If he’s telling me to run, it’s clearly going to be really bad for me if I do appear for the gathering. Right. Maybe I can break a leg or something up on my mountain.
I stare at them until they’re gone, and only once I’m sure I’m not going to get jumped, do I open my door to my truck and climb in. The groceries can wait. If the pack is here, then I need to be elsewhere. I can come back tomorrow. I’ll be cutting it close, but it would be safer.
Once I get halfway home, I pull over. My hands are shaking, and I feel sick; the warmth of the day is gone. Even the pine-clean scent of the forests I’ve claimed as my own isn’t bringing me peace.
They claim this place is haunted, so the human townsfolk won’t come here. My pack is too lazy to run up and down mountains. When the witch, old Freida Jones, passed, she willed me the tiny plot of land and the cabin.
It’s been home for years now. Just me. Alone.
Why does that feel so heavy today?
I get back in the truck. The drive is long, and, normally, I take peace in the bumpy ascension, but today I’m just itching to be home. I want out of these layers of clothes and want to be in my own space. The smell, the stench! I want this damn scent off me. I slammy foot on the brake as soon as I reach home and jump out of the truck, ripping four layers of shirts off me until I’m in a tank top and jeans.
I close my eyes and tilt my head to the sky, letting the sun fall on my face. Remembering what my mother would say to me.Keep your anger leashed until you need it. Never let them see how strong you are, not until you can take them all down.
My mother was an omega, like hers before her. Just as I am. Whether I have a wolf or not, they can’t take that from me. And omega wolves cannot be controlled.
My phone’s shrill tone breaks the silence. I reach for it absently and accept the call while I unlock my front door and kick it shut behind me.
Home sweet home. My expensive couch and TV take up a lot of the space. There are four bedrooms, but I only use the one on the other side of the kitchen. A back door down the hallway and miles of beautiful views out old rustic windows.
I love it here.
“Casey, thank fuck.”
I sit up more alertly. “What’s wrong, Liz? Who do I have to kill?”
Liz is my only friend. My best friend. We catch up for coffee once every couple of months and talk a few times on the phone during that time. I’m aware that I put a higher value on our friendship than she does, but I need her. I honestly don’t have anyone else. She’s human, but married to a wolf, so she’ll never be accepted. Not fully.
“No one. It’s nothing like that. It’s just a simple thing, really. A huge favour.”
I wrinkle my nose and trot back down to my truck, pulling out the few bags of shopping I did manage to buy before I got cornered. I carry them up to the front of my house with my phone squeezed between my ear and shoulder. “What kind of favour?”
“The kind that would save me. I’m desperate.” She does sound bad; she sounds scared.
“Uh-huh. What kind, Liz?”
There’s a tense silence. “Dog sitting.”
I laugh at her and put my shopping on the old cut-up wooden bench in my kitchen. “Dog sitting. I can’t dog-sit.” I scoff at the very idea of me with a dog.
“Please. I’m begging you.”
“Liz, I can’t,” I growl into the phone. “I’m in the mountains; they could get eaten or worse.”
“It’s for one day.”
I pause. I need this friendship. She’s the only person left who speaks kindly to me.
“Casey, one day. I have my in-laws coming over.” I despise Liz’s new husband. He is a lazy bastard of a beta, so this makes me less inclined to help. A typical Foster wolf. “And his youngest sister, she’s ten, and she’s deathly allergic to dogs.”
I hesitate. It’s really rare for a wolf to have allergies, but then, we don’t all end up as wolves, do we?
“Please, Case, I know it’s a lot to ask, but no one will help me, and I…I just want to get them to like me. I know you can understand that.”
And I could. I tried so hard with my family until I learned better, but some lessons need to be learned the hard way in order to stick.
“How many?”
