A gift with no strings (even though it came delivered with one).
I ordered this from an international used bookstore the day you told me about what happened to your book, and it just showed up.
It’s not the same, but it’s the best I could do.
Callum.
P.S. Cops arrested Veronica. Everything is over.
Brushing tears from my eyes, I pick up the book. It’s not just a copy ofThe Secret Garden, my favorite book. It’s a first edition, signed by the author.
I don’t even want to know how much this cost, but I will treasure this book forever. With tears in my eyes and my blanket wrapped around my shoulders in my cozy apartment, I get comfortable on the couch and turn the first page of my book.
Twice now I’ve started dialing Callum’s number, and twice I’ve put my cell phone down.
I told Jack that I only wanted to thank Callum for the book he gave me. Jack gave me a knowing look and asked if that was all. I said it was, but it wasn’t. I miss my scent matches, and I don’t know why I’m not going back to them.
Lucia thinks I need to make them grovel more for the way they treated me. Buying a building was a good start, but they needed to crawl over literal glass and maybe buy me a mansion to prove their love and earn my forgiveness.
I told her that a mansion wasn’t necessary. She told me a mansion isalwaysnecessary, especially if it involves loaded alphas, and I laughed and shook my head.
I’ve had a life of privilege. A mansion is nice, but I’d much prefer a life full of people who love me unconditionally.
After another long day of cleaning hotel rooms, I’m yawning into my hand as my apartment building comes into view. I spot a blonde woman sitting on the bottom step that leads up to my building. She has a duffel on the floor beside her blue skinny jeans and black boots.
That can’t be…
My steps slow as I squint. And my heart, once slow and steady, starts pounding.
I tell myself it isn’t who I think it is, even as my canvas bag slides down my right arm, dropping to the floor with a clatter from my empty Tupperware container.
“River?”
The woman stands and turns to look at me.
“Hey, sis,” River says, with tears in her eyes.
I knock her to the ground with the force of my hug, and we’re both laughing and crying too hard to care about bruised elbows and skinned knees when we eventually pick ourselves up.
“Where have youbeen?” I ask River once we’re in my apartment and on my couch. “And what happened to your hair? It’s soshort.”
River smiles wryly at me as I tug on her blonde hair that barely reaches the top of her shoulders. The last time I saw her, her hair was as long as mine, reaching the small of her back.
“I have a job now, and I didn’t want it smelling of engine grease.”
“You have ajob? Engine grease?”
She nods. “I work the front desk at an auto repair shop run by a pack of alphas and a beta. It’s actually not that far from here. I want to learn about how to fix cars eventually, but the front desk is a good place to start.”
Three hours pass in the blink of an eye as we fill each other in on our lives.
She tells me all about Haven Academy closing down, meeting a beta called Della Jackson who pretended to be an omega, and building a new life for herself.
I learn that going to our parents to find River was a waste of time. They wouldn’t have known where she was because they wouldn’t have cared to know. When River refused to mate with an alpha of their choosing after leaving Haven Academy, they shut their door to her, just like they did to me.
Like me, River pawned a piece of jewelry to get cash to fund her new life, all while looking for me when she learned I’d left my scent matches. She’d tried to visit me in the hospital, and security refused to let her in, thinking she was a reporter pretending to be my sister—one had tried that already and failed.
Then I fill River in on my year of misery with Pack Wells, followed by everything that happened with Callum’s dad, Veronica, and Wilkes Booth.
