Page 55 of Alistair

“I’m happy you got some closure too.”

He was lucky, because he’d never been wounded emotionally the way that Maggie had, but he could still empathize with her. Her family had hurt her maybe even more than that asshole, but she was healing and stronger because of all of it.

The perfect alpha female.

Jasper rolled his neck as he pulled the gate closed to secure the safari tour path. The last tour had finished hours earlier, and thepark was closed for the night. It was his job to ensure that the paddocks were empty of the shifters, all the gates locked, and the Jeeps returned to their stalls where they waited for the following day’s tours.

There was always the hope that a soulmate for one of the shifters might be on the tour, but that hadn’t happened today. And it would never happen for him. He didn’t have to wonder where his soulmate was, because he knew exactly where she was: his old pack. He’d walked away and asked her to come, but she’d stayed behind. It burned as much today as it did seven years ago, when he thought she would follow him so they could be together. But he was as alone today as he was when he’d left his pack with nothing but the clothes on his back and a freshly bleeding exile mark on his forearm.

Even now the mark burned, and he felt it somewhere in his subconscious, a constant ringing bell that he couldn’t seem to ignore or dull.

He walked slowly down the path, checking each paddock and ensuring all was well. Aside from the norms’ paddock, all the others were empty save for the elephants, who were hosting a cookout and holding a ceremony to welcome their new alpha female.

He stopped in front of the gate to the memory’s paddock. In the distance, he could see light from the firepit and hear the echo of voices.

Jealousy from his wolf rose inside him, and he didn’t try to stifle it. It was one of those monsters that lay in the dark with him, when he didn’t work himself to the point of exhaustion so he wouldn’t constantly think of her. He should have come to the park with his soulmate so they could start a life together, not alone with nothing and no one. The jealousy twined with bitterness, coating his tongue like too-sweet candy.

The walkie on his belt chirped, interrupting his downward spiral, and he lifted it off the leather strap.

“Jasper.”

“It’s Amadeus. There’s someone at the front gate for you.”

“What? For me?”

He turned from the elephant’s paddock and walked down the path heading toward the front gate.

“Yep.” The lion’s voice lowered considerably. “A female.”

“Forme?” he repeated, his footsteps quickening.

“Yeah.”

“I’m on the way.”

He kicked his pace up to a jog, his mind spinning. Everyone he knew was in the park.

Well, except for his former pack members. Those peopleheknew but they didn’t know him anymore. He’d chosen exile instead of facing the demons and the price he would have been required to pay. No one from that pack would contact him. Not without accepting a severe punishment from the alpha.

That dickhead.

As he reached the gate, he saw Amadeus, Jupiter, who was the head of security, and Lucius, another lion, standing on the park’s side of the large wrought iron entry gates that were now closed.

On the other side was a person standing in the shadows.

His wolf pranced in his mind.

The figure stepped up to the gate, hands clasping the iron bars.

As he moved closer, he caught the hint of cinnamon and a memory he didn’t want to experience surged back into his brain, of a moonless night and a sky full of stars, and the broken promise that made him feel like half of his bones had been replaced with lead, weighing him down and dulling his senses.

Then he heard a voice that he never thought he’d hear again, and he knew that the eyes he couldn’t see in the dark would be the most incredible shade of violet.

“Jasper? I need your help.”

Maggie had been shooed away from the grill where Alistair and the other men were cooking a meal for their memory’s party ahead of the joining ceremony. She sat around a firepit that the guys had hauled over from an old storage barn, with Rhapsody and her little Khap, and Novi. The two women had quickly become like a second family to Maggie, and even now she counted them closer than any friends she’d had over the years.

She didn’t make friends easily. It came easy to some people, like Penny, who picked up friends everywhere she went. But it never was that easy for Maggie.

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