Chapter 20
JULIET
Luckily, being a librarian in a small Colorado town means I can wear jeans to work, which makes visiting Courtney’s farm after my workday so much easier.
“Hey!” she calls out to me when I step from my car and onto her gravel driveway.
Courtney has on a threadbare flannel with jeans and a durable-looking pair of boots. Still, somehow, she makes the whole outfit seem catalog-ready. Like she should be an L.L. Bean model.
“Hi.” I wave and cross to meet her. The scents of soil and random animals fill my nose the closer I get. “How’s it going?”
“Great now that you’re here!” She holds up a pail full of grain. “Want to help me feed some chickens?”
“Sure.” Are these her rescued chickens? The ones Roderick’s brother built a coop for? “I don’t have any experience with it.”
“Doesn’t take much skill.” Courtney shrugs with a smirk. “Really, you just throw the shit at them, and they go wild. Like kids and candy.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to throw candy at kids.”
“Oh, so you think I should keep it in the back of my van and invite them to climb in and grab some?” She tsks and shakes her head. “No way. That’s stranger-danger shit.”
I laugh and follow her. Courtney peppers our conversation with other wild remarks as she shows me around her property.
The place is spacious, with a larger variety of animals than I expected.
In addition to chickens, Courtney has a couple of cows, three horses, a handful of goats, a barn cat, four sheep, and a donkey.
All rescues.
As far as I can tell, she doesn’t run a farm so much as an animal sanctuary. She tells me we’re only looking at a fraction of her property and that it extends for over fifty acres.
“That’s why my neighbors are scarce. Closest are the Jamesons, about half a mile down the road.”
“You mean Roderick and Tanya? Those Jamesons?”
“Roderick moved out years back. He has a place in town, but Tanya and Isaac live there with their … mom.”
Courtney hesitates in a strange way, but as a person with plenty of secrets of my own, I ignore her pause. I also ignore the fact that I’m near Roderick’s childhood home.
Seeming happy to redirect the conversation, she finally takes me to the chicken enclosures. And despite the fact that I know absolutely nothing about raising chickens, it’s clear to me these birds live a life of farmland luxury.
“This coop is for my layers.” Courtney shows me how she feeds the hens, and I enjoy the commotion of their colorful-feathered bodies vying for the food.
“And over here”—she leads me farther back to a rainbow painted enclosure—“is the coop Warner helped me build. For all the hens and roosters I can get my hands on in need of a cushy retirement.”
“A werewolf rescuing chickens,” I murmur, feeling a smile curl at the edge of my lips at the odd pairing.
Courtney, instead of sharing in my amusement, goes rigid. Slowly, she turns to face me, her expression slack with shock. “You know about us?”
“I …” Her question throws me. “Yeah. You didn’t know I knew?”
“No!” Worry creases her brow. “Did Zoey tell you?”
“Zoey knows?” Hell. I really hope Warner is as decent of a guy as Courtney claims he is.
If Zoey knows about wolves, then she’s in deep.
“No. She didn’t tell me. I knew about your kind before I even moved to Pine Falls.
” I shove my hands into my pockets, suddenly feeling like I stepped wrong.
“I’m sorry. I thought Roderick would’ve told you all. ”
“Roderick knows?” The woman stares at me with an intense scrutiny that makes me want to hold on to my skin so she can’t peel it off with her eyes.
“Yeah. He figured it out. And he told Thad, so I thought he’d tell the pack leader, and they’d let all of you know.”
Courtney sets down her bucket of feed and plants her fists on her hips, eyeing me from my double French braids to my now-muddy boots. “Roderick is the pack leader.”
“No. What?” My mouth bobs open a couple of times. “He … what?”
Roderick is the pack leader?
My stomach twists, nausea hitting me hard as I replay our past interactions. Hell, I should have suspected, especially considering the way he talked about the town and the pack like they were his. Not just a group he was part of, but one he’s entirely responsible for.
I pushed him. Physically. I laid my hands on the pack leader. The alpha.
How is my head still attached to my body?
The Bear Valley alpha would have eviscerated any human who disrespected him that way.
But Roderick … didn’t.
Why?
“Yeah. Has been for over a decade.” Courtney sighs and loses some of her intensity. “He probably would’ve told the pack if he wasn’t dealing with such a major shitstorm right now.”
“What happened?” The question pops out before I fully consider what I’m asking. “Never mind. Pack business, right? You don’t have to tell me.”
Despite my insatiable curiosity, logically, I know the best thing is to keep my nose far away from werewolf business. I just need them to exist and maintain their territory boundary. I don’t need to know the pack drama.
Courtney shrugs and picks up the now-empty feed bucket.
“Family shit more like. Or I guess it’s bigger than that since a human was involved.
” She gestures for me to follow her, which I’m happy to do if I get to hear the rest of this story.
“Turns out his mom—Rebecca, owner of Sawdust and Supplies—did not like the idea of Warner and Zoey dating. So, she’s been sneakily tormenting our friend. ”
“How so?”
My mind brings up memories of the ways Janeen secretly enacted her wrath on me.
If we were ever physically close, she liked to deliver a savage pinch to a place covered by my clothes.
One time, she came up behind me and cut off a section of my hair.
I had to trim the rest down four inches to match the uneven length.
Then there were whispered rumors she and her friends spread around town that I was flirting with other men.
That last one sent Cory into a rage. Which I later paid for.
“I don’t know all of it,” Courtney continues, unaware of my rising anxiety, “but apparently, she disabled Zoey’s truck, messed with the gas gauge, and chased her in the woods. The worst involved some property damage, which landed Zoey in the emergency care clinic last week.”
“Warner’s mom did that to her?”
Maybe I’ve put more trust in the Pine Falls wolves than I should have. That text from Zoey, telling me about her injuries, was concerning enough. But to find out it was all because of a disgruntled werewolf?
“Yeah. When Warner found out, he was pissed. I mean, he’s obviously in love with our girl.” Courtney opens the back door to her house and ushers me inside. “So, now Roderick has been dealing with this shitstorm.”
“What’s he going to do?”
It’s his mother, so, a slap on the wrist? I know werewolves sometimes challenge each other to fights to settle things, but would one of the sons really fight their mother?
“Oh, he’s already done it. Same night they found out the truth.
Rebecca Jameson is gone. Exiled for a year at least. And can’t come back until she can prove she won’t be a danger to Zoey or any other resident of Pine Falls.
Wolf or human. It’s the logistics of the exile that’s been keeping Roderick busy.
Running the store. Caring for Tanya and Isaac. All that.”
Courtney’s answer steals all the words from my throat. For a time, I stand still and quiet in the middle of her kitchen, unable to take in the cozy beauty of the space as my mind processes this new information. The shock is overwhelming.
Roderick, pack leader of the Pine Falls wolves, has exiled his own mother because she endangered a human?
The reality is difficult for me to comprehend. The action would never have been taken by the wolves in Bear Valley. They all knew how Cory treated me. Hell, most knew how Janeen and her friends treated me.
But no wolf ever did anything. I’m betting that Janeen had begged her father, the local pack leader, to drive me away from the town just because she hated how Cory wanted me.
The man probably would’ve given in to his daughter’s wishes if it hadn’t been for the fact that Cory was his second-in-command.
An alpha doesn’t piss off his beta over a human.
Instead, the pack leader took a step back from the conflict, leaving us all to work it out on our own. Leaving me vulnerable. The man didn’t care in the slightest about me. He only wanted to keep his pack content.
Who cares if that meant I dealt with abuse while standing in the crossfire?
Roderick has chosen the exact opposite approach. He’s prioritizing the well-being of a human over the preferences of his own mother.
Could it be possible the wolves of Pine Falls don’t think of themselves as better than humans?
If that’s the case, then I might need to rethink some of Roderick’s behavior toward me. If it wasn’t born from his dislike for my species, then it has to be something else.
“Courtney?” I settle on the thick wooden bench at her kitchen table as she pulls a lasagna out of the fridge. “Do you have any idea why Roderick might not like me?”
The wolf turns a dial to preheat her oven before facing me. “He told you he doesn’t like you?”
I shrug. “Not in those exact words, but whenever we talk, he inevitably asks when I’m leaving town. And when he found out I knew about wolves, he accused me of hiding things.”
No need to mention the fact that I am hiding things. Like my real name.
Courtney considers my question as she sets a pair of wineglasses on the table and fills them with a generous portion of cabernet.
The rich scent is soothing, and I realize this is the first time I’ve simply had dinner at a friend’s house.
In college, I ate in dining halls and cheap takeout places with people from my classes and the few guys I dated.
When I traveled, I’d share the occasional campfire with others, but I mostly ate on my own.
In Bear Valley, Cory didn’t like me spending time with people unless he was there too.
The closest I’ve had to this was my campout with Zoey. I swallow past a grateful lump in my throat at the realization that I’m truly building a life and friendships here.
“He’s had some issues with people not from around here.
And that was right around the time he became pack leader.
My guess is, he’s projecting from past experiences.
” She hands me my glass before turning to slide the lasagna into the warm oven.
“I’ve known him since we were kids, and he’s always had a stick firmly lodged up that tight ass of his.
” She grins over her shoulder, and I find myself smiling in return.
“He’s a good leader though. Fair. But maybe he hasn’t been that way with you. ”
“Yeah,” I murmur. Although I think I’m beginning to see.
I am a threat.
If the Bear Valley pack were to ever discover this is my hideout, there might be discord between the packs. I don’t think they’re likely to discover me, which is the whole reason I chose this place, but still. One could argue I have put people at risk by moving to town.
Just because I don’t want anyone to be in danger doesn’t automatically make it so.
Maybe, just maybe, Roderick hasn’t been completely unjustified in his coldness toward me.
Damn. Does this mean I need to apologize?