The Beta's Son Never Knew Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Six A.M.

Without the tea she smells the whole diner for the first time, including the Alpha, and he tells her the law that will cost him his chair on his thirtieth birthday.

I woke up on Hattie's couch because the world smelled like bacon.

It was not a small smell.

It came up through the floorboards, and it had layers.

There was bacon, burnt toast, coffee and floor cleaner, and under all of it, old fryer grease.

I sat up with the quilt on my lap and my eyes watering.

I had never smelled anything in my life.

I had smelled the idea of things, because people told me what they were.

Now there was bleach somewhere, and Hattie's lavender shampoo from the next room.

There was even the sour edge of my own tears, dried on my cheeks.

I put both hands over my nose, and it did not help at all.

Hattie came out of the bedroom in her apron, and she took one look at me.

"What?"

"I can smell the bacon," I said. "I can smell your shampoo. It's lavender."

"It's been lavender for six years."

"I know. I know it is now."

She stared at me.

"Cass, did you eat something?"

"I poured out the tea last night," I said slowly. "I haven't had any since yesterday morning. That's all I did."

Hattie put her hand on her hip.

"Sweetie, you drank that thing every day for five years."

"It's for my nerves."

"Is it?" said Hattie, and she did not say anything else, and neither did I.

At five minutes to six, someone knocked at the back door of the kitchen.

I went down the stairs in the borrowed sweatshirt with my braid half undone.

I had expected to smell him before I saw him, and I did.

Conall was standing on the loading dock with two paper cups.

The cold air carried him in ahead of him: cedar, wood smoke, and something warmer under it.

It made the muscles in my legs go loose.

I stopped on the bottom step.

"You smell like a campfire," I said, which was a stupid thing to say.

"I slept in the truck."

"All night?"

"You said Hattie's," he said, "and I didn't want to be far."

He handed me a cup.

It was coffee, and it was the first coffee I had ever really smelled, and it was almost too much.

Hattie's grandfather had not come in yet.

The kitchen was empty and warm, lit by the one bulb over the grill.

I stood against the steel prep table with the cup in both hands.

Conall stayed by the door as long as he could stand to.

Then he crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me.

He did not touch me.

He put one hand on the table beside my hip.

It was a very quiet kitchen.

I could smell the warmth coming off his skin.

His mouth was a few inches from mine, and I knew exactly how many.

My heart was going so hard that I thought he must hear it.

He could, because his eyes dropped to my throat and stayed there.

"Do you always loom," I said, "or only before breakfast?"

For a second he looked startled.

Then something moved at the corner of his mouth, and he took his hand off the table and stepped back.

"Only before breakfast," he said.

I was disappointed, and I did not like how much.

"Cassandra, I need to tell you something," Conall said, "before someone else does."

"All right."

"I turn thirty on the full moon in November. That's eight weeks."

"Happy early birthday."

"It isn't one." He turned his cup in his hands.

"Our law says an Alpha who reaches thirty without a mate can be challenged for the chair by his Beta."

"What's it called?"

"The Thirtieth."

I looked at him.

"Braden's father," I said.

"He has wanted my seat for years. He can't have it unless I'm alone on that night."

I understood then, all at once, why he had parked outside a diner.

I put the cup down very carefully.

"So you want a girlfriend by November."

"I want you to know exactly what I'd be asking," Conall said. "And I know what it sounds like."

"Then say the rest."

"My wolf spoke your name before I thought of the law. I'd have come to that creek if the Beta had never said a word."

"That's very convenient."

"It's true," he said, in a voice so low that I felt it all the way down my back.

Outside, tires crunched on the gravel of the front lot.

There was more than one set. Three trucks pulled in, and then the doors slammed.

Conall turned his head toward the sound, and his shoulders changed.

"That's the Beta's truck," he said.

Hattie came through the swinging door with her phone held out, her face pale under the freckles.

"The pack chat," she said. "The Beta posted this at a quarter to six."

She held it up so we could both read the screen.

It said: Pack meeting Monday, ten o'clock, the Hall, with a smiling face after it.

Under that it said: The Alpha spent last night outside a wolfless girl's door, and I think we all deserve to hear why.

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