Run Away From the Cruel Alpha novel · Chapter 2 of 16

Chapter 2: My Name Is Wren

Mireya denies who she is until Rhett orders Dominic off her, Celia recognizes her, and that night her shop window is smashed with a moonflower left on the counter.

Nobody in the Blue Kettle breathed.

Dominic's thumb pressed into the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse.

"Three years," he said. "I buried you."

"You buried someone," I said. "It wasn't me."

"Don't."

"My name is Wren Hale."

"Your name is Mireya Blackburn."

He said it loud enough for the deputies to hear.

Loud enough for the man by the window, who had stopped laughing.

"I don't know you," I said.

My voice shook on the last word.

He heard it.

He smiled, slow, the way he used to smile across the pack table when I dropped a fork.

"You were always a bad liar, runt."

Runt.

Nobody had called me that in three years.

For one second I was twenty-three again, standing at the edge of the training ring while the whole pack laughed at my small black wolf.

Mae put herself between us.

She only came up to his chest.

"Mister, you let go of her or I call the Alpha."

"I am an Alpha."

"Not in this town you're not."

He didn't even look at her.

Celia had come around the counter now too.

Her heels crunched on the broken cup.

She was staring at my neck.

The color had gone out of her whole face.

"Dom," she said. Her voice was thin. "Dom, that's not her. Mireya had long hair. Mireya had a wolf."

"Look at the scar, Celia."

"Lots of people have scars."

"On the left side? Where I bit?"

Celia's mouth closed.

Behind me, the brass bell rang.

A cold voice came from the doorway.

"Take your hand off her."

Rhett Callahan filled the door frame.

Flannel sleeves rolled to the elbow. Work boots. Sawdust still on his jeans.

He came in every morning at nine for black coffee and one peach hand pie.

He was twenty minutes early.

Mae had her phone in her apron pocket. I saw the screen still lit.

Dominic turned his head.

The two alphas looked at each other across my shop.

The air got heavy.

Two of the farmers got up and left their plates.

"This doesn't concern you, Callahan," Dominic said.

"You're in my town, at my summit, with your hand on one of my people. It concerns me."

"She's not your people. She's my mate."

"She's got no mark on her."

"Because she cut it out."

Rhett's eyes went to the scar.

Then to my face.

He didn't look surprised.

He had carried me across his border three years ago with that scar still bleeding.

"I'm going to say it one more time," Rhett said quietly. "Let her go."

Dominic's grip got tighter.

My fingers were going numb.

Rhett walked forward.

He didn't hurry.

He stopped close enough that Dominic had to tip his head back an inch to hold his eyes.

"You want to start the Southern Alliance summit by fighting the host in a coffee shop?" Rhett said. "In front of two deputies? Go ahead. Your treaty dies on this floor."

Dominic's jaw worked.

Then he opened his hand.

I pulled my wrist back against my chest.

There were four white marks on it where his fingers had been.

"Mireya," Dominic said.

"Wren."

"We're not done."

"We were done three years ago."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he took Celia by the elbow and walked her out.

The bell rang behind them.

My knees almost went.

Then the door opened again.

Celia came back in alone.

She crossed straight to me.

She leaned close, smiling, so nobody could see her mouth.

"You should have stayed dead," she whispered.

Then she was gone.

The shop was empty by ten.

Nobody wanted to be near me.

Mae mopped up the oat milk without saying a word.

Rhett sat at the end of the counter and didn't touch his coffee.

"You all right?" he asked.

"No."

"You want me to put a man on your door tonight?"

"No. If you do, the whole town knows it's true."

"The whole town already saw his face."

I untied my apron.

My hands wouldn't do the knot.

Rhett reached over and did it for me.

"Go home, Wren," he said. "Lock up. Call me if anything moves."

I closed early at four.

I wiped the counter twice.

I turned the sign to CLOSED and went home.

At 2:17 in the morning, my phone buzzed on the pillow.

It was the alarm company.

Front window. Blue Kettle.

I drove there in my sleep shirt with my keys cutting into my palm.

The big glass window by the door was gone.

It lay across the tables in a thousand pieces, shining under the streetlight.

The door was still locked.

I stepped through the empty frame.

Glass crunched under my shoes.

There was something on the counter.

Right where Celia had poured her coffee.

A single white moonflower.

The kind that only grew in the Ironclaw hills.

Its stem was wrapped with a strip of black ribbon, tied in a bow.

The kind they tie on a coffin.

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