A Pack for Autumn (Cozyverse #1)

1. Easton

1

EASTON

I am not a stalker.

I am not a stalker.

I am definitely not a stalker.

I chanted the phrase to myself as I wound through the aisles of Mariposa Market, stealing covert glances at the dark-haired beauty on the other end of the aisle.

I’d looked it up—the definition of stalking. This definitely did not qualify. Stalking required a pattern of repeated unwanted attention or harassment.

I wasn’t harassing her, and how would I even know it was unwanted ? Okay, she might have turned me down when I asked her out on a date— twice —but I wasn’t stalking her. It just so happened that the adorable lighthouse keeper and I were often at the market at the same time. Like today, I’d had an urgent need for baking soda.

Urgent.

I’d seen a video about how baking soda could deodorize your fridge. How was I supposed to last another minute without it after hearing that?

I jolted when I realized she wasn’t in the aisle anymore. She was heading to the checkout.

Olive .

The first time I heard someone in town speak her name, it felt like the clouds had parted and sunlight was streaming down on me. A great achievement since it had been pouring down rain, but that was the power of Olive. She was sunshine on a rainy day, and I needed to be by her side forever.

I just had to figure out how to win her over first.

I slipped in behind her in line, a bright orange box of baking soda clutched tight in my fist.

The cashier, an idiot teenager named Jack, smiled at her. I coughed to cover the rumble of a growl in my chest. Olive deserved all the smiles in the world. I just wanted to be the one to give them to her.

To give her everything.

“Your name is Olive, right?” Jack asked.

“Umm, yeah,” she responded.

There was a slight frown on her luscious pink lips. A little crease between her big, brown eyes.

Jack chuckled as he scanned her first item. “So, does that mean your parents are olive farmers?” He paused his scanning as if waiting for uproarious laughter.

She fixed him with what could only be called a withering stare, and my heart pounded with excitement. Olive was shy and quiet, but sometimes she let out her snarky side, and it always delighted me.

“I don’t know, Jack. Were your parents super into changing tires?”

“Umm… what?”

“Or growing magic beans?” she deadpanned.

Jack blinked, looking totally lost, before busying himself with scanning the rest of her items. I, on the other hand, coughed again, this time to cover my laughter. My girl was so fucking funny.

She turned towards me. Our eyes met, and the world slowed. Her beauty was the kind that made it hard to breathe. The way her bangs fell across her forehead was so cute I could hardly stand it. She was wearing a forest green sweater that draped gently over the luscious curves I wanted to bury myself in.

Just then, the market door opened and Hank—Starlight Grove’s quintessential cranky old man and bookstore owner—walked in, sporting a deep frown as he leaned heavily on his cane. The noise distracted Olive and she looked away. My jaw clenched against the urge to beg her to look at me again.

Hank’s interruption did bring one good thing—a gust of wind that blew into the market through the open door, catching Olive’s hair and ushering her scent in my direction. My irritation vanished as I inhaled deeply. She smelled like a pumpkin spice latte, all warm and comforting and sweet with an edge of bitter coffee. My cock stiffened immediately, and I shifted my stance. This was why I tried to resist breathing around Olive. I didn’t want to scare her off by sporting a hard-on every time I was around her but fuck, it was pretty much impossible. She wore a sort of deodorant to mute her scent, but the faint whiffs I got were enough to feature in my dreams. I wanted to roll around on her adorable chunky sweaters, wanted to drown myself in her. Maybe the wind would blow little particles of her scent onto my shirt, and I could curl up in bed with it later.

My scent, however, was out full-force, declaring to all in the vicinity that I was completely obsessed with this omega. Olive stared straight ahead, but I thought I caught a tinge of pink on her cheeks. It gave me a tiny spark of hope that she wasn’t as unaffected by me as she acted.

All too quick, Jack was reading out her total. She paid for her items, grabbed her two cloth bags, and headed to the door.

I wanted to run after her. I could offer to carry her bags so she didn’t have to balance them on her bike handlebars as she rode back to the lighthouse. Or I could carry her if she wasn’t feeling up to biking today.

But my feet stayed rooted to the floor. She already felt like mine, but I was terrified of messing this up. After she’d practically run away from me the second time I invited her to dinner, I realized I needed to rethink my strategy.

I’d been told repeatedly that I came on too strong, and that, according to the last woman I’d gone on a few dates with, my attention was suffocating. And my Olive was skittish. She only came into town when she’d run out of her stash of ramen and TV dinners. She never initiated conversation. I’d never even seen her smile. I had to play this right. I couldn’t scare her off. I wouldn’t survive it.

I watched her through the large market windows as she got on her slightly rusted bike and set off down the road.

“Umm, are you going to buy that?” Jack gestured at the crushed box in my fist. A dusting of baking soda spilled onto the floor. Shit . I looked around furtively to see if Marisol or Carmen were around. They would kill me for getting their floors dirty. I let out a little sigh of relief when I didn’t spot either of the sisters. This was another reason I had to be careful with Olive. I’d never gotten used to my alpha body—the way I towered over pretty much everyone, especially omegas like her, and how I constantly bumped into things and broke them with my clumsy limbs.

I never wanted to break her.

I mumbled an apology as I handed Jack some money. By the time I left the store, Olive had already disappeared down the winding road that led to the bay. I hated that she didn’t live closer to town. What if something happened to her out there, all alone?

My legs were heavy as I headed back to the house I shared with my packmates.

Finn was making lunch when I entered the kitchen. His eyes flicked to me and the still-leaking box in my hand. “Are you going to tell me why you sprinted out of the house like it was on fire?”

I’d been hovering by the window all morning, knowing Olive usually went to the market on Thursdays. My heart had almost exploded when I saw her coming down the street. But saying that would make me sound like a stalker, and I definitely wasn’t.

“We needed baking soda,” I grunted. I opened the fridge and set the sad little box on the shelf.

Finn looked like he wanted to press me, but he just turned back to his sandwich. I wanted to tell him about the woman I dreamed of making our omega, but Finn was still lost in his grief after the death of his grandparents, and Lars was still obsessed with an omega he’d scented years ago.

I took a deep breath. First, I would convince Olive to give us a chance. Then, I would convince the guys.