Run Away From the Cruel Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Glass Door
Three years after her funeral, Mireya watches her cruel alpha and his new Luna walk into her coffee shop, and Dominic pulls down her collar to find his mark cut out.
I had been dead for three years.
Every Sunday, somebody laid white moonflowers on my grave.
I knew because the Ironclaw Pack posted pictures of it.
A tall man in a charcoal coat, kneeling in the pine needles with his head bowed.
"Our Alpha never forgets," the captions said.
I scrolled past them on my phone every Monday morning, standing behind the counter of my coffee shop in Georgia.
Then I put the phone face down and made the coffee.
My name here was Wren Hale.
My hair was copper now, cut short at my jaw.
I wore a scarf or a high collar every day, even in July.
"Wren, honey, the peach pies are out," Mae called from the back.
"Coming."
The Blue Kettle smelled like burnt sugar and dark roast.
The brass bell over the glass door rang all morning.
Farmers. Teachers. Two sheriff's deputies who never paid for refills.
Magnolia Creek was a small pack town, and nobody here asked where I came from.
At 8:40, the bell rang again.
I looked up with a smile already on my face.
It died there.
He had to duck a little under the frame.
Black hair swept back. Ice-blue eyes. A silver alpha ring on his right hand.
Dominic Blackburn.
The man who had laid moonflowers on my empty coffin one hundred and fifty-six Sundays in a row.
My hands went cold around the milk pitcher.
A woman came in behind him and took his arm.
Platinum hair. Pearl-white coat. Diamonds in her ears.
Celia Langford.
She wore the Luna's crescent pin on her lapel.
My pin.
"Oh my God," Celia said, looking around. "It's like a barn in here."
Dominic didn't answer her.
He was looking at the menu board.
He hadn't looked at me yet.
I lowered my head and wiped the steam wand very slowly.
Sable, I thought.
My wolf didn't answer.
She hadn't answered in three years.
That was the only reason I was still standing there.
Without her, my scent was so faint that other wolves took me for a human.
"Two lattes," Celia said to the counter. "Oat milk. And make sure it's actually hot."
Mae came out wiping her hands on her apron.
"We'll take good care of you, sugar."
She made them herself, humming.
I kept my back turned and stacked cups that didn't need stacking.
"Here you go," Mae said.
Celia took one sip.
Then she tipped the cup and let it pour out over the counter.
Hot milk ran across the wood and dripped on Mae's shoes.
"I said hot," Celia said. "This is warm."
The shop went quiet.
A deputy set his fork down.
Mae didn't flinch. "I'll make you another."
"Don't bother." Celia pulled a napkin from the dispenser and dropped it into the puddle. "Southern packs. You people really are just dogs with porches."
A man by the window laughed.
Nobody else did.
"Clean that up," Celia said to Mae. "You're the help, aren't you?"
I turned around.
I didn't decide to. My body did it.
"She's not the help," I said. "She's sixty-one years old, and you'll apologize to her."
Celia looked at me for the first time.
Then she looked me up and down, slow, and smiled.
"And who are you?"
"I own the place."
"Well." She laughed. "That explains the smell."
Dominic's head turned.
Not toward Celia.
Toward me.
He was frowning.
He took a breath through his nose.
Then another.
I watched his pupils go wide.
"Dom?" Celia touched his sleeve. "What is it?"
He didn't hear her.
He walked around the end of the counter, where customers weren't allowed.
"Sir," Mae said. "Sir, you can't come back here."
He stopped in front of me.
He was close enough that I could smell his cologne.
Cedar and smoke.
The same one he wore the night the east hall burned.
"Say something again," he said.
"You need to leave my counter."
His face changed.
I had seen that face once before, on the night of our mating ceremony, when he first caught my scent across the clearing.
He grabbed my wrist.
His grip was iron.
"Let go of me."
"Your voice." His fingers dug into my wrist bones. "Your voice is the same."
"You're confusing me with someone."
"Am I?"
His other hand caught the loose end of my gray scarf and pulled.
I twisted away.
The scarf came loose anyway and slid down my shoulder.
The whole shop saw it.
The ragged silver scar on the left side of my neck.
The place where his mark used to be, cut out with a knife.
Dominic stared at it.
Behind him, the second latte slipped out of Celia's hand and broke on the floor.
His breath came out of him in one hard push.
"You're supposed to be dead."
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