Chapter 2 - Poppy
Rushing into the pack center, the wolves are already finding their seats, but there’s no time to check on Daniel.
I need to get to the kitchen to serve lunch.
Doing a quick scan of the dining hall, I spot my son at the table designated for the younger wolves, laughing with his friends. Breathing out a sigh of relief, I hardly have a moment to spare when a hand grips my arm and tugs me away.
I gasp when I’m pulled into the kitchen, a pair of searing green eyes meeting mine.
“Where the hell have you been, Poppy?” Ingrid, the Nightclaw beta’s wife, asks with her hands propped on her hips.
I wince as I rummage through my mind for a suitable excuse, but when I open my mouth to speak, I manage only a listless squeak before she pushes a ladle into my hand.
“You said you were serving lunch today. Did you forget?” she continues, picking up the pot from the stove.
“I—I didn’t forget,” I mumble, sighing out my frustrations.
Ingrid must see the irritation written on my face, and she tilts her head to the side.
“You’re not okay, are you?” she frowns, setting the pot back down before reaching up to touch my forehead with the back of her hand. “You’re getting a fever, Poppy. Are you sick?”
“No,” I chuckle nervously. “I’ve just been—”
Just then, the lunch bell rings out, and Ingrid groans. She snatches the ladle back and picks up the pot again.
“Don’t worry about this. I got it,” she says with a wink as she heads to the door.
“Wait! Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” she nods. “Could you get the laundry going instead?”
“Y-yes,” I stammer, straightening up behind the door as she leaves. All I catch is a glance at the lunch hall, and my heart stops when I see him again.
Broad shoulders taper into a tiny waist, muscles clad in a tight-fitting black T-shirt that leaves little to the imagination of his contoured back, standing on two powerful thighs.
I gulp hard, eyes traveling to the back of his head when it feels too intrusive to be gawking at his plump rear, but that’s where dark brown curls twist and almost touch his collar, and I’m reminded of what it felt like to let my fingers get lost in those luscious locks… .
Damian Walker stands in the hall with his back turned toward the kitchen, and even if I haven’t seen his face yet, there’s no doubt that it’s him.
I heard about his arrival in Fort Smit this morning, and I’ve been doing everything in my power to steer clear of him.
Just as I have done every time he sets foot in Nightclaw territory to visit his brother.
Even if that means hiding inside my cottage on the south outskirts of town.
Damian can’t know that I’m here.
A shiver courses down my spine, and I feel the surge of an unwanted awareness fill my nerve endings, and that’s when Damian turns on his heel. I dodge behind the kitchen counter, making sure he can’t see me when the other volunteers walk out with more pots to serve lunch.
Still, it’s risky being inside the pack center when he’s under the same roof.
He has no business being here, anyway. He usually doesn’t mingle with the common folk of the pack. So what is he doing here today?
It doesn’t matter.
All I know is that I must avoid him; I must avoid being seen by him.
So I grab the laundry bag from the kitchen that contains soiled aprons and kitchen cloths and bolt for the washing room.
Once I’m behind the closed door in the small square room, I feel like I can breathe again. I’d spent all morning pacing the floor in my cabin, not risking coming out except for when I had to take my son to school this morning.
If Damian finds me here… He’ll find out about Daniel.
And I can’t risk all of that coming to light.
As I pick out items from the laundry basket and shove them into the washing machine, I mumble curses under my breath.
Almost a year ago, when Daniel and I were forced to evacuate our home in Roland, I wasn’t expecting to find that Dorian Walker was the alpha of the Nightclaw Pack.
He forfeited his place as the alpha of Valley Walker, so I didn’t think he’d become the alpha of his uncle’s pack.
I’d heard about Nightclaw and how they welcomed misfits like me—even if I’d been living as a lone wolf for nine years before arriving here—and knew that I’d have to meet Dorian eventually, only relying on the fact that he never knew about his brother and me.
My son and I reached the edge of Nightclaw territory when we fled the strange occurrence outside our Roland home; we returned from our day, only to find the garden around our cabin smeared with death. The stench of it almost made me throw up, and I knew I had to get Daniel and me to safety.
But when we arrived, border patrol stopped us and called their alpha over to decide if we’d be given refuge in the pack. To my surprise, it was Alpha Dorian Walker who came out to meet us.
And luckily for me, even though he recognized that I was once a Valley Walker wolf, he didn’t know about my history with his younger brother.
Of course he wouldn’t have known!
My relationship with his brother was a secret that I’d probably be buried with.
I’d like to keep it that way.
All Alpha Dorian knows is that I’d been living as a lone wolf with my son after leaving Valley Walker, but he doesn’t know the details, and didn’t care to ask when I told him we didn’t have a house anymore.
He agreed to give us refuge right away, not caring about rank or status, just the mere fact that I was a single mother trying to find shelter for my son and me.
But ever since Alpha Dorian was rescued after going missing for months, Damian has been visiting way too often for my liking.
I don’t even know when I stopped angrily shoving laundry into the washer, but I find myself staring out the window while toying with my necklace, wondering if it’s a good idea to take my son and run before Damian finds us here.
It’s probably not a good idea to even be under the same roof as him, so when Ingrid comes back to find me after serving lunch, I breathe out a sigh of relief.
“Do you think you can cover me for the rest of the day?” I ask her as she comes in. She doesn’t close the door behind her, so I nimbly move past her and close it myself.
“Yeah, of course, honey,” Ingrid says, her brows furrowing with worry as she touches my arm. “You’re really not feeling well, are you?”
I shake my head and lie as I touch my temple. I just need to get out of the pack center, and I can hear Daniel and his friends laughing outside, which means he’s left already. That’s a good sign. “My head’s throbbing.”
Ingrid nods. “Yeah, you go on ahead and get some rest. I’ll tell Danny where to find you when he’s done playing with his friends.”
“Thanks, Ingrid.”
She winks and offers me a gentle smile. “You can count your lucky stars that I’m the manager of this place. And you happen to be my best friend around here. Don’t forget, tonight is Alpha Elias’s memorial bonfire. It will be extra special. I hear Dorian’s brother is staying for the celebrations.”
Groaning, I fake a bout of pain and press my finger to my temple again. “I don’t know if I’ll make it with the way I’m feeling.” I shrug, and Ingrid sighs.
“That’s okay. Just get better, then.”
I smile gratefully and thank her again before leaving the pack center, slipping out from the back door, my hoodie covering my head this time.
Moving stealthily around the village has become second nature ever since Damian began making his appearances in Fort Smit. I disappear into the crowd in the market, moving as if I’m one of the elderly ladies picking out a new pearl bracelet before breaking off and racing down toward my cabin.
Once I’m inside, I breathe out a sigh of relief as if I’d been holding my breath the whole way.
I decide to take a shower to wash away all my anxieties, but once I’m in the shower stall and close my eyes, basking in the warmth of the water running over me, I accidentally let my mind wander off to places I’d rather not visit.
Damian Walker.
Before he became the alpha of the Valley Walker Pack.
Back then, not a day would pass without us seeing each other. And now, ten years have passed, and I pray he doesn’t see me.
What kind of twisted fate had I stepped into when I walked into the pack his brother took over?
My only consolation was their longstanding hostility, the reason why they couldn’t see eye to eye even when Dorian joined the Rosethorn Alpha Council. Everyone whispered about it, until our alpha went missing, and when he was rescued, the brothers seemed to have repaired their relationship.
I should be happy for them, but I’m not. I’d put so much distance between myself and Damian for ten years so he wouldn’t even know I had his child that I’d become detached from feeling anything for him.
Then why are you thinking so much about him right now?
I snap my eyes open and groan at my inner wolf’s intrusive question, gasping when I realize where my hand has drifted.
Snatching it from between my thighs, I gag dramatically and step beneath the showerhead so the water can rush over my head, a shiver running through me.
There’s no way Damian has me feeling things I thought I could never feel again. I’d buried the existence of those feelings long ago, when I left Valley Walker to forge a life for myself and my son. A life he couldn’t give me.
And now that he’s around, breathing the same air as me, it’s too risky to be here anymore. I bite my bottom lip in contemplation, wondering if it’ll be a good idea to leave.
The rogue threat has been dealt with, and perhaps that was the reason for the shriveled garden in Roland. Maybe there is no danger out there.
The only real danger is sticking around and risking Damian finding me. Or worse, finding Daniel.
He lost the right to know he has a son a decade ago.
And even if we’re safer here, we’re not safe from him. He had the power to break my heart once. I won’t let my son go through the same.
When I’m done in the shower, pacing the living room floor as I weigh my options, a familiar knock on the door interrupts me.