Page 3 of Hunted

“You shouldn’t be so surprised, Pen. Your cakes are incredible.” I pick up my easily won chocolate milkshake and take a long sip from my straw, wincing when I pay for it with a serious case of brain freeze.

From Penny’s furrowed forehead, she’s thinking hard.

“What?” I put down my glass and pick up my menu. I don’t know why I even bother looking at the menu. I always order the same thing.

A car slows to a crawl just outside and I turn to see why. It’s a navy Hyundai slowly driving past. Maybe a tourist looking for the hotel? My gaze briefly connects with the driver, a man in his early twenties with shoulder length light brown hair and cobalt blue eyes.

I’m used to seeing hikers who come to Winter Lake for the quiet forests, or white-haired couples drawn to the retirement town with its pretty pastel Mom & Pop stores.

“You’re really good at this,” Penny says, distracting me from the man outside.

“Good at what?” I shake off the unease that he was staring right at me, breathing out a sigh of relief when he continues down the main road toward the hotel.

“Being that L word,” she says quietly, her lips barely moving.

The diner isn’t that busy yet since we’re here for an early 11 a.m. lunch, but we don’t talk about shifters or anything that we wouldn’t want any of the human inhabitants of this retirement town to know. Namely, that they have a shifter pack living in their midst.

I assume the L word Penny means is Luna. The female leader of the pack. It’s a role I never expected to step into, want, or enjoy so much.

I shake my head, denying it. “I’m just doing what I would have liked someone to do for me growing up.”

My mom died shortly after giving birth to me. If she’d lived, she would have been the Luna of the Boone Pack. She’d have led the pack alongside my dad and served as the maternal leader in the pack.

Penny’s smile grows. “That must be why, then. You know exactly what it’s like and you know exactly what we need.”

Growing up, I’ve been neglected, ignored, and treated like I didn’t belong. If there is anything I could do to stop anyone feeling the way I did, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

I motion at the menu to hide my embarrassmentandmy pleasure. “What are you ordering?”

“Salad.”

I raise my eyebrow.

She rolls her eyes. “Burger, of course, with onion rings and bacon, and I will enjoy every bit of grease and crave even more of it.”

I lift my chocolate milkshake to toast what sounds like an excellent idea. “And pie for dessert?”

She chinks her glass with mine. “What is a trip to the diner without pie?”

2

MACK

Ilook out of Bennett’s garage, waving at Aerin as she crosses the road from the grocery store to the diner. Penny helped her load the groceries in the trunk, so I didn’t go help her like I did the week before.

Aerin returns my smile before she disappears inside for their lunch date. As always, she’s beautiful, her long brown hair in a braid and her gray-blue eyes like a summer storm.

“Someone is going to mistake you for a stalker. You know that, right?” Bennett calls out.

I turn from the open shutters at the front of his garage in the center of Winter Lake. As usual, he’s buried his head in the hood of a car. But such is the life of a mechanic.

“If that was Helena across the road, I guarantee you would be standing at the door alongside me,” I say.

Helena, Bennett’s mate, is in the early stages of her pregnancy, so fatigue and morning sickness often mean she doesn’t join Bennett when he arrives to work in his garage before 6. As I’m leaving to go home with Aerin is usually when Helena is pulling up to have lunch with Bennett.

He lifts his shaved head from under the hood, and his expression is thoughtful. “Nope.”

“Liar.” A vibration pulls my gaze to the other occupant in the garage.

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