Page 8 of Impregnated By the Alpha

“I haven’t decided anything yet,” Jonah protested, twisting his fingers around his backpack’s zipper. He was getting the urge to grab it and run. “I’m just heading back for the funeral.”

“So he says,” Spencer added.

Adria elbowed him in the ribs. “Well, you’re welcome here for as long as you need.”

The group of friends was still watching him, darting curious glances his way.

“I think others might disagree,” he said.

Adria waved a dismissive hand their way. “They’ll get over it. Well, some of them.”

Jonah knew what she meant. Some wolves would never accept a White Winter in their presence, and could never forgive the pack their history. He couldn’t blame them. Was that raven-haired woman one of them? Though he’d searched his memory, he still couldn’t place her.

He jerked his head toward the women, voice pitched low. “Who is the pretty woman with the black hair? She seems familiar, but I can’t remember why I’ve seen her before.”

Other than in his dreams, he thought, but kept that rather embarrassing idea to himself. Still, Adria’s smile was smug when she replied, and she was far too knowing. Jonah had never been good at subtle.

“That’s Moira. Actually, I think you two went to school together. She was a Silversand before she joined the Rosewoods,” Adria said.

Moira. The name was deeply buried in his past, in his awful high school years. He’d been a skinny, nerdy boy with an attitude problem, finding snark the only way to fend off the bullies that would have otherwise targeted him.

“Moira,” he breathed. “I remember her.”

And he did. They hadn’t been friends. He could remember the first day he’d seen her, her dark hair falling over her face as she leaned over her desk to write something in her notebook. Jonah had taken the empty seat beside her and opened with a joke about her being the only goth girl in a school full of preppy kids. She’d tucked her hair behind her ear and looked at him, blue eyes ice cold, cheeks turning pink from his comment, and he’d felt something shoot through him, hot and uncomfortable.

“Pretty sure she remembers you too,” Adria said, frowning at him. “I’d avoid her if I were you. I don’t think she wants to see you. Well, in fact, I know she doesn’t want to see you.”

Jonah couldn’t help it. He stole another look at Moira and found her watching him, eyes as cold as they’d been in his memory. She looked away at once, but not before he saw her cheeks flush rose.

“She hates the White Winters,” Jonah said, flatly. It figures that the one woman who caught his eye was the one who hated his guts before he even opened his mouth. “Did something happen, did we hurt someone she’s close to?”

Adria snorted, her forehead crinkled in a look of disbelief. “Seriously? No, it goes back a lot farther than that. Think high school. Apparently, you were the world’s biggest bully.”

Spencer laughed, then caught himself, biting down on his knuckle. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just,” he said, waving a hand around at Jonah, “this guy? A bully? He’s like a golden retriever on two legs. Honestly, I don’t know how you survived the White Winter pack. No offense.”

Once, it would’ve stung. Jonah knew he was different from his pack, from his best friend, and he’d done his best to fit in and find his place among them. But he was more focused on Moira and what Adria had said.

“People can change.” Adria glared at her mate until he stopped laughing. “And I believe Moira, when she says what she went through was awful, no matter what sort of wolf Jonah has turned into.”

He’d teased her in high school. He’d liked the way it’d made her blush, the way she’d fire back at him, the way she’d squirm in her chair. It had given him a rush like nothing else he’d felt.

“A bully?” Jonah repeated, trying to imagine it from Moira’s perspective.

Had he been that awful? He had thought it was just teasing, but to her, was it something more?

“You bullied her so badly she left the Silversands, Jonah,” Adria went on, like she was speaking to an idiot now. She threw up her hands. “You can’t be serious. She was a shell of a person when she came to the Rosewoods. Timid, quiet, could barely look anyone in the eye.”

Jonah thought of the laughing woman he’d seen walk into the pub, the way she seemed to glow, to bring life to the room. It was impossible to imagine her cowed and afraid, and even more impossible to imagine that he’d had something to do with it. Guilt churned in his gut.

“I was only teasing,” he said, lamely, fingers tightening around the zipper pull until the metal cut into his palm.

It was proof that he’d always been a screwup, even as a kid. It was just who he was. Deep in his blood, inescapable.

“If you were the only one laughing, it wasn’t a joke,” Adria said, leaning forward. She was formidable in the way Beth was, protective of her own.

“You’re right,” Jonah agreed, knowing that whatever his memory was of the situation, it didn’t matter. “I should apologize to her. I should go over right now and—“

“No!” Adria said, too loud, even over the noisy pub chatter. People turned to look at them, “No, she doesn’t want to talk to you. She doesn’t want to see you. She just wants you to leave her alone. Can you do that? You’ve done enough to her, so really, it's the least you can do. The kindest thing you can do.”

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