Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
He sighs and tosses his pen on top of the lined yellow paper, leaning back in his desk chair and rubbing his forehead. “Why?”
“Because the sound system in your truck is better than the one in mine. And I’m still annoyed with you about this whole Cassandra thing.”
“Did she explain to you why she’s here?” he asks, dropping his hand.
I grunt and cross my arms, leaning against the doorway and avoiding his eyes, staring out the large windows that overlook the pack grounds. It’s the best view in the packhouse, but I can’t appreciate it right now. “She did.”
“Then you understand why it’s important. We can’t have any more issues. King Malachi did us a favor by reaching out to the high oracle to ask if anyone could help us. And she’s the only one they could send, and your house is the only place she can stay right now.”
He crosses his arms, too, and once again, his tone leaves no room for me to argue. He doesn’t alpha command me—he won’t unless he absolutely needs to—but it’s implied, nonetheless.
She’s staying with me, end of discussion.
My entire body tenses as her bright-as-the-sun smile flashes through my mind, and her tinkling piano laugh rings in my ears. I breathe out through my nose and clench my teeth.
“Why is this so upsetting for you?” Wesley asks, brow furrowing.
“She’s so… happy. All the time.”
“It’s been twenty-four hours.”
“Exactly,” I say, fully aware of how ridiculous and childish I must sound right now.
He’s right. It’s barely been a day. I should give her a chance; sit back and see how this plays out. I should let it go and stop pestering him. He has enough on his plate—worrying about his luna, getting ready for their pup to arrive in a few months, and Goddess only knows what else he deals with as our alpha.
Wesley’s lips twitch, and he shakes his head. “There’s something else, though. And I’m guessing it has to do with the request Rachel submitted for an official pack transfer to the Lynn Woods Pack in Massachusetts?”
His chair rocks side to side, and he watches me, waiting to see if I’ll respond.
I don’t.
My silence is answer enough. It’s all the confirmation he needs to know my blow-up yesterday had almost nothing to do with Cassandra and almost everything to do with Rachel leaving.
For good this time.
And now I have to deal with little miss sunshine and daisies while also grappling with my reignited feelings of rejection and inadequacy as I replay every single memory of my years with Rachel, searching for a key moment, a specific choice I made that altered the course of our relationship, making it end with her walking out of my life forever instead of ending in a happily ever after with her remaining at my side.
Joy.
“So Cassandra’s going to be around me all the time?” I ask, moving the subject away from Rachel. “At Haven’s rehearsals, I mean?”
“She is,” Wesley says, following my change of subject with obvious, understandable reluctance. But I don’t care. I’ll talk about it with him later. Maybe. When I’m ready.
If I’m ever ready.
“And anywhere else Haven needs to go for luna duties,” Wesley adds. “Meetings with other packs, the Northern California mating ball in a few weeks…”
I sigh and rub my hand over my short hair. The mating ball. No one in our pack has attended one since I was rejected, and the only reason I’m going is because Haven is going. Otherwise, I’d be staying here with Reid and Sebastian in protest.
I definitely don’t want to talk or even think about that event right now. I won’t touch that issue until I absolutely have to. Instead, I circle the conversation back to Cassandra’s role here at Crescent Lake. “And has anyone thought of the questions people will ask? About who she is or why she’s at Haven’s ballet rehearsals with me?”
“We gave her a tablet and a laptop. Just tell everyone she’s your intern or personal assistant or something,” Wesley says, shrugging and picking his pen back up.
“Fine,” I say, crossing the last few steps to his desk and holding my hand out to him. “But I’m still taking your truck.”
Wes sighs and tosses his pen down again, opening his drawer to grab the keys to his truck. He dangles them in the space between us while giving me a warning glare. “Just be careful with it. The last time I let one of you borrow it, the tailgate ended up dented.”
I laugh, my tense muscles loosening for the first time since I saw Rachel trying to sneak away yesterday morning. “I promise I won’t punch your truck, Alpha,” I say as I give him a wave and leave his office.
“And Nolan?” I pause in the doorway, arching a brow at him. “Try not to be a dickhead.”
After I pull Wesley’s truck around to the front of the packhouse, I wait on the curb, leaning against the cab of the truck. I shoot off a coffee order to Brewed Awakenings to make right before we get into town while I wait for Haven and Cassandra to be ready to leave.
I don’t have to wait long. They show up together. A quick peek at my watch tells me she’s arrived here precisely one hour after I told her we’d be leaving in an hour.
She’s punctual. I’ll give her that much.
As they walk towards me, Cassandra listens intently to something Haven tells her. Neither of them pays any attention to me, which gives me the opportunity to observe Cassandra undetected.
She’s thankfully changed out of her short shorts and her thin, low-cut tank top and into a casual, floral midi-dress. It was a struggle to not check her out as we stood together in my kitchen. The swell of her breasts peeked out at me over the neckline of her shirt, and her long, smooth, ivory legs extended from those way-too-short pajama bottoms, and I had to force my eyes to remain on her face.
Okay. Maybe I checked her out a little when she wasn’t paying attention. Her and her piercing green eyes, her thick, bouncy, curled hair, and those long, pale legs that seemed endless in those orange checked pajama shorts.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I kind of wish she hadn’t changed. Because while lovely, her off-white dress that comes to mid-calf hides most of those long legs, and it is a shame to cover up legs that perfect.
“Are you ready?” Haven asks, interrupting my play-by-play of Cassandra’s activities in my kitchen this morning. My reimagining of how her legs stretched and tightened with every step she took, how her dark tresses swayed with her movements, the tips brushing the top of her ass, and how her pink lips wrapped around the fork as she took the first bite of her pie drowned almost everything out, to where I didn’t realize they reached the vehicle.
“Yup,” I say, jerking upright and away from the door, grabbing the handle to open it for her, avoiding her eyes and Cassandra’s.
But Haven steps towards the back door, opening it herself. “I’m going to sit here,” she says, one hand resting on her baby bump, the other moving to the small of her back as she grimaces. “It’s more comfortable for me in the back. I can stretch my legs and get a better positioning for my back pain.”
She climbs in before I can respond or move to help her, and Cassandra gets into the passenger seat as I stand there, still holding the door open. Without thinking, I reach for her as she climbs into the truck. Her hand is delicate and warm in mine, her skin soft. A gentle breeze sends her hair dancing across my chest and face, the hint of daisies flirting with my nose.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?