Page 1 of Storm's Mistake

Chapter One

“Shadow Storm is here.”

Lisa looked toward the main door of the coffee shop, and sure enough, there was Shadow himself—over six feet of him—filling the entire doorway. She didn’t even need to look around to know men and women admired him. They all wanted a piece of him.

She glanced over toward Adele who’d given her the heads-up that her ex had entered the store. Not that anyone would have known they were ever a couple. They were rarely ever seen together. In the beginning, she had figured it was because he was getting used to dating a human, but then, much to her embarrassment, it was another reason.

They’d been dating for nearly a year. He’d been flirting with her every time he came into the coffee shop, and she’d always rejected his advances. She never once believed a single word he said about how beautiful and smart she was, and that she made the best coffee. Now, she did take the coffee comments seriously.

At twenty-five years old, she’d been serving coffee for five years. After her parents passed away six years ago, she had soldtheir family home, packed up and moved to No Wolves Road. This is where she wanted to be.

As a human, her family had moved from place to place, including areas dominated by pack wolves. Lisa wasn’t clear about how they had come to know the existence of wolves, just that her family did. This also meant they were able to find them. She believed it was due to some distant cousin or something like that who ended up married, or became a wolf. Again, very vague, but either way, she knew about the existence of wolves. Some of the packs she’d lived among hadn’t exactly been nice. Some had been downright cruel.

So, No Wolves Road had felt like a sanctuary to her. No wolves resided in this small town, however, they were surrounded by multiple large and small packs, or even lone wolves. None of them lived in the town, and this suited her.

However, as she’d been living here five years, she’d also come to see something she didn’t like. The wolves, as in most of the old packs, used the male and female humans.

Until a few months ago, when an Eloise Richards finally settled down with one Beau Alpha, no other wolf had taken the lurch and mated to one of them.

They were humans, lesser species. The only good quality they seemed to possess was the ability to serve and to fuck. She hated this, and she vowed to never date one of them.

That had technically lasted four and a half years, until six months ago. She finally gave in and dated Shadow. He’d been sweet, kind, and very sincere. She should have known it was all a façade. They’d dated for six months, and during that time, she had fallen madly in love with him, given him her virginity, and in her head, saw a future together. Then, one cruel night, he didn’t know she was heading to the bar to see him. That was when she heard him talk about her.

“Fuck, no, I’m not settling down with her. She’s a piece ofpussy, that’s all. Something to have fun with and not think about the future. I’d never mate to a human. Please, we all know what they’re good for.”

There had been some rude comments about her size, and some men had wondered how he could enjoy screwing such a woman.

All Lisa remembered was being so heartbroken. She’d never been a woman to cause scenes, and rather than see them laughing at her, she’d left. She never called Shadow back. When he came knocking on her door to see her, she literally didn’t move, so he didn’t sense she was home. Until he left, assuming she wasn’t home, she stayed perfectly still.

Avoiding his calls, not answering the door, it was only a matter of time before he ended up at the coffee shop, and she finally confronted him two weeks ago. Since then, he hadn’t been in the coffee shop. To some women, he wasn’t worth her tears or her time, but she was still struggling to get over him.

“Do you want me to handle him?” Adele asked.

The other woman was the same age as her, only she was smart. Adele didn’t flirt, she didn’t steal glances at anyone. She stayed perfectly neutral, not giving any wolf the time of day. Now that she thought about it, Adele didn’t flirt with any human or wolf.

She was tempted to let Adele deal with everything related to Shadow, but Lisa didn’t want to feel this way. No Wolves Road was a small town, and she wasn’t leaving it because she couldn’t handle one guy. Shadow was one single guy. A cruel one, but also just a wolf, and she would get over him soon enough. He’d taken her virginity and said some of the sweetest things to her, but it didn’t really matter.

She blew out a breath and shook her head. “No, if I get him as a customer, it will be fine.”

There was no way she was going to run away from this.Keeping her fake smile in place, she served several customers, aware of some leaving the line just to allow Shadow to advance. She was not going to show how nervous she was. He didn’t deserve to see her pain, or to know how she was feeling.

In the space of five minutes, he moved right in front of her, and it was time for her to take his order.

“What can I get you?” she asked, glancing down at the register so she could ring him up and have no reason to look at him.

“Lisa,” he said.

She hadn’t expected his voice to be so soft, and she was tempted to look up to see what he wanted, but that would be giving in to this ridiculous need, and she was not doing that.

“Can I take your order?” she asked, going for a different approach.

“I want you to look at me.”

“If you’re not going to give me your order, then you should leave the line,” Lisa said, only this time she did look up and stared into Shadow’s smug face.

At first, he had this smile on his face, one she could only assume meant complete and total victory. But, as the seconds passed and she didn’t smile back nor give him any reason to believe she wanted him, the smile slipped. It was almost comical, and she would have laughed if it weren’t for the pain slashing through her chest.

This man had betrayed her, hurt her, and above all else, he’d used her. She didn’t know what hurt more—the fact he used her or that she hadn’t seen it coming. He’d seemed so true, so nice, so honest. It had all been a lie, and she hated him for that more than anything.