Page 3 of Wynter Abandoned

Smoke stepped forward. “I told you, she’s near.”

“Well, near doesn’t fucking help, does it?” I roared, frustration boiling over.

My beta had a point though. All three of us had sensed our mate was close over the past year or so. Sometimes, when we went into town, my wolf would pick up a scent that fueled him on a wild goose chase but, after a while, the scent faded, leaving us back to square one. I almost believed our mate was a ghost or a shadow. Sure as hell seemed that way at times.

“Neither does parading females through the pack house like cattle, but it was your idea.” Titan had closed his eyes.

“Let’s stop talking about the things that aren’t working and focus on what can.” Smoke moved across the room to sit next to Titan. He was leaner than all of us, and his feet barely made asound as he walked. “We have the ball coming up. The ball the council suggested. I have an idea.”

“Name it.” I leaned against the front of my desk, crossing my arms over my chest. If Smoke had an idea of how to find our mate, I was kind of pissed he hadn’t spoken up earlier. Still, Smoke only talked to us like this. To others, he spoke minimally. It was his way. Always had been.

He went on, “You need to open up the ball to everyone. I don’t think for a second our mate is one of those pampered princesses we keep bringing here. I have a feeling she lives in the shadows, or in someone else’s shadow.”

“Explain,” Titan said, sitting up.

“Merchants. Traders. Store owners. Servants. Farmhands. Riders. Seamstresses. Every female in our pack’s domain needs to be here. With or without a wolf.”

His last sentence had me curious. What was my friend thinking? “Smoke, I can’t mate with a human. We…we can’t mate with a human.”

His eyes met mine. “I never said human. There are some who haven’t shifted yet. Latents. Those who are half shifter who maybe weren’t comfortable coming to the runs or weren’t selected to come here and twirl their dresses in front of the alpha. Every female needs to be here. It’s the only way we’re going to find her.”

Silence hung between us for a few moments.

Then I nodded. “Titan, I’ll go down and look at the females, just in case. Smoke, send word to the printer and double, no triple, the amount of invitations to print for the ball. And at the bottom, make sure it reads to dress in your best. I don’t want anyone not to attend because of something as stupid as a dress.”

Chapter Three

Wynter

As soon as my stepsisters and their mother, all of whom had returned to their beds for breakfast, were served, I fled outdoors to the barn and chicken coop to care for the animals. Back when Daddy was still with us, it had been a family chore, well, family meaning he and I. Stepmama and her daughters had various reasons for not helping. Allergies to dust, fur, feathers, hair, straw… Headaches, backaches, andit’s not ladylike.

But I didn’t mind. It was so much better, just the two of us doing the milking in the warm barn on a cold morning, the cow’s breath steaming in the air. Brushing the horses he loved that we no longer had because they were too expensive to feed and had been sold away to someone else in the pack. I hoped every day they were taking care of them.

I cleaned Bossie’s stall and forked in some fresh straw bedding, fed and watered her, and gave her a good scratching around the ears and a kiss on the nose. “Thanks for the milk. You are my best friend.”

The chickens were such good layers and really didn’t take much work. I made sure to fix their coop when necessary and let them out to bustle around in the yard and take dust baths while hunting for insect snacks on nice days. Like this one.

“Might be warm enough in a while, girls, if you’re up for playing?”

Clucking and fluffing of wings ensued, which I translated to mean, “Why are we waiting? We want to play now!”

“In a bit.” I checked all the nesting boxes and found a dozen or so eggs. Not as many as usual, and I would have to try to convince my stepmama, as I did every year, that it was because of the weather and time of year and not because the chickenswere lazy or past their prime and needed to be eaten. “Just have your breakfast.” I filled their trough with grain and some fruit and vegetable trimmings and rinsed out their bowl before pouring in clean, fresh water. “I’ll be back later.”

I didn’t really think the animals answered me. Not in words, but I knew they appreciated my efforts. They weren’t shifters, just ordinary beasts, but they reacted honestly to my behavior and my words. They didn’t seek out ways to be cruel to me, to make me feel like less than a human or a wolf shifter.

Returning to the barn to make sure I’d closed the cow’s stall properly, I caught my reflection in the water barrel. A smile lifted my lips, just a bit, but it fell as an unladylike shriek from the house told me my presence was needed to do something any of the three of them could do for herself. One of a variety of tasks not nearly as pleasant as caring for our animals. But this afternoon, I’d slip out again. I was preparing the garden beds for their long sleep and to be ready for planting in the spring. We didn’t grow anything to sell, just enough for our needs, or many of them. The stepsisters had exotic tastes and demanded many things out of season that had to be bought at great cost. Daddy had left enough to keep us comfortable, or so I believed, but if they continued to gobble imported chocolates and rare coffee that had been through some animal’s digestive tract and lots of things in small jars that cost more than the finest steak, it would not last forever.

Trudging back to the house, I swung by my shed and tucked an egg behind my bed. I didn’t have a way to cook it, but it was a good source of protein, even raw.

***

The shriek coming from inside the house was, to my relief, a squeal of happiness instead of something they deemed horrifying like a mouse or a cobweb in a corner somewhere.

As I gathered the plates from breakfast, haphazardly discarded outside their respective bedrooms, as though this were a hotel instead of a home, I listened to them talk about what was scream-worthy. Not that I’d ever been to a hotel, but I had read about them in Calla and Violet’s discarded paperbacks.

They were excited about the upcoming event at another pack, one we had never visited before, at least that I knew of. It had been a while since I’d been anywhere really.

And they had heard some out-of-town alphas would be in attendance.

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