by J. L. Wilder
Bethany smirked at Charity. She seemed to get a kick out of the idea that being eighteen meant anything special and was always deriding Hallie about her insistence that she was an adult now. But Charity could relate. She had been on her own since she was Hallie’s age. Of course, Hallie’s parents were of the regular human variety, and they probably just wanted to see their daughter stay out of trouble and transition safely into independent living. It was a far cry from the situation Charity had been in when she was seventeen. If she hadn’t left, she would be mated to someone against her will right now.
She would probably be mated to Hawk.
And Bethany thought her boyfriend was bad!
“Angela!” Bethany called across the empty restaurant. “Kate! Isa! We’re all going out tonight!”
Angela, Kate, and Isa popped up from behind the bar. Charity knew there was a tiny spot in one of the corners that was out of view of the security cameras, and the three of them had probably been doing a few shots back there. They were tousle-haired and looked as though they were already more than ready to party. “Excellent,” Kate said. “Where are we going?”
“Pub crawl,” Isa enthused. She had been pushing for just such an activity for the past several weeks, ever since the new Irish pub at the end of the block had opened. “We can start at O’Flaherty’s and hit The Silver Grasshopper, Jack’s, Pour Henry’s...”
“We can’t take Hallie to a bunch of bars,” Charity objected. If she was going to go along on this excursion, she was going to try to at least exercise some common sense and control.
“Sure, you can,” Hallie said. “I have an ID.”
“See, she’s fine,” Isa said. “Let me see your ID, Hallie.”
Hallie pulled it out and Isa came over to examine it. “Well?”
“No one could hope to tell it from the real thing,” Isa declared, passing it back to Hallie. “She’ll be totally fine.”
“Excellent,” Angela said briskly. If the group of girls who worked at the restaurant could be said to have an alpha, Charity had often thought, Angela would be it. She was the oldest and had been working there the longest, but there was more to it than that. She had the same kind of born in leadership quality that Charity remembered having noticed in Hawk. It was a sort of magnetism, a way of getting everyone around her to listen to what she said and to follow her lead. And her confidence was an unbreakable thing, a sight to behold.
Now she hopped up onto the bar, swung her legs over, and dropped down on the other side. “Everyone wrap up your closing duties and let’s get going,” she insisted. “It’s still happy hour at O’Flaherty’s, and if we get a move on, we can catch two-dollar shots.”
The last thing Charity wanted was to do a bunch of shots and have to stagger home wasted, but she had to admit it had been a long time since she’d been out with the girls. Maybe it would do her good. “Let me just finish these last few silverware bundles.”
“We’ll help you out,” Angela said. “Won’t we, girls?” And moments later, she, Kate, and Isa had pulled up chairs and were helping to bundle up the silverware. This was a perfect example of Angela’s leadership ability, Charity thought. It was also the kind of thing Karl had been great at as an alpha, back when she was growing up with the pack. He had a way of getting everyone to do things without making them feel forced, letting them feel as if it had been their own choice to do what he wanted all along.
The girls visited their lockers, put away the things that belonged at work and picked up the things that didn’t. Charity exchanged her uniform apron for her purse and her sensible, comfortable shoes for a pair of nice wedge sandals. “Keys away,” said Angela firmly, and everyone who had driven that day hung up their car keys in their lockers, to be collected the following morning. Cabs would be arranged to get them home that night, or they would walk.
Hallie was practically jumping up and down. “My first real pub crawl!”
“Okay, but you’re going to have to reel it in a little,” Kate laughed. “Go up to the bouncer like that and he’s going to know you’re only eighteen.”
“Right, okay, how’s this?” Hallie affected a serious expression, heaved a sigh, and allowed her shoulders to slump. “Having three children is no picnic! Why, I never get a moment to myself! Have any of you filed your 1040s yet?”
“And just who is that supposed to be?” Isa demanded.
“My mother!”
“Maybe aim for a middle ground,” Charity advised.
It was less than a five-minute walk to O’Flaherty’s, and because they served food as well as liquor, Hallie’s fake ID wasn’t required for entrance. That seemed to take the wind out of her sails a bit, but Charity thought it was probably for the best. Better to give her a chance to relax a little before she had to try passing herself off as a genuine twenty-one-year-old. The six of them got a table at the back of the place and Angela ordered two rounds of shots to get the evening started.
The shots arrived, and in short order, the girls were on their way to being drunk. Isa and Angela left the table and went to play a game of darts, and Bethany began to unload the story of herself and Brian on the rest of the table.
“I just know he’s seeing someone else,” she complained, accepting one of Charity’s shots and knocking it back quickly. She made a quick face. “Maybe we should get a chaser.”
“But who would he be seeing?” Hallie asked, breathless with excitement. This was as good as a soap opera for her, Charity thought. Hallie was the only one in the group who seemed as unlucky in love as Charity was. Brian was a mess of a boyfriend, yes, but at least he was something. Kate and Isa were roommates and had a revolving door of one-night stands—they were forever regaling their coworkers with tales of their conquests. Angela, meanwhile, had been in a steady relationship for the past four years, and they all expected her boyfriend to propose at any moment.
“He could be seeing anybody,” Bethany said. “Probably one of those bitches he works with, though, I’ll bet you anything. Little tramps. Not one of them a day over nineteen.”
“Is that bad?” Hallie asked anxiously.
“It’s not bad to be young,” Kate said. “It’s bad that Brian is fooling around on Bethany with a younger woman. It means he’s only interested in women up to a certain age.”
“Do you think that’s true?” Bethany sounded agonized.
“Listen, Bethany, he doesn’t deserve you,” Kate said earnestly. “He’s a jerk, and you could do a million times better.”
“She’s right,” Charity agreed. “You’ve got to leave him. You can’t let him keep doing this to you. Either leave him, or else lay down the law and tell him if he doesn’t clean up his act, he’s going to find himself dumped.”
“That’s easy for you two to say,” Bethany sniffled. “You don’t know what it’s like to be in love. You wouldn’t think it was such an obvious choice if you’d ever really loved somebody.”
“Well, I hope I never do if it turns me into a complete doormat,” Kate said and threw back her second shot. “We need more drinks. I’ll buy the next round.” She got up and walked off to the bar.
Bethany watched her go. “Did I make her angry?” she asked.
“It wasn’t the most tactful thing you could have said,” Charity admitted.
“Are you angry?”
“No.” How could she expect Bethany to know that she had loved someone once, that she had decided to walk away from a life with someone she cared about? She had never told them any stories about her past. It would have been nice, she thought suddenly, to have been able to talk to someone about everything that had happened. Maybe she would feel more over it if she’d ever been able to air out the pain. But her friends were all pure human. No one in her life was a shifter. How could she possibly tell them her stories? Too much would have to go unsaid.
Kate returned with the drinks. She seemed to have shaken off Bethany’s comment, and she passed dirty martinis around the table. Hallie examined hers with an air of fran
k curiosity, took a tiny sip, and made a face.
“You don’t have to drink it,” Kate assured her.
“No, I’ll drink it,” Hallie said. “Just takes some getting used to is all.”
Charity closed her eyes and shook her head. At the same time, she couldn’t help wondering what it had been like when her old friends in the Hell’s Wolves had started drinking for the first time. Karl had always been very strict about underage smoking and drinking—you could do what you wanted when you were of age, he told them firmly, but children in his pack would take care of themselves. Because the rules had been the same for everyone, there had been no peer pressure, no one friend more advanced and worldly than the rest who had introduced them to alcohol at a young age. They had all been perfectly clean and sober up until the point when Charity had left them.
Her packmates—those of her generation—had belonged to two different litters and had, therefore, had two separate birthdays. She imagined they would have delayed the party until the younger group, her own, turned twenty-one. But when that day came, it would have been uproarious. There would have been a party with the older pack members first, of course, where they would have been served beer or wine or something classy like that. Then they would have gone into the woods with a bottle of whiskey or tequila to really cut loose.
Charity felt a sharp pang, suddenly, at the realization that she had missed that. Her brothers and sisters had come of age without her.
It always surprised her when something like this happened. Her thoughts of pack life and even of Weston were a dull, constant ache, something that never really left her and rarely had the power to surprise her. But sometimes some thought or memory of her old life would spring up as if from nowhere, taking her completely by surprise, knocking her back on her heels.
Her stomach rolled. She thought she might be sick.
She had given up so much to save herself from the omega’s fate.
Hallie, Kate, and Bethany were staring at her. “Charity?” Bethany said. “Are you okay? You look sort of green.”
“You know, I don’t feel so well,” Charity said. “I think I’m going to head home.”
“What! Already!” the three of them protested as one.
“We’re still only at the first stop!” Hallie said. “That isn’t even a pub crawl. That’s just...that’s just a pub.”
“Just a pub will have to do it for me for tonight,” Charity said firmly. “I have to open in the morning. And that shot didn’t settle so well.”
“You’re getting old,” Bethany mourned. “Going home after one drink!”
“Bethany, she’s like three months older than you are,” Kate scolded. “Are you going to be okay, Charity? Do you need us to help you get a taxi?”
“No,” Charity said. “It’s only a couple of blocks to my apartment from here, I can manage.”
“Okay,” Kate agreed. “We’ll see you at work tomorrow, then.”
“See you. Have fun the rest of the night. I’ll want to hear all your stories.” She wouldn’t, actually, but she didn’t want them to feel ditched. “Tell Isa and Angela bye for me.”
“We will,” Hallie agreed.
Charity picked her way through the crowd and out onto the sidewalk. As soon as she was alone, she started to feel a little bit better. Sometimes just being around people who weren’t her pack was enough to make her feel painfully out of place. It was a sharp reminder that no matter how long she lived in the human world, no matter how hard she tried to adjust to life as a human, she was denying what she really was, and it would never quite fit.
She decided to take the long way home, winding through the hilly streets instead of along the main thoroughfare that would take her back past the restaurant where she worked. It was a nice night, just a little bit of chill in the air, and the moon was bright overhead. The single shot she’d drunk had begun to settle nicely, setting her head swimming just enough to be comfortable. She wandered slowly up one hill and down the next, making her way gradually back toward home.
A large black van pulled slowly to a stop beside her. The door opened and a large man got out.
“Excuse me,” he called.
She couldn’t see his face in the shadows. Nerves gripped her suddenly. “Can I help you?” Maybe he just wanted directions.
“Do you live around here?” he asked. “I’m looking for someone.”
“No, I don’t,” she said, even though they were now within a couple of blocks of her apartment. The last thing she wanted was for this stranger to know where she lived. Why had she walked home through a residential area! If only there was a store nearby, she could duck inside and wait for him to go away.
“Wait,” he said. “Come here. Let me get a look at you.”
Terror seized Charity. She turned and ran.
The van roared to life behind her, following her, filling the air with exhaust. The man’s footsteps beat the cement. She had hardly gone three yards before his hands were on her.
She couldn’t even scream. Her throat seemed to swell shut as the fear took hold of her.
Her feet left the ground. He lifted her bodily and the back door of the van swung open, allowing him to toss her inside. He slammed the door behind her, plunging her into darkness.
A moment later, she was pitched over sideways by the momentum of the van as it sped off into the night.
Chapter Five
WESTON
The one good thing about having Hawk as an alpha was that they’d all been allowed to get cell phones. Hawk had actually taken a considerable amount out of the pack’s savings in order to fund the purchase, which Weston couldn’t approve of—there had been very little money going into savings since Hawk had taken the reins of the pack. Weston was expecting to hear that they were broke any day now.
Still, it was good to have a phone, especially when they were split up around the city and hunting for Charity.
Weston couldn’t believe that she might still be in the area. After a night’s sleep and thorough consideration of the idea, it seemed incredibly unlikely. There was a whole world out there. Charity could be literally anywhere. Why would she still be within thirty miles of the pack she’d run out on all those years ago?
So, Weston had decided not to waste his time joining in the hunt. Why get his hopes up for no reason? Why waste hours combing through the city when the odds of finding her were so low?
He had to admit that he was surprised at himself. When he’d first heard about the hunt for Charity, he had been so intent that he should be the one to find her. But after sleeping on it, everything seemed to look different. She obviously didn’t want to be found. And Weston wasn’t sure, if he was being honest with himself, that he wanted her found either. How would it feel to see her again after all this time? How would it feel to be responsible for hauling her back home when she’d run away from him?
No, he wanted no part of it. And, thank God, Hawk had issued a request instead of a command, and Weston was blessedly free to ignore it.
Not that he could let Hawk know what he was doing. He rode into town with the others, bikes clustered around the black van that Hawk had rented for the occasion, but as soon as they hit the city limits, he forked off and sped away from his brothers.
He would find a bar, he decided. He would spend the day hiding out in some little hole in the wall place, drinking beer and trying not to think about Charity. And then, when they returned home, he would simply report that he hadn’t found her. And that would be the truth.
It was the phone that made it all possible. Since they were separated, he knew that Hawk would be calling or texting when he wanted everyone to return home. That meant that Weston would be able to wrap things up and head back to the cabin as soon as he was wanted. He wouldn’t be missed. There would be no conspicuous absences on his part, and nobody would ask any questions as to his whereabouts.
The bar he eventually located was dark and tiny, with wooden walls that were bowed and warped by too many years o
f rain and not enough treatment to protect them. He parked his bike, went inside, and claimed a tiny table in the farthest back corner. He took his phone out of his pocket and placed it on the table in front of him.
The bartender came over. “What can I getcha?”
“What’s on tap?”
“Duck’s Pale Ale.”
Weston stared. He was no stranger to beer, but... “What the hell is that?”
“It’s imported.”
“Imported from where, Iowa?”
The bartender frowned. “Do you want it or not?”
“Yeah, I want it.” Weston would have dearly loved to laugh in this bartender’s face, but he did want a drink, and he couldn’t afford any of the top-shelf liquors that gleamed in the glass-fronted cabinet behind the bar. Besides, beer was the best thing to drink without getting so drunk that he wouldn’t be able to drive home safely.
The bartender disappeared and returned a few moments later with a pewter mug. He set it down harder than was necessary on the table in front of Weston.
Weston handed over a few bills. “Could I get some nuts or something?”
The bartender rolled his eyes but went off again and returned with two bowls—one full of peanuts, the other empty. “Shells in there,” he said roughly.
“You got it.”
The bartender stalked off. Weston shrugged off the encounter. The guy was moody now, but after Weston had spent all his money here, he’d feel better. Weston turned his attention, instead, to the Duck’s Pale Ale. He raised the mug to his lips and sipped cautiously.
To his surprise, it actually tasted pretty good. It was just hoppy enough and carried a smack of citrus. He took a deeper swallow and sat back in his seat, extending his legs out long in front of him. This bar, he decided, was the perfect place to hide out for the day. At first glance, he hadn’t even known it was a bar. The sign outside was small and wooden and barely visible from the street. The place had no windows, making it look more like a shed than a bar. And it was completely empty apart from Weston himself. This wasn’t the sort of place that saw a lot of custom, he thought. Maybe that was why the bartender was in such a bad mood.