23. Annabella
Chapter twenty-three
Annabella
Iwasn’t prepared for the Bottley. Mismatched armchairs and loveseats clustered around low coffee tables made of rich, dark wood; the kind of surfaces that bore the marks of countless cups and conversations.
The upholstery came in warm shades of burgundy and forest green, worn soft in places from years of use.
Nothing matched, but somehow it all fit together, creating pockets of comfort throughout the space.
Behind the bar, shelves lined with bottles—whiskeys, rums, gins—stood alongside jars of homemade syrups and canisters of coffee beans.
I noticed the wood grain didn’t quite match in one section, like it had been repaired, rebuilt.
The counter, too, showed signs of careful restoration, newer wood blending with old.
This place had survived something. Been broken and put back together.
A Shifter sat in one of the burgundy armchairs, laptop open, nursing an espresso while she worked. At a corner table by the door, a human and a Shifter played chess, arguing over a move. A young mother bounced a toddler on her knee while chatting with another woman.
No invisible lines. No species sitting on opposite sides. No one watching their backs. My throat went tight, and I hated it.
Sofia spotted us from behind the bar and wound her way over, touching shoulders as she passed, calling out names, an easy warmth that felt genuine.
She pulled me into a hug before I could stop her. Vanilla and coffee grounds.
“You came! I saved you the best booth, corner spot. You can see everything.”
She wasn’t wrong. And the fact that she knew I’d need that—to see the exits, the windows, the whole room at a glance—said more about her than any hug.
“Sit, sit. Coffee’s coming. And Esme—”
“Julie saved me a bear claw,” Esme finished happily. “Because Julie is the best.”
“Does everyone know about the bear claws?” I asked, sliding into the booth.
“With how much she talks about them?” Jem took the booth behind us, back to the wall, eyes on the door. But his face opened for just a second, something warm and almost young. “Oh yes. The whole Pack knows.”
Sofia disappeared into the controlled chaos behind the bar. Esme sat across from me, running her fingers in absent patterns on the table, and I let the silence sit because I didn’t trust my voice.
“Your wolf is waking up,” Esme said softly. “Still tucked away, hiding in the shadows, but her eyes are open now, and your witch-light is brighter. Like a candle that finally found its match.” She paused, fingers tracing invisible patterns on the table. “How does it feel? The wakey up part?”
There was something innocent yet so knowledgeable about Esme that I found myself wanting to be honest with her.
“Confusing. I feel angry and lost and scared, and whole, which is weird. All these feelings bundling around inside of me. It’s like waking up after a really vivid dream and the world has changed, and everything I thought I knew was wrong. ”
“Mmm.” Esme nodded. “Esme knows that feeling. When everything goes topsy-turvy. But Annabella is less tangled than before. Less fighting herself.”
Something inside me eased at her words.
“Esme. What’s it like being a witch in a Shifter Pack? And I mean really. Not the polite version.”
A smile spread across her face. “Like coming home after being lost in the dark woods for a very long time.” She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. “Not saying it was easy. No, not easy, but it always felt right.”
“Not easy,” I repeated. “I imagine not everyone welcomed you here; they must have been suspicious of you. I know what werewolves think of witches, so what changed?”
“I am Pack now. That means we protect each other. They would die for Esme. I would die for them. That’s what Pack is. Not just blood, not just birth. Choice. Every day, choosing each other.”
I couldn’t speak. Because that word—choice—hit the exact wound Sam had torn open six hours ago. Simon hadn’t chosen me. Simon had chosen his reputation, his mission, his image as the great persecuted witch. He’d chosen secrecy over his own daughter. And he’d framed it as sacrifice.
“The Wolf Council would kill you if they knew you do magic here,” I said quietly.
“Maybe.” Esme’s smile turned sly. “But Sam stands between me and them. Always has.”
I blinked. “He lied to the Council?”
“The Council is just a coat he wears for work.” She leaned forward, and her power moved with her. It wasn’t a display, nor a threat, it was just there, the way gravity was there. “When it matters, really matters, Sam chooses Pack. Every time.”
There it was again. Choice. Sam choosing to break me out of Adarcan.
Sam choosing to sit on a hallway floor all night.
He’d saved my life. Had looked at me like I was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen.
He’d treated me like I was more than just my mission or my usefulness.
Had protected Esme when it meant betraying his duty to the Council.
Damn it, I didn’t know what to think or feel anymore.
Sofia returned with fresh coffee and bear claws and slid into the booth beside me. “How are you finding the Shaw house?”
“It’s fine. Thank you for making my room so welcoming.”
“Sam driving you crazy?”
I took a long drink instead of answering.
Sofia laughed. “He means well. He’s just not subtle about it.
” She nudged my arm—casual, familiar, like we’d known each other for years instead of days.
“You know, Sam never used to be like this. All brooding and intense.” She paused.
“Which is saying something, because brooding and intense is basically the Shaw family default.”
Behind us, Jem snorted as the Bottley’s front door banged open and two wolf cubs tumbled through it.
Actual wolves. Tiny, round-bellied, uncoordinated—barreling across the coffee shop floor like someone had lobbed a pair of furry grenades inside.
One was white with oversized paws it hadn’t grown into yet, skidding on the hardwood as it made straight for Jem’s booth and launched itself at his legs.
The other was smaller, darker—a tawny brown with a black stripe down its spine—and it had locked on to Sofia with the single-minded intensity of a guided missile.
Sofia caught the tawny cub mid-leap without missing a beat. “Victoria! You little terror. Where’s your mom?”
The cub yipped and squirmed, licking Sofia’s chin with the frantic enthusiasm of a creature that had been separated from her for at least ten entire minutes.
I stared. Not at the cubs; at the room. Nobody reacted.
The woman with the espresso didn’t look up.
The chess players continued arguing. The barista glanced over, smiled, and went back to steaming milk.
Two wolf cubs had just torn through the place like it was a dog park, and nobody so much as blinked.
The white cub—Oakley, I assumed, from what Sofia had told me about the twins—had scaled Jem like a tree and was now perched on his shoulder, nosing at his ear. Jem reached up and scratched behind the cub’s ears.
“They got away from Mai again,” Jem said mildly.
“They get away from everyone,” Esme said, beaming at the cubs like they’d just performed a miracle. “Little wild things. Born running.”
The Bottley door opened again, and a woman stepped through, slightly out of breath, carrying a canvas tote in one hand and a sippy cup in the other.
Petite, with dark wavy hair pulled into a knot that was losing its battle with gravity, eyes scanning the room.
She spotted the tawny cub wriggling in Sofia’s arms and exhaled.
“Right. Of course. You’re already here. Why do I even try?”
Mai Parker. Co-Alpha of the Three Rivers Pack. I knew her file, but the file hadn’t mentioned the baby food stain on her shirt or the way she moved through the Bottley like it was her living room, dropping the tote on the counter, squeezing the barista’s arm, smiling at everyone as she passed.
Sofia was already shifting to make room. “Mai, come sit. Annabella, this is—”
“I know who she is.” Mai slid into the booth across from me with a tired smile. “You’re the one all the Shaw brothers blew up a federal prison for. Nice to finally meet you.”
“They didn’t technically blow it up. They just…broke us out.”
“Trust me, the way Jase tells it, there were definitely lots of explosions.” She set the sippy cup on the table. “How are you? Really. Not the answer you’ve been giving everyone.”
I paused, thinking about it. “Getting there,” I said finally. It was more honest than, “I’m fine,” and less honest than, “I haven’t slept through the night since I got thrown in Adarcan and I’m terrified of my own wolf.”
Mai studied me for a moment, and I wondered if she was going to push further, but then she said, “Getting there is underrated. People act like healing should have a finish line. It doesn’t.”
In Sofia’s lap, Victoria’s ears were pricked forward, dark eyes fixed on me with unnerving focus. Then she wriggled free of Sofia’s hold, dropped to the booth seat, and did something that stopped the air in my lungs.
She Shifted.
Just like that. One second, tawny fur and oversized ears.
The next, a toddler. Naked, flushed, wild dark curls springing in every direction, her father’s blue eyes blinking at me from a round, serious face.
The shift had been seamless. Effortless.
No hesitation, no fear, no visible pain. And unbelievably fast.
That could have been me. If I’d grown up here. If I’d had this instead of Ashridge. I could have Shifted as easily as breathing. Could have known my wolf the way Victoria knew hers, as something natural, something joyful, something that belonged.
Mai was already wrapping Victoria in a cardigan she’d pulled from somewhere. “There’s my favorite naked daughter. You know, clothes are a thing.”
Victoria ignored her. She was staring at me. Then she climbed across the table toward me, small hands gripping the edge of the table for balance.
Her eyes locked on my hair. On the silver streak.
I sat very still. In Ashridge, children were taught to point at that streak. To call it the mark of an abomination. To throw stones at the half-breed witch-bitch with the freak hair.
Victoria reached up and grabbed it. She didn’t pull it, just held it, her small fingers wrapping around the silver strand as she turned it in the light from the window, watching the way it caught the sun.
“Pwetty,” she said. And grinned at me like I’d handed her a gift.
My vision blurred. I blinked. Hard.
“It’s shiny,” Sofia said softly, watching my face.
“Shiny,” Victoria agreed, still holding the strand. She looked at Mai. “Mama. Shiny hair.”
“I see it, baby. Very pretty.”
Victoria released my hair and held out her hands. “Up?”
I looked at Mai.
“Only if you want to,” Mai said. “She does this. Picks people and decides they’re hers. It’s extremely inconvenient and very hard to argue with.”
I lifted Victoria into my lap. She settled against me immediately, one hand fisting in my shirt, the other reaching for my hair again.
Over by Jem’s booth, Oakley was still in wolf form, curled in the crook of Jem’s arm, watching us. I got the feeling he’d Shift too, if he decided I needed further inspecting.
The door opened again, and Ryan Shaw filled the doorway.
I’d seen pictures, heard the stories, studied his file.
None of it had prepared me for the physical reality.
He was broad through the chest and shoulders, dark hair, blue eyes that swept the room in a single pass and took in everything in it.
He blinked at Victoria in my lap, at the silver streak she was still gripping.
“Annabella.”
I met his eyes. In every Pack I’d known, holding an Alpha’s stare was a challenge. An invitation to violence, but Ryan Shaw looked back at me and simply nodded once.
“Welcome to Three Rivers,” he said. “You’re safe here. You and your crew.”
It was my turn to blink. That was it? No, “in return I expect?” No, “We need you gone in three days?” Just, “Hey, glad you’re here, stay as long as you like, we’ll take care of you.”
My wolf did something she’d never done in the presence of an Alpha. She settled. It was something deep and old and undeniable, the wolf-instinct that said, “This Alpha is safe.”
Ryan scooped Victoria off my lap—she protested briefly, then grabbed his shirt and started telling him about shiny hair—and kissed Mai’s temple.
“Stay as long as you want,” he said. “I’ve got the little demons.”
He collected Oakley from Jem—the white cub draped over Ryan’s free arm like a furry scarf—and left. Victoria waved at me over his shoulder.
I waved back. My hand was not entirely steady.
Mai watched him go as I wrapped my hands around my mug and let the noise of the coffee shop wash over me. The laughter and clinking ceramic and hissing steam. Pack life happening around me, messy and real and nothing like what I’d been taught.
And in the middle of it all, a witch. Accepted. Protected. Cared for.
If this was real—if Esme wasn’t just some exception to prove the rule—then maybe everything I had been taught was wrong.
Maybe all Packs weren’t the enemy.
Maybe wolves weren’t the problem.
The thought cracked something open inside me, a hairline fracture in the wall I’d built around my beliefs. I wasn’t ready to tear that wall down. Not yet. But for the first time in years, I wondered if it needed to come down.
Esme reached across the table and touched my hand. Her fingers were cool, and I felt a whisper of her magic, gentle, curious, not invasive.
“You’re not alone anymore,” she said softly. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it yet.”
I pulled my hand back, but not harshly. Just…
carefully. Because she was right. I wasn’t alone.
I was surrounded by people who claimed to care, who wanted to help.
And that terrified me. Because if they were right—if this was real—then I’d wasted years fighting the wrong enemy.
Working for the wrong cause. Trusting the wrong man.
And I wasn’t sure I could survive being that wrong.
I picked up my coffee and took a drink, letting the bitter warmth anchor me.
One thing at a time. That’s all I could manage.
First, I had to heal.
Then I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do about Sam Shaw and these feelings I couldn’t seem to kill, no matter how hard I tried.
And eventually—eventually—I’d have to decide what I believed.
But not today.
Today, I would sit in this coffee shop with Esme and Sofia and Mai and watch Pack members smile at each other. I would let Sofia fuss and would accept that Jem was protecting me for reasons I didn’t fully understand.
And I would try not to think about Sam waiting for me back at the house.
“Try” being the operative word.
Because apparently, not thinking about Sam Shaw was becoming increasingly impossible.
Spirits take it all.