58. Juniper
JUNIPER
With my second espresso of the day clutched firmly in hand, I pushed through the door, stepping into the lobby of a local catering company.
After waking early, and then running through the forest to catch Levi, I would have been running on fumes regardless.
Couple that with the hours I’d spent planning the mating ceremony, and I was dragging hard.
“Good afternoon! How can we help you?” the receptionist said as I stepped up and leaned on the counter.
“Hi,” I said, doing my best to give her a winning smile. “I’m Juniper Hollis.”
The woman’s eyes widened with recognition. “Oh. Right, the alpha’s mate. Congratulations.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’m planning our mating ceremony, and I was hoping you all could help with the menu.”
“It would be an honor,” she gasped, putting a hand to her chest. “Were you looking for plated service? Buffet or family style? Or maybe passed canapes and a dessert bar?”
I sighed. I was too tired to deal with this. “Is there, like, a brochure or menu or something?”
“Of course.” She handed me a three-ring binder that had laminated pages of both printed menus, as well as pictures of the food.
With Anders being the alpha in the relationship, tradition said he and his family would pay for the mating ceremony, which was a reversal of typical human tradition.
A small, petty part of me recalled how Anders had been acting, and I decided to give him a little payback.
Something simple that might be the first step in humbling him and getting him to fully turn that leaf he was already trying to flip.
“Let’s do plated service,” I said with a smile, and perused the menu.
“I think some passed appetizers too. For those, let’s do the caviar with accompaniments, and these lobster bites.
A shaved brussels sprout salad for the first course, entrée should be the…
uh…what’s more expensive? The Chateaubriand or the seared Wagyu fillet? ”
She blinked at me in surprise. “Umm, the Wagyu.”
“Good, we’ll do that.” I continued reading and chuckled. “I see here you can add shaved truffles for an additional price? I’d like that as well. For the dessert, I like this five-tiered cake I see here.” I pointed at a picture of what looked like the most opulent cake I’d ever seen in my life.
Scribbling notes down, the woman quickly added the cake, looking both excited and harried. “Anything else?”
“Why not,” I said with a shrug, feeling better than I had all morning. “Let’s add a bread service for each table, and an open bar.”
“Open bar?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Um, I assume you understand the cost associated?”
“Sure do,” I said as I slid the pack credit card across the counter to her. “You can put the deposit on this.”
When I told the receptionist how many people we were anticipating, I thought she might actually pass out, but she assured me that her team would have everything ready by the date I gave.
When I left, I was re-energized. I’d spent the entire morning bouncing around town talking to rental companies, calling bands and DJs, and even speaking with a valet company to help park cars for many of the humans who would attend.
Deciding I’d done enough for the day, I headed to the store to see if my grandparents needed help.
I downed the rest of my espresso, then tossed the cup in a trash can and shifted.
As I ran along the sidewalks, my nails clicked on the concrete, and I breathed in the scents of the day.
The smells still nearly overloaded my mind, but in a good way.
I even thought I could smell the faint wisp of flower buds coming out on trees.
The last few days had been markedly warmer than before, and there was a hint of spring in the air.
By the time the mating ceremony rolled around, we should have some beautiful, flowery scenery behind us.
That would make the day pleasant, at least, especially if I was still as hung up about mating with Anders by then.
On the surface, my life was exactly what I’d always wanted.
I was paired with the pack alpha, able to see my grandparents any day I wanted.
I had a new respect from the townsfolk, yet I still didn’t feel good.
Seeing Levi that morning hadn’t helped. I’d left him for what I thought was a good reason, but that didn’t make it any easier to see him.
Every time I saw his face, all I could think of was how I’d hurt him, and how I’d hurt myself by leaving.
It had gouged out a hole in my heart, and I understood it had done something equally devastating to him.
Shifting back to my human form at the door, I stepped inside and froze at the sound of Levi’s voice.
“Do you have any more photo albums?” he called from the opposite end of the store.
“Yes, dear,” Gran said, emerging from a storage closet.
I gaped at them, looking from her to where Levi stood, his back to me, perusing old copies of magazines and local newspapers Grandpa insisted people wanted to buy, but never actually did.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
Levi spun and grinned at me. “I drafted your grandmother into helping with research.”
“What is he talking about, Gran?”
She put the box down and gave me a warm smile.
“Leviathan came by this morning and told me a bit about his past and what you and he agreed to. I’m helping him.
We’ve been selling the town’s discarded items for over fifty years.
I told him there might be some things around here that might belong to his lost love.
” She shrugged. “Or something here might give him clues about who may have killed her. Between you and me, your grandfather and I are loath to get rid of things, even when they don’t sell. It’s a problem.”
That part was right. The storage room and the basement were packed with things that had sat on shelves, collecting dust. The one time I’d tried to talk them into renting a dumpster to clean both out, you’d have thought I told them I was going to kill a puppy with a chainsaw.
I glared at Levi, but he was digging through a box of photos, wholly unaware I was staring daggers at him. We’d never discussed dragging Gran or Grandpa into this.
“Where did you get these?” he said, lifting a stack of dusty photos.
“A lot of what we get is from estate sales,” Gran explained. “Donations, yard sales, and auctions too. I think those came from an estate sale twenty or thirty years ago.”
I sighed. “Gran, why would you all buy these? How did you ever think you’d sell old photos?”
She gave me a pitying look. “Just because you can’t sell them, doesn’t mean they deserve to be lost. People took these pictures. They meant something to someone years ago. There’s no reason for them to end up in a landfill.”
My grandparents had always been hopeless romantics. Some of that had worked its way into my own DNA, but not to the level they had. Maybe one, or both, of my parents had been more pragmatic, helping level off my sentimentality.
“Holy hell,” Levi muttered, flipping through the pictures. “I think I know who these belonged to.”
“Who?” Gran and I asked in unison.
“Thurman Walker. He was the newspaper editor,” Levi explained.
“That’s the only reason someone would have all these.
The paper was small. Thurman was basically a one-man show.
He took all the pictures, wrote almost all the stories, and did the marketing for…
” He trailed off as he paused on a certain set of pictures, his eyes growing wide.
“What’s wrong?” I said, craning my neck to see what had caught his attention.
Levi placed two photos down. One was a young man in typical nineteen-twenties attire and hairstyle, grinning while holding an axe at his side. Even in the aged patina of the photo, I could make out the sweat stains on his shirt. Behind him lay stacks of chopped and split logs.
“My half-brother,” Levi said. “Rafe Thornton.”
Those words slammed into me harder than I could have imagined anything striking me. I’d have been less surprised if a bus crashed through the front door of the shop and crushed me beneath its wheels.
“Thornton?” I said. “You’re related to the Thornton family? That’s—”
“He’s Anders Burnell’s great-grandfather,” Gran said.
“He was my beta when I was the alpha of this pack,” Levi said, shaking his head sadly. “My best friend too, but he ended up banishing me for Naphele’s murder. He found me with her body. Someone told me he died years ago, and I have no idea if he ever believed in my innocence.”
While he gazed at that photo with a strange combination of heartbreak and longing, I glanced at the other. This man was leaning on a split rail fence, a faint yet noticeable grin on his face. He looked just like Grandpa.
Gran, seeing my reaction, tapped the picture with her finger. “That’s Winston Hollis. Your grandfather’s father.” She chuckled softly. “We never went through these pictures. I had no idea they had one of him in here.”
Levi tore his eyes from the picture of Rafe Thornton to look at the one of my great-grandfather. He picked up the picture, a wistful look in his eyes.
“Winston was one of the only ones who believed I was innocent,” Levi said, then shook his head as if clearing it.
“I’ve forgotten so much. After all this time, things started to run together.
I never even put it together that you and he would be related,” he added, glancing at me.
“The last name alone should have clued me in.”
“Why did he think you were innocent?” I asked.
The smile on Levi’s face faded into a frown. “Winston was a good man, but not what you’d call easy to deal with.”
Gran huffed. “That’s putting it mildly. Oh, I’m glad your grandfather is out and about. He hates talking about his father.”
Grandpa was so kind and sweet, I’d simply assumed that his whole family had always been that way.
“What was he like?” I asked, more intrigued than I thought I’d be.