by Casey Morgan
Alpha’s Valentine’s Day Virgin
A Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance
A standalone full-length novel in the
Alpha’s Virgin series (Book 3).
Copyright © 2019 Casey Morgan; All Rights Reserved.
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Table of Contents
Books in the Alpha’s Virgin Series
Chapter One
Celeste
One Week from Valentine’s Day
Chapter Two
Celeste
Chapter Three
Celeste
Chapter Four
Mason
Chapter Five
Celeste
Chapter Six
Celeste
Chapter Seven
Mason
Chapter Eight
Mason
Chapter Nine
Mason
Chapter Ten
Celeste
Chapter Eleven
Mason
Chapter Twelve
Mason
Chapter Thirteen
Celeste
Chapter Fourteen
Celeste
Chapter Fifteen
Celeste
Chapter Sixteen
Mason
Chapter Seventeen
Celeste
Chapter Eighteen
Mason
Chapter Nineteen
Celeste
Chapter Twenty
Celeste
Chapter Twenty-One
Mason
Chapter Twenty-Two
Celeste
Chapter Twenty-Three
Celeste
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mason
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mason
Chapter Twenty-Six
Celeste
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mason
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mason
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Celeste
Valentine’s Day
Chapter Thirty
Celeste
Epilogue
Mason
Sneak Peek of Alpha's Halloween Virgin
Books in the Alpha’s Virgin Series
Sneak Peek of The Spell of Three
Books in the Alpha’s Virgin Series
Each is standalone but connected. So you can read them alone but if you like the concepts then be sure to keep reading more in the series!
Alpha’s Halloween Virgin: A Halloween Wolf Shifter Romance
Alpha’s Christmas Virgin: A Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance
Alpha’s Valentine’s Day Virgin: A Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance
Chapter One
Celeste
One Week from Valentine’s Day
The recipe called for one and a half cups of chocolate chips, but I threw in another half-cup for good measure. Mom would reprimand me if she saw what I was doing, but she and Dad were in the back, working in the kitchen proper, while I was out here minding the front counter of the bakery.
We hadn’t had any customers in a few hours, so to keep from getting bored, I made my own batches of cookies to sell. Only during the slow times, when I was up front on my own, did I get to experiment with baking. The rest of the time, what my parents said, went.
I dumped the chocolate chips into the bowl of the old ivory mixer and watched as they stuck lightly into the batter. Then I flipped the switch and the mixer zoomed into life; its beater cut into the batter, making it sway and twist. The noise of the motor was a consistent and soothing buzz.
My parents had had the mixer for years. I had a vague memory of it running the first night they adopted me. And honestly, it had been run every day of my life since then. Its sound was soothing in a way nothing else ever was. It was a sound that said home for me, just like the baking of cookies and pastries.
Mom burst through one of the swinging double doors that leads back to the kitchen, having hit it with her boney hip, and carried a tray of strudel to the front display case. As she passed me, she eyed the ivory mixer and tuts.
“Celeste.”
She frowned. The expression pulled her narrow face even narrower.
“You know we don’t have the money to waste ingredients. Less chips, not more. Save the chocolate chips for the cookie baskets we need to make for Valentine’s Day.”
She leaned down and unlocked the display case, so she could slip the tray she was holding inside. The smell of the fresh baked strudel was wonderful, and I took in a deep breath. I loved the scent of cooked apples and dough.
Mom noticed my inhale, and then she reached over and pinched me on the hip. It was her silent reminder for me to keep out of the baked goods. She thought I was getting fat. I liked to think of myself as pleasantly plump.
“People love chocolate chips, Ma,” I told her, inching out of the reach of her pinching fingers. “They always ask for the cookies that have the most. The rest don’t sell.”
She hissed under her breath and continued stoking the display case, making sure that each and every item was perfectly in line with the next. “Not like we have many customers anyway,” she muttered. “This was a booming part of town when your father and I opened, now look! Everyone is gone, run off by these gangs or ruffians.”
I nodded politely. This was a complaint she made often.
Not that it wasn’t true. Our little town of Gray Acres, Minnesota was slowly being abandoned. The industrial air conditioner parts factory that used to be the center of town closed three years ago, and now people had had to move to find other jobs.
But not us – my father was determined to hold his ground; like this little bakery was the castle of his kingdom and not a run-down shop with a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor.
I understand, it was the only home I’ve ever known — or at least the only home I could remember. Most of my memories from the time before I was adopted were gone or just a confusing mess of images.
The Crescent Moon Bakery was my family’s whole life. My parents, Robert and Martha Blenko, were immigrants from the Ukraine. This shop was their little piece of the American Dream, so giving it up would be a huge loss.
But with the violence increasing every day and the shops closing around us, sometimes it seemed like it wasn’t worth holding on to and we should have just moved. If we had been able to afford it, we probably would have, by now.
“Blenkos don’t give up,” Dad constantly told me, even though we had been in the red financially for months and barely able to eat.
He was determined to stay. His steadfastness didn’t even waver when the Southland gang — the ones who caused the violence — started asking for payments for protection. I had wanted to tell them no. Dad, however, struck a deal and gave them a portion of our ever-shrinking grocery budget.
I let out a soft sigh, frustrated with my parents and the situation. My mother’s sharp ears heard it and she turned quickly to look at me. Her brown eyes pulled up into slits under her black eyebrows.
“No more wasting ingredients, Celeste.”
She wiped her flour covered hands on the old blue apron she always wore when she was baking, and glared at me with hard, tired eyes.
“We don’t have the money and you don’t need to be wasting your time with cookie batches we don’t need, and you end up eating.”
This time she reached over and pinched my cheek.
I shuffled out of her reach again and shrugged.
“What else am I supposed to do, Ma? There’re no customers and you won’t
let me take college classes. Come on, just one class and at least I would have homework to do when it’s slow.”
She grabbed one of the rags we keep nearby and started to wipe down the counters —something I’d already done a few times today, in my boredom.
“You know what your father said,” she muttered. “You already get too many heathen ideas from that phone we allow you to have and from the TV you watch and the books you read. We don’t need to pay someone to teach you more. Maybe you should bring your Bible out here to read?”
I sighed again and shook my head. This was another argument we had all the time.
I was twenty-three. High school was long gone and most of my friends with it. They had moved to find jobs or go off to college. But both those ideas were abhorrent to my overly religious parents.
I was not to leave the house until I found a husband — a husband that was from our church, no less — and until that time I was to work at the bakery. Not that I minded the work, I loved to bake.
It was something I planned to do for the rest of my life and teach to my children — if I ever had any. It was just hard to keep busy with so few customers.
The timer went off and I stopped the mixer. Mom gave me another glare but then quickly raised her boney shoulders in a shrug.
“Go ahead and bake them,” she told me. “Might as well, since the dough is made. But, Celeste,” she raised a lean finger and put it in my face, “no more after this!”
I nodded and she stormed back into the kitchen, leaving me alone. I already had the cookie sheet on the counter next to the mixer and covered with parchment paper, so I pulled the silver bowl from the mixer and started on the next step.
I pinched the dough—just like Ma had pinched me earlier—and pulled off a little chunk. Then, I rolled it into a ball and set it to the paper. When the dough was all rolled out, I would squish each ball with a spoon.
It was a process I had been familiar with since I was five years old and my parents had started to let me bake. It was repetitive work that let my mind wander.
I glanced over the counter that separated the seating area from the back of the bakery. The five round wooden tables and their chairs were clean, but empty. I had scrubbed them down that morning, hoping to see the place full by nine a.m., but the morning rush never came.
It was another slow day, where we were lucky to have one or two souls wander in on their way to work, hungry for our muffins beforehand.
A flash caught my attention and I looked out the front windows. Snow was falling lightly outside, big fat flakes that stuck to the already accumulated snow and covered everything with a blanket of white.
Everything was silent—hushed, like time had slowed, and I was trapped in a never-ending loop of being bored and making cookies.
I dropped my head back down to my work, rolling out another ball of dough. I really hated not being allowed to go to college.
I was an adult by legal standards and someone who should be able to make her own decisions. And yet, the thought of disobeying my parents—beyond adding a few off ingredients to cookie dough—was unthinkable.
There had been a lot of love and kindness in my childhood and I wasn’t exactly one to upset the boat. I would argue and yell, but never fully defy them and I wouldn’t leave against their wishes. Still, with most of my friends gone and so few customers popping in at the bakery, life was lonely.
Slight movement caught my eye and I looked up and out the long line of front windows again, thinking I must have missed something last time when I had become distracted by the snow.
Was a customer coming in?
My eyes met a man’s—dark brown, almost black, like the chocolate chips I had just mixed. They were unbearably sad, as if the whole world had forgotten him somehow.
And yet, I smiled.
I smiled to let him know that not everything was bad. I smiled to let him know there was goodness in the world, and that he wasn’t alone. Something in my soul wanted to soothe this stranger.
He didn’t open the door or come into the Bakery. He just stood outside in the cold and falling snow, staring through the windows with a depth of longing in his eyes.
I kept my smile and tried to look as inviting as possible. Meanwhile, I gave him a quick once over.
The stranger was extremely tall. It looked like he was very muscular under the piles of clothes that he covered his body with: old loose jeans, a dark blue hoodie pulled up over his hair, and a torn brown duster coat to try and keep the wind out.
He had a worn backpack on his shoulder, covered with rough sewn patches; it was military green. He was a drifter.
Maybe I should have felt scared. So many of the people who came by our shop these days were malicious. Most of them were gang members. We had had rocks thrown through our windows, graffiti painted on our walls, and a few robberies.
Multiple times, I had begged my father to get a gun, but he wouldn’t do that; nor would he move. When we called the police, the officers would just shrug—too underpaid and low staffed to handle the criminal activity on the streets of Gray Acres.
Somehow, though, I could tell that this stranger meant me no harm. His eyes were too lost and too sad. I had a feeling that all he needed was a chance to not feel invisible.
I moved down the counter to the display case and slid it open. Grabbing a cinnamon roll that had been baked this morning, I raised my hand up and out to offer it to the man. His deep eyes took in my movement and widened slightly in surprise.
His eyes were really beautiful, elegantly shaped with long dark lashes and flecks of amber that seemed to glow out of the dark depths of his irises. The face that held them was beautiful too, with a rugged, angled jaw line covered with a rough beard, high cheek bones and thick brown eyebrows.
His lips, narrow but well-shaped, parted as he looked at my offer. I assumed he was hungry, since most drifters were.
Giving my hand a quick wiggle, I offered the cinnamon roll to him again. The movement seemed to shake him out of his hypnotized state.
He dropped his head, breaking the connection between us, and looked down at the sidewalk. Shoulders bent, he moved on; his long stride taking him quickly out of view.
I hurried around the counter and ran to the windows—cinnamon roll still in my hand. My hand brushed the front door handle, but I didn’t run after him.
I wasn’t sure why.
I told myself that it was because it was cold out and I didn’t have a coat.
But maybe the truth was that I was a little scared of him after all.
Chapter Two
Celeste
Mary came into the shop just a few minutes later. My best friend shook the snow from her curly, red hair and brushed it off her old gray jacket, before taking the coat off and hanging it on the employee coatrack.
My only friend left in town, Mary was pretty much in the same situation I was in. Her parents wouldn’t let her leave either, so she was stuck here working for us.
“Ugh,” she said, rubbing her hands together and shaking her shoulders. “With Valentine’s Day just a few days away, you would think that it would warm up a bit. I’m so tired of feeling cold.”
My mother poked her head in from the kitchen.
“Is that Mary?”
My friend gave her a little wave.
“Come back here to the kitchen a bit and warm up, child,” my mother instructed her. “I have one of the ovens open.”
“Yes, Mrs. Blenko,” Mary chimed.
She came behind the front counter and gave me a questioning look.
“Are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
I shook my head and continued to roll up batter for the cookies I was making.
“No, I’m fine. Just lost in thought. Barely any customers today and Mom was harping on me for making cookies. There’s nothing else to do.”
I leaned towards her when she got close enough to me on her way to the kitchen.
“She wants me to read my
Bible,” I whispered and rolled my eyes.
Mary gave a snort of a laugh but covered her small mouth quickly. Her blue eyes sparkled over her hand.
“Yeah, that’s what my mom tells me to do when I’m bored as well. It’s their answer to everything,” she whispered, and rolled her eyes back at me, just slightly.
One of the double doors swung open and Mom looked through again.
“Come on, child.”
She gestured for Mary to get into the kitchen.
“Your mother would never forgive me if you caught a cold. Come in here and warm up your bones.”
My friend gave me a quick smile and hurried into the kitchen. She was always the good girl, obedient and soft spoken.
Our parents belonged to the same church, The Path of God, and their very conservative beliefs shaped both our lives.
Mary wasn’t allowed to go to college, either. Our church believed in sheltering ourselves from the outside world, not to mention the fact that they believed womens’ jobs were to be wives and mothers, so they didn’t see the need for higher education.
My parents let her work part time of the bakery. We couldn’t really afford it, but they felt it was necessary to do good within the church. Plus, Mary’s parents wanted her to be good in the kitchen, for when she eventually became a wife and mother. She wasn’t.
The front door opened, and a cold breeze filled the room. I turned, with a smile on my face, ready to greet a customer and found Big Dog standing in muddy boots in our doorway.
“Smells like heaven in here!”
He sniffed exaggeratedly and stalked towards the counter.
Big Dog wasn’t big. He was just barely taller than my five-foot-four frame, and his short stature made him extra mean.
He walked with an exaggerated swagger, one hand clamped onto his belt buckle and the other swinging back and forth. He was getting mud all over the wooden floors I had mopped this morning.
I frowned as he approached and pulled back from the counter.
He ignored my displeasure, leaned over the counter and swiped at the red sweater I was wearing. He succeeded in getting a hold on my arm and pulling me towards him. My nose wrinkled as the smell of his cologne overtook me—it was much too strong.