Chapter 7 Presley
Presley
The pansies looked as tragic as I felt. The Yorkshire drizzle and temperatures that made my breath visible inside the caravan would depress anyone.
"You'll perk up." It was a big fat lie, I failed them.
I watered them anyway, tilting the chipped mug over each bean tin like I was performing their last rites.
The purple one had given up entirely. The petals curled inward, and the stem drooped toward the windowsill like it couldn't bear to look at me anymore. Fair enough. I was a lousy omega. I couldn’t even keep flowers alive, how would I nurture a baby living inside me.
No wonder the pack didn’t want me.
The yellow pansy's single remaining bloom wobbled in the draft seeping through the window frame. I'd stuffed newspaper in the gaps yesterday, but the cold found its way through regardless.
I was wearing three jumpers. Wool on wool on wool, like a human lasagne, probably less appetizing. The outermost one was cable-knit and belonged to my dad. It was unraveling at one cuff, and still smelled faintly of him, or maybe I just wanted it to.
A knock rattled the caravan door.
I set down the mug and picked my way across the narrow floor, stepping over the bucket I'd positioned under the ceiling leak. The water inside had a thin skin of ice.
Lovely.
I unwound the length of wool I kept wrapped around the door handle. It wasn’t only a lock but was the only thing preventing the door from clattering like a skeleton's teeth every time the wind picked up.
I cracked the door open.
Maeve stood on the concrete step, cheeks pink from cold, dark hair escaping from under a knitted hat. She was wearing her café apron already, which meant something was wrong.
"Before you say no," she started.
"No."
"Presley."
"Whatever it is, no. I'm having a rest day." I gestured at my jumper cocoon. "Can't you tell? This is my loungewear."
Maeve's mouth twitched, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. She was pale underneath her wind whipped cheeks. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
"I need you to cover my shift."
I leaned against the doorframe, studying her face. "You're already wearing the apron."
"I thought I could manage." She pressed the heel of her hand against her sternum, grimacing. "Turns out I can't. Something I ate, maybe. My stomach's doing backflips."
She didn't look like food poisoning. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. The kind that follows you, the kind you can't escape by moving to a caravan park in the arse end of North Yorkshire.
I should have pushed, but I didn't. That was our unspoken agreement. She didn't ask why I talked to dead flowers, and I didn't ask why she checked the exits of every room she entered or why her hands sometimes shook when a car backfired in the village.
"Give me five minutes to find my boots." I stepped back to let her in, but she stayed on the step, arms wrapped around herself. "Or wait outside in the hypothermic weather. Your choice."
"I'll walk with you. The fresh air helps."
I found one boot wedged under the fold-out bed, the other was beside the door where I left it. After I pulled on my coat over the jumper situation, I grabbed my keys. The caravan groaned as I locked up, hinges protesting like an elderly person’s joints.
We walked the gravel path toward the café, feet crunching. The stream name ran alongside us, half-frozen at the edges, the center still moving sluggishly. Bare trees lined the opposite bank, branches like black cracks against the gray sky.
"There are alphas about." Maeve’s gaze was behind me. She was scanning the treeline, jaw tight.
"Alphas?"
"Three showed up at the café yesterday. Two more this morning." Her fingers flexed at her sides. "Sniffing around. Ordering coffees they don't drink. Asking Dave questions about the park residents."
A cold knot formed in my stomach that had nothing to do with temperature. "And?"
"And there's only one reason alphas start congregating somewhere like this." She finally looked at me, green eyes sharp. "Someone's going into heat. They can smell it."
The knot pulled tighter. "I'm not due for two weeks."
"Heat cycles aren't trains, Presley. They don't run on schedule."
"Mine do." I kicked a stone off the path. "Mine are as regular as clockwork. I could set my calendar by it."
Maeve made a noncommittal noise. She wasn't convinced, but she didn't argue. But then, she never argued, she just stored information away behind those watchful eyes, cataloging everything for later.
The café came into view, single-story and through the steamed windows, I saw the land owner, Dave behind the counter, already dealing with the breakfast rush. Three people was a rush for us.
"It’s strange that he’s decided to work. He normally stays at home and leaves everything to us.”
I stared at Dave. She was right. Something was off.
“Just be careful," Maeve said as we reached the door. "If you start feeling anything strange. Call me. Don't play the hero."
"When have I ever played the hero?"
"I mean it, Presley."
I held up three fingers. "Scout's honor. If I start going into heat in the middle of the café, you'll be the first to know. Right after everyone in a five-mile radius who can smell me."
She rolled her eyes but some of the tension left her shoulders. She pushed open the door, and the smell of bacon fat and burnt toast washed over us like a warm, greasy hug.
Dave was definitely working today.
The café was everything I loved and hated about my life.
Plastic tablecloths wiped down a thousand times.
Coffee machine that sounded like it was having a nervous breakdown.
Regulars who knew my name and asked after my health and left two-pound tips they probably couldn't afford.
It was small and slightly shabby and completely safe.
Maeve handed me her apron. "The bacon order came in this morning—it's in the walk-in. Just needs separating.”
"Got it."
"And there's a sandwich in the fridge for your lunch. The one in the cling film."
"You made me a sandwich?"
"Don't let it go to your head. It’s just tuna mayonnaise." She was already backing toward the door. "And don’t give it to the cat. I'll call later to check in."
She left before I could thank her, the bell above the door chiming in her wake.
I tied the apron around my jumper mountain, which was quite a feat, requiring creative knotting.
I was halfway to the counter when a strange noise started.
Not a normal noise. Not a car engine or a lorry on the road or even that alarming sound Dave's espresso machine made when it was about to give up the ghost. This was something else entirely. A deep, rhythmic thwapping that grew louder and louder, shaking the windows in their frames.
I’d heard that noise before.
Dave looked up from the till, frowning.
The three customers stopped mid-bite.
I moved to the window, pressing my hand against the cold glass, and watched as a massive black helicopter descended onto the field behind the caravan park.
It landed in the clearing where Mr. Jacob did his morning exercises (if you could call standing in the same place with your hands in the air, and mostly, glaring at anyone who walked past). A cloud of dirt and old leaves swirled outward, pelting the nearest caravans.
Including mine.
"What in the ever-loving—" Dave started.
The helicopter looked like something from a spy film. Sleek and dark and impossibly wrong in this setting. It was as odd as a Lamborghini parked outside a pound shop.
The side door opened.
A figure emerged, tall and broad-shouldered, dark blond hair whipping in the rotor wind. Even from this distance, and despite the dirty café window, I recognized him.
Fritz.
Behind him came Etienne, built like a rugby player because he was a rugby player. I'd found out after some internet sleuthing. His dark hair and his stubble still made my inner thighs do inconvenient things.
And then Hastings.
Henry Hastings, thirty-five, CEO of Hastings Corporation, gray eyes and granite jaw and that sexy silver threading through his dark hair at the temples. He stepped onto the muddy field in what looked like a thousand-pound suit and didn't even flinch.
"Is that—" Dave moved to stand beside me.
Slick running down my leg?
Yes!
Fuck!
I managed to keep that thought inside my head as Dave finished, "a helicopter?"
"Could be a spaceship."
He turned and glared at me. "In my field?"
"Have you paid your taxes? Or perhaps one of the residents is hiding from the Mafia."
"Presley." Dave turned to face me, his eyebrows climbing toward his receding hairline. "Why is there a helicopter in the field?"
I watched the three alphas orient themselves, scanning the park.
Etienne walked to my caravan first. Which was easy enough to find.
It was the sad one with a door that looked like it was hanging on with sheer willpower.
Oh and the newspaper I always stuffed in the door jamb to keep it shut when I left the caravan. He started toward it.
"I may have applied for a job."
"A job."
"As a... consultant."
Dave's expression suggested he didn't believe me for a single second but he also knew better than to press.
He'd known me since I was eighteen, serving customers while my mum was in hospital.
He'd seen me bury both parents within a year of each other.
He'd hired me back when I told him I had no choice but to live in the caravan full-time because the bank had repossessed my home.
"Right," he said slowly. "A consultant. And you’re that in demand that your… whatever they are, came to talk to you about the consultancy work?"
“Yes.”
“Presley–”
"I have fancy clients with helicopters."
I watched Fritz reach my caravan door. He tried the handle. It was locked, I wasn't an idiot. I had a special way with the handle that nobody else knew. And of course, the newspaper wedged at the bottom helped. He frowned at it, said something to Etienne over his shoulder.
Etienne stepped forward, gripped the handle, and pulled.
The door didn't open so much as partially detach. The hinges screamed as the plywood splintered where the lock met the frame.
"Oh, that's lovely," I muttered. "Just brilliant. All you had to do was lift the bloody handle in the opposite direction."
Hastings stood back, arms crossed, watching his packmates break into my home with the casual patience of a man who was used to getting what he wanted. Then he turned and glanced toward the café and toward the window where I stood watching.
Our eyes met.
Even through dirty glass and fifty meters of distance, there was that pull again. That awful, inconvenient pull I'd felt in his office, the one that had made me want to lean closer instead of run.
I untied my apron.
"Dave," I said, "I need ten minutes."
"Take twenty." He was still staring at the helicopter. "Is that a government thing?"
I was already out the door before I could answer.