Chapter One
Posy
“Posy, we’re going for the full-moon shopping. Do you need anything while we’re there?”
My adoptive mother never failed to include me in anything she did, but that question told me not only my mom and dad were going but the alpha or perhaps others who would have preferred I never sullied the pack lands with my presence. So…best I not accompany my family on their monthly trip.
The pack lands lay over ten miles from the nearest town and much farther from any city with big-box stores and supermarkets. The little mom-and-pop was pricey, and shifters, at least the ones in our pack, didn’t like to pay extra for anything.
While I did enjoy getting free samples and picking out my own snacks from the new and exciting selections, getting in the pack minibus with thirty people who barely tolerated me, held little appeal anyway.
“I’m fine, Mom.” I kissed her cheek. “Thank you for thinking of me.”
“I always think of you. How about I bring you a surprise?”
“You’re the best.” As difficult as it was for me to cope with those who resented a human among them, they really hadn’t shown me their true colors until my mid-teens.
As a child, I didn’t have much contact with pack leadership or their close associates.
But my parents? I knew now that they had been pressured every day since they found me along the road and brought me home to find a way to get rid of me.
My folks rode off with the others, and I returned inside the house.
They wouldn’t be back until close to suppertime, and if Mom was bringing me a surprise, I wanted to do the same for her and Dad.
When she was at home, I never got to spend much time in the kitchen, but maybe I could find a cooking video to follow online and really surprise both my parents.
To say my last attempt to make beef stew had been a disaster was an understatement.
I grabbed my phone and sat down on the sofa after checking out what the refrigerator and pantry had to offer.
Bringing up the browser, I began to type in the list of ingredients I had available.
I’d seen enough videos to know that was possible.
Bad cook: excellent watcher of videos. Let no one say I lacked certain skills, even if not others.
When I had some ideas of what specifically I could prepare, I’d TikTok search for videos of better chefs making it.
Ground beef, broccoli, onions…
A pop-up ad filled my screen, and I closed it.
Typed again in the search bar. Mushrooms, garlic, rice…
The ad again, but this time in a more subtle corner mode.
When I went to close it, I somehow started a download of an app.
Panicked, I tried to shut down the phone.
If anything happened to it, I would go a long time without one because my folks were not among the richest in the pack, and lack of transportation kept me from getting a job in town.
The download continued while I held in the side button that should have shut down the device.
It had every other time, and the lack of response made me surer a virus was insinuating itself into my helpless cellphone.
Sweat tricked between my shoulder blades, and I tried to remember if there was anything else I could do.
The battery was not removable—that much I remembered, and throwing the phone against the wall was only going to break it.
Clutching it in both hands, I watched the app finish loading and open, all on its own. The Mail-Order Matings app. Whatever that was. At this point, it had gone past stopping, and I read the first page.
Due to the way the pack treated me, I’d given up on dating shifters early on.
The few I’d gone anywhere with on innocent picnics or to town for a meal considered me a type of prey.
As the lowest-ranked female, my virtue held little value to the alpha.
Others were traded to various packs for connections or even, in one case, a car.
But nobody would take me—something I couldn’t be sad about.
But neither was I going to allow myself to be taken without permission, and after one hike when I barely managed to fight off the alpha’s nephew, I quit dating wolves.
Nothing romantic about rape, even if that particular male told me I should be grateful he was willing to touch me.
My single experience going out with a human left me cold. He seemed so bland compared to anyone I knew. Too human.
So, relationships had been essentially taken off the table, and, unfortunately, no matter how helpful I tried to be or how hard I worked for the pack, I wasn’t going to be able to stay much longer. Every day I remained hurt my parents’ status in the pack, and they deserved better.
This app seemed to be for not only shifter relationships, but they welcomed humans who wanted to date shifters.
Did I want to? I wasn’t sure. Not anyone like the jerks in our pack, so probably not wolves, but the “free look” at the app before joining held a lot of testimonials from people who’d had good luck with it.
Who’d met their mates, the loves of their lives.
Sometimes it was even more than one per person.
Was it even possible to find romance and happiness with two foxes or three coyotes?
If they had humans as an option in their profile, that would seem to indicate they actually liked us, right?
Was this the last chance I had to avoid living all alone somewhere? If I walked away from the pack and didn’t want to date a human, what did that leave me?
Needless to say, I never found a recipe or a video on how to cook it, that day. My folks came back and found me still sitting in the same spot staring at my phone. They brought me a cute top and a giant chocolate bar.
I ate the bar in one sitting.