. Maybe it was just that she was feeling guilty about not contacting Kira in a few months.
That had to be it, right? That, combined with these intense days. The restaurant barely covered the bills, so she had taken on some extra work online to try to build a buffer and give Lianne a better life. The exhaustion must be catching up to her, making this old infirmary flare up again.
That’s all it was. An infirmary. Some sort of mental illness, one that fortunately didn’t seem to have passed down to Lianne. And whether or not some of these hallucinations seemed to have come true… well, that was only a coincidence. A shudder ran down her spine as she shook herself, trying to push aside those uncomfortable thoughts.
As for the pack… well, why should she even be thinking about them? Afterherejected her so publicly, she left. It had been the only thing to do, leave the pack and all their cruelty. That was the first choice Gwen made that had actually made sense, leaving. She had never felt the need to shift, never felt her wolf’s presence strongly, so relocating into the city had been easy enough. It was better than being in a pack that treated her like their favorite punching bag.
She missed Kira, though, and Kira’s younger sister Chelsey. Kira and Gwen had first bonded through their shared outcast status, and Chesley had naturally been pulled into their little group. The three of them did their best to stay in touch, andsometimes the two sisters would come to the city to visit. But they didn’t talk very much anymore, other than the occasional email or the obligatory ‘Happy Birthday’ phone call.
The bus arrived at her stop, and Gwen got off. It was still early in the night, not yet eight. Frustration built in her chest. Now that she was practically home, she was starting to regret asking for the night off. As tired as she was, she could have lasted another few hours. The loss of tonight’s income was going to hurt. She’d have to redo the budget for the next paycheck to make sure she could get all the bills paid.
But even those frustrations melted away when she got into the house. Lianne was in her PJs, sitting on the couch with her babysitter, Kelly, as they read bedtime stories. Lianne’s eyes lit up when she saw Gwen.
“Mommy!” she jumped up and ran to her, throwing her arms around her stomach. “Ha! Kelly said I wasn’t allowed to stay up all night, but I did!”
Gwen laughed and kissed Lianne’s head. “I came home early, Annie-Lee,” she teased, using her pet name for her daughter. “I hope you didn’t give Kelly too hard a time.”
Kelly laughed. “She was a perfect angel.”
“Uh-huh,” Lianne agreed, then yawned, her small frame sagging into Gwen’s side.
Gwen kissed her again and picked her up. “Kelly, do you mind cleaning up while I put Lianne to bed?”
Normally, Kelly would get Lianne to sleep and then do some light cleaning in the house. Gwen didn’t want to put her out of the income she’d been planning on having, not when Gwen knew her family was struggling since her mother got sick. Kelly looked relieved as she nodded.
As Gwen read stories and tucked Lianne into bed, the exhaustion from the day gradually gave way to sleepiness. Learning she was pregnant was one of the hardest days of her life. She hadn’t known what to do, didn’t know if she could reach out to Raf—to him, to tell him about being pregnant. But then she remembered the laughing look on his face when he said, “I was bored.”
She couldn’t trust him. Not with her baby.
Becoming a single mother was challenging, but it had worked out in the end. Her love for Lianne carried her through the rough days. She couldn’t imagine a different life. The only regret she had was wondering if she was enough for Lianne. If there was something Lianne was missing out on by not being part of a pack.
We’re our own pack, she reassured herself when she turned off the big light and turned on the night light. Lianne rolled to her side, her hands tucked under her cheek as she closed her eyes.
Exhaustion started weighing heavier on Gwen; the earlier tension of a migraine was starting to pull at her temples. She went back to the kitchen, where Kelly was cleaning up.
“I need to head to bed. Will you be alright heading home on your own?” Gwen asked, one hand resting on the back of her aching neck.
Kelly hesitated. “I have a lot of homework to do, and home is pretty noisy right now. Do you mind if I stay and work here?”
“Go ahead,” Gwen told her. “Let me know how many hours you worked tomorrow, okay?”
Gwen headed back to her room. Normally, she would shower after coming home, but her limbs felt loosened at the joints, her muscles aching. She washed the makeup off her face and threw her hair into a braid before she collapsed into bed. Her eyes shut instantly, her body sinking into that space between sleep and wakefulness, that hazy place where dreams were real.
