Breed Me, Daddy Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Kitchen
Everly's wolf wakes when Kellan's hand brushes hers at the MacAskill dinner table, and she says it out loud; he leaves, and Ridley says she smells like open season.
My wolf woke up in Kellan MacAskill's kitchen, and it picked the worst possible man.
I was twenty-two years old and I had been home a little while.
I still had my duffel bag on my shoulder and Chicago on my shoes.
Marlee had dragged me straight from the bus station to her house.
"You're eating before you unpack," she said. "Dad made the stew you like."
Marlee MacAskill had been my best friend since we were six.
She was five foot eleven now, with bleached hair cut close to her skull and a ring in her lip.
She hugged me so hard my feet left the floor.
"Four years," she said into my neck. "Four years of video calls. I'm never letting you leave again."
"I start in Seattle on September first," I said.
"I'm never letting you leave again, and I'll deal with Seattle later."
The MacAskill kitchen smelled like woodsmoke, onions and old pine.
It had always smelled like that.
I had eaten about a thousand dinners at that table.
Then Marlee's father came in from the back porch, ducking under the doorframe, and the whole room tilted.
Kellan MacAskill was forty-one.
He was the Alpha of the Pinegate pack and he owned the sawmill.
He was six foot four and built like the side of a barn, with black-brown hair to his collar and a beard going grey at the chin.
I had seen him a hundred times growing up.
I had never once seen him.
"Everly," he said. "Welcome home."
His voice went through me.
I stood there with my mouth open.
Something that had been asleep in my chest for twenty-two years opened its eyes.
It was a wolf.
It was mine.
And it was looking at him.
"Sit," Marlee said. "Both of you. Dad, pass her the bread."
He picked up the basket and held it out.
I reached for it.
His fingers closed over mine for one second.
Heat poured up my arm and landed low in my belly.
My knees went soft.
I smelled him then, all of him, cedar and iron and warm skin, and every cell in my body said the same word.
Mine.
The bread basket hit the floor.
Nobody moved.
"Ev?" Marlee said. "You okay?"
I was not okay.
My skin was too tight.
My pulse was in my throat, and between my legs I was going slick and aching in front of my best friend and her father.
I looked up at Kellan.
His hazel eyes had gone gold.
His whole body had stopped.
His nostrils flared once.
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
I said it out loud, because I have never in my life been able to keep my mouth shut.
"It's you."
Marlee laughed, confused. "What's her?"
"Everly," Kellan said, very low.
"It's you," I said again. "I can smell it. You can smell it too."
Marlee's smile slid off her face.
She looked at me.
She looked at her father.
She said, "Dad?"
Kellan put the ladle down.
He did it carefully, like it might go off.
"Marlee," he said. "Eat without me."
"What is happening?"
"Nothing is happening."
He walked out of his own kitchen.
The screen door banged behind him.
Through the window I watched him cross the yard to the sawmill with long, hard strides.
My wolf threw itself against my ribs and wanted to run after him.
Marlee grabbed my wrist.
"Ev. Your eyes are silver."
"Are they?"
"They were grey. They're silver. And you're shaking."
"I think," I said, and my voice broke on it, "I think I'm about to go into heat."
She stared at me.
"You don't have a wolf," she said. "Your wolf never woke up."
"It just did."
"For who?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't make myself say it twice to her face.
She let go of my wrist.
She went still in a way that told me she already knew.
I picked my duffel up off the floor, because I had to do something with my hands, and I walked out the front door into the evening.
The air was cold and full of pine.
Every scent in the valley was suddenly loud.
Someone was frying fish three houses down.
Someone had cut a lawn.
And a man was standing at the bottom of the porch steps with his hands in his pockets, breathing in.
Ridley Crowe.
The Beta of the Pinegate pack was thirty-five, wiry and pale-eyed, with the sides of his head shaved and a long dark knot of hair on top.
He had been the boy in school who pulled the wings off things and then cried when he was caught.
He smiled at me.
"Well," he said. "Look who finally woke up."
He drew in another long breath through his nose, slow and filthy.
"You smell like open season, Everly."
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