CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
KIT
Five days had passed since the storm. Five days of far too infrequent messages from Aster and Callum in the pack group chat, reassuring us that Lucas was resting and healing well.
I’d been too tired to protest leaving Lucas in the mountains when Louisa and Errol bundled me into their car the night he was turned. One of them had carried me from the Jeep to my bedroom above the bookshop. I’d woken the next morning exhausted from how much pain I’d drained but overwhelmingly grateful Lucas was alive.
Over the last five days, my gratitude hadn’t faded, but the distance between us had seemed to grow. Since Lucas arrived on the island five weeks ago, we hadn’t spent more than a day apart from one another. We’d hugged in the mornings before he went off to save animal’s lives and I noodled around my bookshop. We spent our evenings close on the sofa, talking and completing puzzles.
I hadn’t realised before how lonely I had been. Or, I had known, but it slammed me about the face now I’d had a taste of companionship. Logically, I knew that once Lucas had adjustedto his new abilities he would return to the village, come back to me, but it was taking too long. I wanted him here now, where I could check he was okay and help him adapt to something we shared.
‘Bugger.’ I chucked the sheet of half price stickers onto the counter. Despite being a brand I bought because of their inability to leave horrible marks on book covers, obviously I’d been sent a dud batch that couldn’t even leave the sheet without tearing. It didn’t matter that I’d used the same sheet of stickers last week and they’d been perfectly fine. They were stupid and wrong and I hated them.
The shop door swooped open. Bonnie started talking before it had fully swung shut. ‘As all powerful Alpha, do you reckon I should devise a heinous punishment for my dearest little brother for adding some random to the pack without seeking permission first?’ She waved a hand, dismissing the hot burst of outrage she no doubt sensed from me. ‘Yeah, yeah; there’s the wholehe was going to die if we didn’t do somethingand that would have made Aster cry and we can’t have that, but also I want to mess with Cally-pops. It’s been far too long since he’s frowned at me so hard his face basically becomes all eyebrow.’
She sauntered over to the counter. I would say she was lucky there were no customers in the shop when she blathered about the pack but Bonnie was an arsehole, not an idiot. She would have checked for heartbeats other than mine and Kat’s before she prattled on about anything secret.
‘You smell weird.’ She wandered around the counter and pulled me into a hug that had more in common with a headlock. ‘What’s going on in that gorgeous brain of yours?’
For the first time since I’d realised members of my pack had been holding back on snuggles because they thought I didn’t want them, I shrugged away from one of them.
‘Nothing’s going on,’ I grumbled, then blushed because Bonnie would be far too delighted by the bump in my heartbeat.
She cackled, then crowded into my space. It wasn’t quite a hug but there was no way to escape as she pressed up along my side.
‘Tell me what’s wrong or I’ll lick a book.’
‘I hate you,’ I muttered.
Bonnie swiped a copy ofPride and Prejudicefrom the display of clothbound classics near the counter. She wiggled her tongue at it.
‘Fine. Fine.’
I tried to grab it, but she used her ridiculous Alpha strength to pin me to the wall while she set the book safely on the counter. Then she sped around to the other side where I couldn’t reach her without hurling myself over the polished wood.
‘I have an arsehole for an Alpha,’ I growled. Then tacked on when her fingers flexed towards another book display, ‘And I miss Lucas.’
My cheeks burned. That wasn’t quite what I would have chosen to say, but the threat of saliva on books flustered me. It was true, anyway. My heartbeat didn’t stutter again.
‘You miss your little buddy?’ Bonnie’s face contorted with a complicated mix of mockery and sympathy, like her dickhead half was doing battle with the half of her that actually cared about her pack minions. ‘If you’re lonely, you can come over to mine and Joshua’s any time. If we’re humping, we’ll keep it quiet and we’ll hang out with you once we’re done.’
‘What an incredibly tempting proposition,’ I muttered into the sky-blue scarf I’d paired with a green jumper this morning. I straightened, resolve forming after days of dithering. ‘I want to visit Lucas.’
Then bring him home, I didn’t say. It would be enough of a battle to get myself to Callum’s cabin while a new werewolfwas acclimatising in there who I had no claim over other than relatively new friendship.
‘You know that’s not wise.’ Bonnie put on the same voice as when people at the island’s council meetings piped up about subjects that weren’t on her laminated agendas. ‘Lucas is not only a new werewolf, but he wasn’t in any way mentally prepared for the change. He needs time with Callum and Aster to get used to what life is going to be like from now on.’
She didn’t need to add that after I’d been bitten, I would have freaked out if anyone came near. It had taken me three weeks to leave Callum’s cabin, and I’d had a scarf firmly wrapped around my neck that I’d point blank refused to remove.
I slumped onto the stool behind the counter and rubbed my hands over my face. I understood too well the vulnerability of becoming something completely new.
‘Fine.’ I dropped my hands to my lap. ‘I’ll stay down here and wait.’
Bonnie leant across the counter to pat me on the head. ‘Good boy.’
I growled at her as she walked backwards to the door. Her feral grin grew as she paced away.
‘Does it mean I half win the bet about when you and Lucas will get it on if I picked the time when you fell for him?’
