Page 184 of Secret Shifters Next Door

“You got it. She’s cute, bro.”

I growled into the phone before hanging up on Blayne’s laughter. I sat, tapping my foot until the email with all the info came through. Pulling up everything Blayne had found, I spent the next two hours researching Celina Santos.

She’d been in foster care from the age of four. Her mother had been deported and, from the written statement from her, hadn’t wanted to take her child back to live in poverty. She’d given her up to the system rather than have her live in a slum in Brazil. The father had been a Scottish expat who’d disappeared not long after Celina was born.

It all sent me into a pissy mood. Everything I read told me Celina had had a crap life. Father ran out on her when she was a baby. Mom gave her away. One set of foster parents had been arrested for neglect. She’d bounced around half a dozen different homes. It made the situation with my own parents rear its head. It was difficult not to draw parallels.

I’d been born an alpha, but I wasn’t in line for the role. The son of my pack’s alpha had been. That hadn’t been an issue. I hated the idea of being in charge of anything, which was ironic since the guys tended to defer to me all the time like I was the leader of our little pack. Instead of worrying about being alpha, my whole world had been wrapped up in the girl I loved. We’d been friends since we were born and fell in love later. I’d known, deep in my soul, that she was my one true mate. We’d made so many plans: kids, growing old together, even a human-style wedding.

Then, over the course of a week, she grew distant and wouldn’t answer my calls or texts. I’d decided to go see her—spur of the moment—to figure out what was wrong. At her house, Ifound her in bed with the alpha’s son. They hadn’t heard or seen me come in. He hadn’t forced himself on her, and it was clear that she’d been enjoying what they were doing.

They’d finally noticed and yelped in surprise. I ran before either of them could say anything. The next day, the alpha’s son taunted me by telling me how sweet my girl was and how she was better off with a true alpha than with a second-tier wannabe Beta. I’d lost my mind and attacked him, beating him until he was unconscious, until the rest of the pack had to drag me away and restrain me with ropes.

Attacking a future alpha was the same as attacking the current alpha and was punishable by death. Thankfully, our alpha understood what had gone down and how sensitive the situation was. He verbally chastised his son and took pity on me by banishing me rather than killing me. My parents wanted to go with me into banishment, but I’d run off in the night because I didn’t want to drag them into a life away from a pack.

In a way, I’d lost my family too. I’d gone it alone for years, struggling to afford tuition and scrounging for scholarships to pay for college. I’d come out the other end with a criminal justice degree; Celina had become an author. Both were solitary jobs. Her pain was greater than mine, though. At least my parents had wanted to stay with me. Hers had both abandoned her without looking back.

My wolf whined as I thought about a little girl crying in bed, wondering where her mommy and daddy were and why they didn’t love her enough to keep her. I’d chosen to leave my parents behind; she hadn’t been given any kind of choice. The only communication I had with Mom and Dad was a postcard on my birthday, so they knew I was still alive. It broke the no-contact rule, but I needed to stay connected to them in some way. I wondered if Celina would want even such a small sliver of a relationship with her parents.

I collapsed back into the cushions of my couch, pinching the bridge of my nose to try and stave off the building headache. I was screwed. What kind of person would abandon their mate? Especially after learning how shitty her life had been? How she’d been discarded by the people who should have loved her unconditionally. The fact that I knew all this about her made me feel guilty. I was a PI, it was what I did, but it didn’t make it any less of a violation.

I spent an hour stewing on what I’d learned. My wolf was drawn to her, and from what Steff and Tate went through, I knew there would be little to no fight against its desires. No matter what my wolf thought, Celina would be better off without me. The one woman I’d ever loved had shunned me for another. I wasn’t worth the love anyone might have for me. Why should I drag her down?

The doorbell rang, and I jumped in surprise. It was too late for mail, and I hadn’t ordered any food. I walked to the door and opened it. No one was around the door, but there was a container on the doormat. Kneeling to pick it up, I read the note on top:

Enjoy.

I glancedat Celina’s door and could almost feel her presence there. My wolf chuffed and wanted me to go knock, but I just grinned and took the tub into my apartment. It was full of cookies. Chocolate chip cookies, no less. My favorite. I ate one and groaned in pleasure. In twenty minutes, I’d eaten the whole dozen. I thanked God for my shifter metabolism and wished I’d stopped at the store on the way home. The only milk I had was three weeks past date.

She’d been too shy to give them to me face to face. It was a nice gesture, especially for someone I’d only met that same day. With a belly full of cookies, I went to bed early, exhausted—emotionally, mentally, and physically—from the day. I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I woke up the next morning at my usual five a.m. I always went for a jog before the sun came up. Before I left, I wrote my own note and put it with the empty container on Celina’s welcome mat.

Usually, a jog cleared my head. This morning was different, though. Instead of sweeping the troubles from my mind, every step seemed to overwhelm me with more thoughts, problems, excuses, and desires. The logical thing to do would be to talk to the guys about it, but I knew what their answer would be. They would want me to be with my mate. That alone made it difficult to get out of my head. No matter what scenario I played out in my mind, I could never see a way that this woman, or any woman for that matter, would want me. If the one person I loved more than anything in the world could turn their back on me…The odds weren’t in my favor. No reason to get my hopes up.

I picked up the pace, pumping my arms and legs until I was sprinting. I went like that for over a mile and a half, letting my shifter endurance and power haul my body along at a speed no human could match in that distance. I slowed back to a more normal speed. Sweat was rolling down my forehead and off my cheeks and nose by the time I got to five miles.

I wiped my face and stared at the ground, not paying attention, which led me to bump into someone. My heart lurched, and I snapped my hands out to catch the person I hit, already thinking about how to apologize. We stumbled together, and I saw it was a young woman. Doing my best to steady my feet and catch her, I barely managed to keep us both upright. I was breathing heavily when I stepped back.

“I am so sorry,” I said. “I’m an idiot. I wasn’t paying attention.”

The woman smiled at me. She was attractive, dressed in a very tight pair of very short jogging shorts and a sports bra that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. I averted my eyes from her legs, belly, and breasts and focused on her face.

“You’re good. I was jogging right in the middle of the path,” she said. “I was asking for it, I guess. Could have been worse. You could have been cycling or something.”

I was finally catching my breath, the sweat already drying on my body. I nodded. “Yeah, that would have been bad. Again, Sorry about plowing you over.”

The woman grinned again, and her eyes slid across my body, top to bottom and back up. I suddenly remembered I’d taken off my shirt and tucked it into the waistband of my shorts about two miles before.

When she looked at me again, there was an undeniably hungry gleam in her eyes. “My friends told me there was a hot guy who likes to jog this path every morning. I’ve been coming out for a few weeks now and thought they were lying. Looks like they weren’t wrong. You are…wow.”

I smiled awkwardly, not sure what to do with the compliment. Steff was better at this than I was. He’d always been the true Casanova of our group. Deep in my mind, my wolf growled in irritation. Its disdain for this woman radiated through me like heat from a fire. It didn’t make much sense, though. She was gorgeous, half-naked, and flirting with me. My wolf usually loved when sexy women flirted with me, even though I was clueless about how to capitalize on it.

The disgust it felt had to stem from the fact that the stranger wasn’t Celina. Was this how it would be for the rest of my life? Even if she left and never came back, would my wolf despiseany and every woman who approached me? That would be inconvenient as hell.

“Um…well, I need to head back home. Sorry to run you down, and nice to meet you. Uh, Miss?”

She extended her hand, and I shook it. “Felicity. Felicity Cruz.” Her gaze lingered on the sweat-glistening abdominal muscles of my torso before she raised an eyebrow. “It was really nice meeting you, too. Bye.”

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