Page 13 of Possessive Alpha

Is that the reason he wasn’t already down here for breakfast?

He didn’t sleep.

I’m working out how I can ask him without it sounding like I am concerned, conscious everyone is still watching us, Clara included, when he picks up my fork and presses it into my hands.

“Here, sweetheart. Eat. We can talk about it when we do our next forest walk.”

Where I won’t be repeatedly diving into any holes in the ground.

I hope.

I eat and try to forget how Ty kissed me and how I wish it had been for much longer than the brief touch of his lips on mine.

After putting off doing laundry for far too long, I prompt Clara from the dining room and upstairs to help, given most of the mess is hers.

I tell myself this is me deciding now is the perfect time to catch up on laundry, but I know exactly what this is. From the way my little sister’s eyes flick from me to Ty, who finishes his breakfast but shows no inclination he’s about to move from my side, she’s put two and two together.

We didn’t have to share a room. There are more than enough for everyone to have one of their own. The sharing comes from years on the road, no idea when trouble will rear its head, and a need to be ready to snatch up my sister and go.

With Ty close by and Jackson keeping a careful watch over his pack, that isn’t likely to happen here, but instincts take time to ignore. Maybe one day, I’ll learn to stop looking over my shoulder.

After Regan showed us the empty rooms when we first arrived, Clara and I settled on this one.

The walls are a soft mint color and there are two double beds with white wood bedframes on opposite sides of the room. We share a small bathroom with a shower, and a walk-in closet, which isn’t that big, but it’s plenty big enough for us.

Other than the way Regan and Jackson have made this place feel like a home, I think I’ll miss our view the most. You can see Dawley town from the other side of the house. It’s not a view that ever appealed to me.

The Dawley National Forest is the reason for so many hikers and tourists in the area. It’s like there are no buildings or cities in the world from our window. Just pure, natural beauty.

Out of anywhere Clara and I have gone since we left our dead pack in Ohio, this is the only place that’s come close to the rural, tranquil feeling I had back then. And that I miss, desperately, six years later.

As usual, instead of helping me, Clara flops onto her bed while I gather all our dirty clothes.

“Martha?” She kicks her jean-clad legs against the edge of her bed. The soft thump doesn’t annoy me yet. It soon will. When that happens, I’ll lob a T-shirt in her face, she’ll catch it, and then do something useful, like helping me.

“Yeah?”

She rolls onto her side to study me. “Do you ever think about Mom and Dad?”

I briefly pause at her uncharacteristically thoughtful expression before I dump an armload of dirty washing Clara left on the floor beside the hamper at the end of her bed. “All the time. And you need to stop being such a slob. You know where the hamper is.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “I’m a slob because I have a big sister to clean up all my messes.” But she gets up and starts stripping the pale lilac sheets from her bed. “You and Ty are cute.”

I deliberately turn my back and start pulling the pastel blue sheets from my bed. “He’s okay, I guess.”

Clara snorts. “Playing that card, are you?”

I’m playing the only card I can. “Let me go grab the dirty towels and?—”

“Martha?”

Abandoning my mission to hide out in the bathroom, I peer over my shoulder. “What?”

“You don’t frown all the time.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

She crosses over to me and taps me on the middle of my forehead. Before I can knock her hand aside, she stops. “You’re always frowning. Or you were before we came here.”

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