They all turned to stare at Dakota, then quickly looked away. A twinge of alarm lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.
Naomi walked over to her slowly, with an odd look on her face. “So…did you go in and register yet?” she asked Dakota. Her voice sounded strained.
“No, I thought I’d walk around downtown a little more, see the sights.” She peered at Naomi.
“Well, enjoy it while you can, I guess,” Naomi said to Dakota. “You’re so brave. I had no idea.”
That was weird. When Dakota had showed her shifter ID card to the shuttle bus driver in Los Angeles, he’d looked at her with concern and said the same thing. The whole drive up here, he’d been extra solicitous of her. He’d insisted on buying her lunch – and he definitely hadn’t been hitting on her.
She’d thought the bus driver was calling her brave because she looked like a pampered city shifter and she was heading into rough, barely developed territory. Her nails were manicured a glossy pink, and she’d worn low-heeled pumps – a dumb mistake, now that she thought about it.
But why was Naomi calling her brave? She wasn’t a country girl either. She’d come from a small shifter city.
“Well, I guess I should go now. It’s been nice knowing you,” Naomi said, with that concerned look still on her face.
“Uh…sure. You too,” Dakota said, bewildered.
What the hell had just happened? “Nice knowing you?” Did coyotes and wolves not hang out with each other up here? Somehow she doubted that was the problem.
Naomi walked off quickly, carrying her suitcase, and climbed up the steps that led to the general store.
Dakota tried not to feel hurt, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d thought that she and Naomi had really bonded, and she’d imagined they’d be friends in this strange new land. Now it was clear that Naomi couldn’t get away from her fast enough. Was it something Dakota had said?
The other women glanced at her furtively, eyes widening, and murmured to each other. Some of them looked right at her and shook their heads sorrowfully. One of them, a wolf shifter named Louise, gave her a tentative thumbs up, then looked away quickly. She looked as if she were going to cry.
They were a few hundred feet away, but Dakota could pick up a little of what they were muttering.
“Poor girl,” one of them murmured.
“It’s just a damn shame, is what it is,” Macy said loudly, and one of the other women shushed her.
What the hell? Did they think she had a terminal disease or something? Come to think of it, several of the women on the bus had offered to share their food with Dakota. Why had everyone on that bus trip insisted on feeding her like it was her last meal? And why was everyone suddenly acting like she had the bubonic plague?
She was sincerely tempted to call Tina up at home, just to hear a friendly voice, but she resisted. She’d come up here to learn how to make her own way, right? She’d…she’d try harder. She would figure out what she’d done to make these people not like her and fix it somehow.
Thoroughly unsettled, she stood there and looked around the market square, trying to decide what to do next.
Chapter Five
She wandered off, distracted, and despite Anthea’s advice, she left the town square and headed towards a park that had been cleared out nearby.
As she walked, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she felt a tingling on her skin. An Alpha Prime was nearby, and he was projecting his feelings big-time; she could sense strength and self-confidence and dominance.
She looked around and quickly identified the source. It radiated from the handsome Alpha she’d seen talking on the two-way radio earlier – the one who’d fried the Charlesville Alpha with his anger-energy. He strolled over to her with a grin curling his mouth and stopped, blocking her path.
She tipped her head up to look at him. He towered over her, easily six foot five. Broad shoulders, skin browned by the sun with a hint of sunburn on his cheekbones, and sensual lips that had been designed for kissing. His eyes were the amber color of whiskey. He wore faded jeans, lace-up brown work books, and a white T-shirt that was molded to the curves of his biceps.
As she met his gaze, a bolt of heat zapped through her – and faint warning bells sounded. He moved with the same arrogance and easy confidence as her ex-fiancé Roy. She hadn’t just fled three thousand miles across the country to make the same mistake twice.
“What are you drinking? Bar just opened,” he said, inclining his head at a building with a big sign in front of it that proclaimed it to be the Watering Hole.
So smugly confident. So sure that the chubby girl would just fall on her back because he was handsome and she should be grateful. She was pretty sure that he was the region’s Alpha Prime; she felt waves of arousal and a hint of dominance flowing from him, so thick she could practically see it rippling in the air. And he was choosing to broadcast his emotions, to ensure that she felt them. Letting her know what he was.
She glanced at her watch, then looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, you want to go to a bar at eleven a.m.?” she said.
He flashed her a winning smile. “Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.” Then he inclined his head at the bar. “So what’s your pleasure?”
She restrained herself from spluttering, “Are youkiddingme?” and settled for, “I’ll have an ice-cold glass of don’t bother, I’m not interested. No, make that a double.” And she stalked off with her head held high.
