Page 21 of Impregnated By the Alpha

“You again,” Evelyn said, glancing at Jonah.

He was already tired of everyone looking at him like that, like they’d found something stuck to the bottom of their shoe. Unfortunately, he’d just have to get used to it.

Plastering on a smile, he paid for their order. “Me again. Afraid I’m your new upstairs neighbor, so you’ll be seeing rather a lot of me.”

Evelyn shared a quick glance with Adria. Commiserating, no doubt.

“Actually,” she said, biting her lip. "Do you need a job?”

Jonah tilted his head to the side. That was not what he’d expected. “Me?”

She nodded and went on. “I’m taking a few classes, and need someone to work the morning shifts. Just a few hours, really, part time. It’s hard to get anyone to work in this town.”

Guilt flooded him. It was his father’s fault that no one new came to town, that there was no one to fill the few jobs left. The least he could do was fill in so Evelyn could go to school.

“Um, yeah. I could do that. I could use a job.” Strictly speaking, he didn’t need the money, but it never hurt to have a steady income, which might help make some inroads into the Silversand community. Then again, it might just mean that people avoided the shop.

“Great. You’re hired. Come back tomorrow at quarter past six, and I’ll give you the rundown.” Evelyn clapped her hands together with the finality of a sealed contract.

They took their coffees over to the back corner of the shop, away from the cold air that swirled in each time someone opened the door, and sat across from each other at a small table.

“What is that you wanted to ask?” Adria wasted no time, probably eager to get away from him.

He swirled the spices around in his mug, inhaling their warm scent. “Well, I heard about the tree. I’m sorry that happened, and it wasn’t me, by the way. Since some people think it was.”

“Moira,” Adria said.

“Moira,” he agreed. “But I’d like to help find whoever did it. I want to be helpful. I want to make amends for… for everything.”

He lifted his arms to encompass not just the cafe but the whole town and all of the people in it.

She considered him for a long moment, picking at the croissant in front of her. He'd already devoured his, crunching through the buttery, flaky layers. If only he could tell Moira how perfect they were.

“We don’t know much,” she answered finally, brushing crumbs from her lap. “The axe was stuck in the tree, but it’s just a generic axe, the sort you’d purchase at any hardware store. No convenient initials are carved into the handle to tell us who it belongs to. We tracked the scent down to the old lighthouse, up along the beach here.”

The lighthouse. It was a fixture in Silversand lore, much like the Rosewood tree. According to Silversand legend, a group of shifters had fled their homeland under the threat of persecution, sailing across the sea. Along the rocky, deadly coast, they’d seen a silver light, flashing from the shore and followed it to safety, a cove. When they’d disembarked, the light had vanished.

His father had told him this story a hundred times. He’d heard it as the pack gathered around the driftwood fire, huddled in the shadow of the lighthouse. Those shifters had settled there and built the lighthouse in honor of the light that had guided them, to become the light for future ships in need of guidance.

Throughout their history, it had been a position of honor to tend the lighthouse until his father’s time as alpha. He could still remember that dark day when his mother’s body had washed ashore, ravaged by the sea. He could still remember his father’s face changing, morphed by grief into someone he didn’t recognize. After that, he’d forbidden the pack from caring for the lighthouse, blaming it, in some way, for his wife’s death.

“It must be a wreck by now,” he said, chafing his hands over his arms, suddenly chill. “Did you find anything?”

“Actually, yes,” she said. “We found evidence that someone had been staying there. A sleeping bag, some food, a lantern. But again, no ID, no name tag. Nothing that would lead us to anyone in particular.”

“But Moira still thinks it’s me,” he grumbled, mostly to himself.

“She wants it to be. Convenient when the monster from your past is still the monster in your present. Makes them easy to find. Easy to avoid.” Adria drank the last of her coffee and tapped her fingers on the table.

“And what do you think?” He wanted her opinion, her honest one. Even if she agreed with Moira.

“Beth told me you were the only one that was kind to her during those first weeks with the White Winters. That you were gentle, sweet, even. That you became her closest friend there.” Adria’s gaze was faraway, past Jonah’s shoulder. “She’s my best friend. I trust her judgment, so I can’t believe that the person she said those things about is the person who vandalized the tree.”

She got up and wrapped her scarf around herself again. “But then again, I can’t reconcile the person Beth said you are with the person Moira says you were. Who are you now, Jonah? That’s what I’m waiting to see.”

Jonah watched her go. He’d been left with more questions than answers in the end, but at least he knew about the nest at the lighthouse. It was a shame what had happened to that place, a shame that his father’s grief had led to the ruin of something sacred to the pack. Superstitiously, he wondered if the disrepair of the lighthouse was somehow tied to the pack’s misfortune. If by allowing it to crumble, forsaking their duty to guide ships, they’d brought bad luck upon their pack.

“You all right?” Evelyn asked, wiping down the next table over. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

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