It was warm for April. Balmy, even, but by the time Sharon Spark clocked out and headed home, most of the heat from the sun was starting to break up. She could have been outside with Alexander all day, scouring the beaches for sea glass or preparing the meager garden for summer, but instead, she'd spent the day cooped up inside the warehouse. It was hard not to begrudge, but she had to continue reminding herself that she did it all for her boy. It was a blessing to be working and earning money on her own, not a curse, although sometimes it felt otherwise.
No. Portsmouth, New Jersey, her tiny two-bedroom cottage, and her warehouse position at the shipping firm were all symbols of her independence. Her sole curse was the one she had left in Yellow Pack, Maine. The suffocating Tenzclaw pack, a million reminders of her shortcomings, and worst of all, her now former Alpha, Luthor Michaels. Compared to everything she had left, the little that she could call her own in Portsmouth was invaluable.
And most importantly, it allowed her to keep her most precious treasure safe—her little Alexander.
The drive home was not too long, for which she was grateful, but long enough to gaze at the scenery while she got lost in her thoughts. The trees were starting to gain some green on them, and where she could see a glimpse of the ocean, it was an endless dark blue. It was a sunny day, but there was a bank of clouds far off on the horizon. She didn't mind the threat of rain, but thunder kept Alexander awake. Maybe they'd be lucky, and it would be only a sprinkle.
Normal, ordinary worries like that were comforting. In Yellow Pack, she'd been an outcast. Weak, unwanted, and when she wasn't being harassed by more powerful pack members, she was being ignored. Even now, she wasn't certain which was worse—the smothering loneliness or the need to fight. She'd never meant to get pregnant on her first heat, let alone by her asshole Alpha, but though the news was devastating at first, pregnancy was the kick in the pants she needed to leave her old pack behind and start fresh.
Alexander was a sweetheart, a treasure, and best of all, he was still blissfully unaware of who his father was, the danger they were in, and the fact that she would do anything to keep him safe.
Anything.
The sight of her house, with its tiny front porch and carefully kept garden, usually comforted her. Today, though, she couldn't get rid of the feeling that something was off. She'd felt a strange energy a mile or two from home, but it was so subtle there wasn't much she could do except brush it off. Relief hit her when she could finally see the cottage—in daylight, from the outside, all was well. Maybe she was paranoid.
The instant her tires ground into the gravel, the front door was flung open, and a small, wiry shape came flying out. "Mama," Alexander screamed, his huge smile flaunting his missing front tooth.
"Careful," she cautioned, even as he flung himself into her arms, wrapping his arms and legs around her like a baby monkey. She felt he was getting too big for her to pick him up, and a pang went through her heart. Luckily, her shifter blood made her stronger than the norm, even if she was a terrible shifter otherwise. She still had a few more years of picking up her boy to look forward to.
She embraced him, her eyes shutting briefly. Alexander's babysitter and co-worker, Blie, followed behind Alexander with a smile on her face. Her own daughter was strapped in a sling on her chest, the much younger child kicking contentedly. They had a wonderful system, working opposite shifts and babysitting for one another when the other was at the warehouse. It also made homeschooling Alexander a lot simpler, although he didn't completely understand why he couldn't follow the other kids to normal school.
Alexander had given no indication of changing yet, but the last thing she desired was for that side of him to reveal itself while he was sitting in the middle of multiplication tables with fifteen other kids. The idea sent a shiver down her spine, and she held her boy even closer.
"He was perfect today as always," Blie told her, coming down the porch steps to greet her. "Same can't be said for my little miss here, but what else is new."
Blie's daughter gurgled in assent, and she smiled.
The sun was nearly set by the time Blie had finished cleaning up and left, and she was sufficiently exhausted to acquiesce to Alexander's proposal of a pancake dinner. He'd spent all afternoon making them with Blie, and the fridge was full of unsuccessful attempts, the stove covered in a light dusting of flour and batter. She wasn't about to complain, though. At least she didn't have to cook.
She tucked Alexander into bed following his bath and pulled out a book, trying to ignore the small twinge in her stomach. It was the same one she'd gotten on the drive home, and now it was worsening, a dull, slow cramp that was making her feel sick. It couldn't have been anything she ate; they'd had the same thing for dinner, and Alexander was fine.
Perhaps she was getting sick. It was flu season, and although shifters tended to have a natural immunity to the bugs that afflicted humans, she was a bit of an exception where shifters were involved. She attempted not to let concern alarm her and instead absorbed the vision of her son as he fell asleep.
"You okay, Mama?"
She swallowed the uncomfortable feelings and smiled softly, "Yes, my love, just tired from work, that's all."
"I wish you didn't work so much," Alexander told her with a yawn. "I miss you when you aren't here."
Ouch. Let it be her sweet little boy to break her heart into a million little pieces with a few innocent words. "I know, buddy, but I'm working a little overtime so that we can take a trip this summer, remember?"
"I know," Alexander sighed, his eyes filling, "You said I can ride a rollercoaster, Mama?"
"Any number of times you'd like," she promised, reaching down to take the book from her lap. "But let's get the story done first, okay?"
Alexander was slightly undersized for his age but was two inches taller in the past six months, so she knew for sure that a growth spurt was on the horizon. He had been born with downy blond hair that had darkened as he aged, but not nearly so dark as her own, and his eyes were the deep, familiar blue of his father's. She did not see Luthor when she looked at Alexander, though, only her sweet little man. However, the traces of his father's features were there in his face, and she knew they would only become more defined as he aged.
Regardless of how large of an asshole Luthor was, she couldn't even begin to deny he was attractive. But if she had anything to say about it, good looks were all the Tenzclaw Alpha Alexander would inherit. All the toxic, misogynistic baggage of pack life weren't going to find their way into her house if she had anything to say about it.
As Alexander eventually drifted off to sleep, she brushed the hair out of his forehead and kissed his cheek gently, her heart bursting with love. She'd given up everything to ensure Alexander's safety, and she'd do it a million times over if she had to.
When she finally emerged from the room and shut the door behind her, leaving it ajar to allow the hall light to stream in, the pain in her stomach intensified. It was a dull ache accompanied by that unnerving feeling of being watched. Though she longed for a hot shower that didn't get interrupted and a cup of cocoa in front of the television, she hadn't lost quite all of her instincts since leaving the Tenzclaw pack, and they were screaming at her to go and investigate. She'd been able to let the worries drop when they were vague, but now that they were getting stronger by the minute, she knew she couldn't ignore them much longer.
She took one step, and then another, down the hall, before the feeling intensified again. It was so intense, so insistent, that it left her winded.
There, at the fringes of her senses, she could have sworn she sensed Luthor Michaels. No, there was no chance in hell it could be him. It had been over seven years since she'd fled, so he should have forgotten about her by now.
No sooner had the sensation swept over her than it had gone, but there was no chance of her being able to relax until she was sure she must have been imagining things. She glanced rearward at the empty house, small enough so that she could see the entirety of it with a single glance, and opened the front door warily. It was chilly but she was perspiring from adrenaline as she slowly looked around, trying to sense if someone was present.
It was a quiet night, the air cool and heavy with the moisture of the nearby ocean and the oncoming rain. Her senses absorbed the night sounds, the chirping of crickets, and the soft sound of the wind through the trees. She could neither smell nor hear anyone, yet it was not only her wolf senses that were unsettling her.
She turned on the porch light with a shaking hand and stepped out, shutting the door behind her. A quick look revealed nothing, but the feeling would not leave, a dull, aching pain in the pit of her belly. She reached out with the once-strange, now familiar magic that had stirred in her after her one night with Luthor, feeling the land around her cottage. Finding out she had been a witch wasn't shocking—it ran in the blood—but since she'd had the magic for seven years, it felt like an old friend when it came to her.
Some residual of magic at the edge of her property and nothing more. It was so faint she couldn't even tell if it was a witch or a shifter.
Probably just a stray passerby. A neighbor you didn't know wasn't human, that's all, she tried to tell herself…But she wasn't very convincing.
After a second lap around her home, she still couldn't make out anything, even if the pain in her belly hadn't let up. Sighing, she supposed the thing to do would be to lock all the doors and try to get some sleep.
"I must be going crazy," she murmured. "Or maybe it's just stress."
But as she headed back to the door, she suddenly sensed the magic again, this time even closer. It was so powerful that she had no doubt what the source was. It hit her over the head like a hammer, and it was all she could do not to fall to her knees and cower.
It was her Alpha.
No, no, no, no. He couldn't be here, could he?
Oh shit. He'd come for her, just as she'd feared. She'd become such a master of hiding, and they'd tried so hard to cover their tracks. How could it be that he'd found them now, after all these years? She'd known it was a risk that Luthor would come for her, but not yet. Not until her little Alexander was older, shielded from the nastiness of the pack politics and his father's cruelty.