Page 85 of Possessive Wolf Daddy

For a long time, I’d worried that I would never feel safe. Even doing something so simple as buying groceries had made my heart pound like I was participating in an extreme sport. But a lot had changed since that encounter. My life had been threatened several more times, for one thing. I guessed you got used to it after a while. For another, Quincy hadn’t been spotted since the day I gave birth. If luck was on our side, he was already dead.

The fact that no one outside our inner circle in Evergreen knew we were back yet gave me a little peace of mind. So did the presence of my security detail in the parking lot, and the privacy afforded by my makeshift disguise.

Tucking my hair under a ball cap and wearing baggy, dull-colored clothes seemed to be working. The other shoppers had taken little notice of me so far. That suited me just fine. I kept my head down anyway, just in case. I’d never been quite as famous as Xander was here. In high school, I’d gone mostly unrecognized, whereas he’d always been the natural golden boy.

But after Marianne abducted me, my picture had ended up in the local paper. The boys’ kidnapping had landed me on the national news. And even barring all that, my profile had been greatly elevated since Xander declared I was his mate.

In a town like Evergreen, gossip spread like wildfire. It felt good to be doing something so normal as grocery shopping again, but it would feel even better if I could do it without being watched.

As I approached an open check-out lane, I was confident that I’d get my wish. No one had noticed me yet. I was in the home stretch.

But then a familiar voice said my name. “Lissy?”

She was behind the cash register, dressed in a dark red polo shirt. It clashed with her pink hair, which was duller and limper than usual. It was tied back in a messy bun that showed off more of the natural brown color at her roots than I’d ever seen back when we both worked at Evergreen Hills.

“Hey, Lexi.” I tucked my head a little lower. Historically speaking, I wasn’t Lexi’s favorite person. The last time we spoke, we hadn’t parted on the best terms. But now that she’d recognized me, I didn’t think I could convince her I was someone else. “It’s, uh, good to see you again.”

“It’s been a long time.” She forced a smile. “How are you and Lieutenant Fire Hazard?” As soon as the words left her lips, her eyes widened like she’d just shocked herself with her own audacity. “I mean, um, Xander. Sorry.”

“We’re okay,” I said, unloading my cart onto the check-out’s conveyor belt as quickly as I could. Despite my nerves over being spotted, I found myself actually smiling back at her.Lieutenant Fire Hazard.I’d forgotten she used to call Xander that. It felt like a relic from a gentler time. “How about you?”

“Yeah, I’m doing well. Really, really well.” She nodded to herself as she reached for the first item to scan. “Um. I heard about your boys. It was on the news. I’m… I’m really sorry.”

She sounded sincere, which was unusual. The Lexi I knew usually had her head entirely in the clouds, with no time or attention span for anyone else’s problems. Distantly, I recalled she’d been pretty rude to me when I last saw her.

I guessed we’d both changed a lot. She seemed perfectly polite now. Friendly and kind.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’re making good progress.”

Her eyebrows shot up hopefully. “Are you really? There haven’t been any updates on the news, so I thought…”

I bit my lip. Should I tell her?

She’d been through the wringer lately, too, or so it seemed. Fired, like Gena had been, and possibly on trumped-up accusations, and she genuinely sounded invested in the boys’ well-being.

“We found Rylan last week,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Xander’s out tracking Ryder down right now, and it’s looking promising. Soon, we’ll have them both home, safe and sound.”

“Oh my God,” she gushed. “That’s great news. I didn’t know you guys were back in town.”

“We’ve been trying to keep a low profile,” I confessed. “After that Morrow Manor piece in theBoston Examiner, with those pictures that journalist got of us, we’ve been kind of hoping that we wouldn’t have a repeat. Not until we’re ready, anyway.”

“Yeah, of course. I can understand that.” She nodded enthusiastically. “You know, there was a guy at the Farmer’s Wife a week or so ago who was asking about you. A shifter, I think. Older guy? Big and kind of grumpy-looking. If he was a reporter…”

I furrowed my brow thoughtfully.

An older guy. A shifter. At the Farmer’s Wife?

If he was grumpy-looking, that could only be one person.

“I know him,” I said, thinking of Denny. He fit the description, and he had said that he loved that restaurant. But Xander was the one paying him, not me. Why would I be the subject of his questions? “What was he asking?”

“Just general stuff about you, I guess. I only overhead him talking to Ed and Lola for a little bit.” She blushed as she swiped a carton of oat milk across the scanner. “I was grabbing a job application, not dining in. He wanted to know what you were like, what you did for work, who your parents were. That kind of thing.”

“Weird,” I said with a laugh. Denny was nosy. Who’d have thought? He’d probably done research on Xander, too. He might have been trying to scrape together another lead, or maybe he was just curious. In his line of work, paranoia and over-investigating his clients probably saved him a lot of grief.

“I didn’t tell him anything, I swear,” Lexi professed. “Like I said, I was in and out. It’s good that he’s not a reporter, though. I bet there’s big money in a story like yours right now.”

“Probably, yeah,” I agreed.

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