Page 52 of Pack’s Pledge

I suspected she did, too.

“You ready?” I asked, and she just looked at me. “You’ll see when you get there,” I said, laughing as I pulled away from the curb.

We’d bought the cabin–signed the contract together, each of our names on the deed–as a sort of present to ourself for forming our pack.Mating.We’d been living in a tiny apartment then, and wanted somewhere to go, to get away from the city, from the eyes that followed us wherever we went. It was a dump, I knew, trying to see it from Britt’s eyes as we pulled into the gravel driveway, up to the brown-painted cabin, the off-kilter front porch with the mismatched rocking chairs. I threw her duffle onto my shoulder, snagged my own from the trunk, and trudged up and into the house. I’d had the property manager come and open it up for us, so we weren’t greeted by the stale, cold darkness that Beau and Conall and I typically endured–roughing it–but by a stocked fridge, the warm glow of lamplight.

I let the duffles fall heavily to the ground.

“Hey, bartender,” I said, and she smiled. “Want to fix us some drinks?” I jerked my head at the bookshelf in the corner of the room, and watched as her eyes lit up.

“Ooh, the good stuff,” she said as she strode over, confidently picking up bottles one after the other. “Oh, damn, you have–”

“Of course we do. You want some?” I went to get two glasses. “That one’s Conall’s favorite. Irish, you know,” I called over my shoulder, then cringed. Was it too early to be joking about Conall?

“Typical,” she said, as I passed over two mismatched rocks glasses, standing at her side as she poured two fingers of brown liquid into each of them. “Adrian. Why are we here?”

“Fuck if I know. Why’d you say yes when I asked you?”

She passed me my drink. “I don’t know, either.”

“As long as we’re on the same page, then,” I said, holding up the tumbler.

We cheersed our glasses and sat back on the couch, each of us taking a small sip.

“Wow, I’d forgotten how good that is,” Britt sighed.

I swirled my liquor in my glass. We shouldn’t be drinking on empty stomach, especially not straight whiskey, but then again, maybe it would make my job here a little easier if Britt tongue was loosened up some. “Before you worked at Ardor, you were a…”

“You can say it,” she smirked.

“A real bartender?”

“Yeah. I love it. I went to college for hospitality,” she said, and took another sip, closing her eyes. “I worked at a bar right after graduation, thinking I’d move up into management, or whatever, but… You know, during the shift, you think,I fucking hate this, these people are so annoying, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “Why Ardor, then?”

She took a deep breath and held it, before letting it all out in a rush. “Conall.” Without picking up her head from the back of the couch, she turned to look at me. “I’d always been interested in… In pack dynamics, or whatever you want to call it. Ever since…” She didn’t have to say it, but she did anyway. “Since Conall.”

“Mmm,” I said, swirling my whiskey and taking a drink.“Tell me about it. What happened.”

“Back then?” I nodded as Britt sank down into the couch. Her shirt pulled up to expose a sliver of soft stomach, and I forced down the wave of memory that rose in my mind: the curve of her hip as she rode Beau, the arch of her back, the roundness of her ass, so different than mine or Conall’s or even Beau’s. I hadn’t been entirely selfless when I’d flirted with her that first night, and I hadn’t been subtle about that.“There’s not much to say. He presented. We… drifted apart. He left. I never saw him again.”

But she’d gotten a job at Ardor a decade later.She’d never stopped looking.

“That’s it, really,” she shrugged, looking into her drink. “I thought it would be interesting, to see how it all worked, I guess. I was quickly disabused of that notion. It’s just like a regular bar, but without any alcohol. More assholes, maybe. Alphas.” She shrugged. “No offense.”

“But by that time you’d been introduced to artisanal Italian water, and you couldn’t quit.”

She laughed. I wanted to hear that sound every day.“No, but the pay’s good. The tips, I mean. A lot of alphas, trying to prove something.” She went quiet, looking down into her drink. “And I kept thinking, maybe tonight…”

“Maybe tonight, you’d be picked up by a handsome alpha who’d sweep you off your feet,” I said, but she shook her head.

“Nota handsome alpha,” she said, and tossed back the last of her drink, peeking at me from under black lashes. “There was only ever him.”

I sat, feeling a little bit stunned, as she gestured to my nearly-empty glass. “You want another? I can fix you up something. I need the practice.”

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed, unthinking. She’d been working at Ardor, making shitty mocktails and flirting with belligerent alphas, to find Conall.

“Here,” she said, returning from the bar after a moment’s work. “A whiskey sour. And don’t worry, I didn’t use the good stuff for this.”

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