Elena’s POV
My mother’s eyes stayed on the elegant box resting on the little kitchen table for a mont too long.
She didn’t press. She never pressed. She just crossed to the coffee pot, poured a careful cup, and sat down across from at the little table under the window.
“That’s an expensive dress inside that elegant packaging,” she noted quietly.
“I know,” I said, eting her gaze. “I have to return it to its owner today.”
“Today.”
She wrapped both hands around the mug. Her knuckles were thin. I could see the veins on the backs of her hands, blue under skin that had gone too pale lately.
“Don’t run yourself into the ground, love.”
I looked up.
She was watching over the rim of her cup. Her eyes were the sa color as mine, only tireder. Her smile was small and crooked and very, very gentle.
“I an it,” she said. “Whatever you’re fixing. Whatever you’re paying for. Don’t do it all at once.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise .”
“I promise.”
She set the mug down. She reached across the table and she squeezed my good wrist, briefly, the way she used to do when I was small and needed walking into a room I did not want to enter. Then she got up. She pulled her coat off the hook. She kissed the top of my head as she passed.
The door shut behind her.
I sat for a mont in the quiet.
Then I closed the book. I grabbed my bag. I went.
The walk into town was long.
The road curved out past the last of the pack houses and then dropped down into the flat stretch that led to the highway. I kept my hands in my pockets. I kept my head down against the wind.
The industrial end of town was the part nobody showed visitors. Long low buildings. Chain link. A wide gravel lot with rows of trucks lined up like sleeping animals, their cabs dark, their trailers hitched.
The distribution facility sat at the center of it all. A squat building the color of wet concrete, with a row of loading bays open along one side and n in reflective vests moving pallets back and forth. A sign on the door said HIRING.
I went in.
The office was warm and slled like old coffee and machine grease. A man behind a cluttered desk looked up over a pair of reading glasses when the bell over the door rang.
“Help you?”
“I saw the sign.”
He took the glasses off. He looked up and down, not unkindly. He had a round face and a salt-and-pepper beard and a pen tucked behind his ear.
“You’re Fairfax’s girl.”
“Yes.”
“You’re in school.”
“Not anymore.”
He raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“I tested out,” I explained. “They moved my credits up. I officially graduated.”
“Done done.”
“Done done.”
He whistled, a low appreciative sound, and leaned back in his chair.
“Well,” he said, looking genuinely impressed. “Good for you.”
“I need work.”
“I need workers.” He rubbed his jaw practically. “So of my regulars walked out recently. I’ve got custors complaining constantly about delayed deliveries. You ever done warehouse?”
“No.”
“Lift.”
“Yes.”
“On your feet all day.”
“Yes.”
“Cold.”
“I’ve been cold.”
That got half a smile. He pulled a form out of a drawer and slid it across the desk, along with the pen from behind his ear.
“Fill this out. Start first thing in the morning. Wear boots if you’ve got ’em. If you don’t, I’ve got a spare pair in the back that’ll be too big but they’ll do until you can buy your own.”
I sat down. I filled in the boxes. My hand was steady. My heart was not.
When I slid the form back across, he glanced at it, nodded once, and dropped it in a tray.
“Tomorrow morning, Fairfax.”
“Tomorrow morning.”
I walked out into the gravel lot with my hands pushed deep into my pockets and for a long mont I let myself feel sothing like good. A job. A real one. Money I could hold.
I started ho.
The air had a particular bite to it now, a clean tallic edge that I knew from years of waking up in this valley.
Snow. Soon.
I could sll it.
As I walked, I thought about winter. I thought about the trailer’s bad furnace. I thought about my mother’s coat, which had a tear in the lining she had stitched twice. I thought about a car, which we did not have, and the long walk between our road and anywhere useful when the snow truly ca. I worried deeply about how we would survive the bitter cold without a vehicle.
I walked faster.
The walk back went faster. I kept a list in my head. Cleaner for the dress. Return it clean. Pay down the oldest of my mother’s dical bills. Set aside a little, just a little, for the cardboard college folder I kept under the couch.
The trailer ca up through the trees and I took the steps quickly and pushed the door open.
I unwrapped a heel of bread from the counter. I cut a slice of cheese. I put the kettle on. I ate standing up, preparing a simple al the way I always did, looking out the little kitchen window at the grey line of the woods.
I turned around to put the knife in the sink.
My eyes went, by habit, to the little kitchen table.
The elegant box was gone.
I stopped.
I stared at the bare table in sudden horror.
No.
I thoroughly searched the cramped space. I tore the front room apart. Under the couch. Behind the couch. Inside the cushions. Under the afghan. Under the table. I opened the cabinet under the sink. I opened the oven. The oven. Who puts a dress in an oven. I did not care. I was opening the oven.
Nothing.
Nothing, and nothing, and nothing.
I stood in the middle of the front room and I pressed my hands flat against my thighs and I tried to make my breathing even out. The dress was gone. The box was gone. The ribbon was gone. Sobody had co in here while I was walking into town to ask a stranger for a job, and they had taken a dress that cost more than this trailer, and they had walked right back out again.
I realized the incredibly expensive dress was missing, and I was completely finished.
That was the only clear thought in my head.
I was finished.
I grabbed my jacket off the hook, trembling.
I went.
The familiar path through the dense woods was the one I’d run that morning. Pine needles wet under my shoes. The wind had picked up. It shoved at the tops of the trees and made them groan against each other. I kept to the trail. I did not let myself run, because running would tire , and I needed every scrap I had for what ca next.
The packhouse rose up out of the trees, pale stone, dark windows, the gravel of the circle drive raked clean.
I stopped behind the big oak at the edge of the lawn.
An unfamiliar luxury car was parked on the drive that did not belong to the pack. Long. Black. The kind of quiet expensive that did not need a hood ornant to announce itself. A driver in a dark coat stood beside the front wheel with his hands folded, waiting.
The Alpha had visitors.
Of course.
I pressed my back against the bark and I closed my eyes for a brief mont. My breath was coming too fast. I slowed it. I opened my eyes. I stepped out from behind the tree and I walked up the drive with determination.
I firmly rang the bell.
The door opened.
The woman on the other side was not Hugo. She was not anyone I had seen before. An unfamiliar oga, by the line of her shoulders and the way she held the door. Young. Neat uniform. Shiny dark hair pulled back into a knot so tight it must have hurt.
She looked at .
She looked at my running shoes with the soles coming loose. She looked at my jacket. She looked at the flyaways the wind had pulled out of my ponytail. Her eyes went up and back down again, slow, thorough, full of disdain, the way you look at sothing you have already decided is not worth much.
Her mouth curved smugly.
“Can I help you?”
“I need to see Alpha Marcus imdiately.”
“The Alpha is currently receiving visitors,” she claid arrogantly.
I refused to be intimidated.
“Tell him Elena is here and I need to see him right now,” I commanded forcefully.
She tilted her head. Sweet. Sticky sweet. The kind of sweet that wasn’t.
“As I said, the Alpha is with guests,” she repeated slowly, as if I had not heard her the first ti. “Perhaps if you left a ssage—”
“Go tell him,” I ordered sharply, stepping closer to the door so she could see the hard resolve in my face. “Don’t make wait until your shift ends, because I absolutely will.”
Her smug smile slipped.
She did not answer .
I did not wait for her to find one. I turned on my heel and I walked back down the steps into the bitter wind. My heart was pounding with dread over the disastrous consequences the missing dress was about to bring.
As I walked back through the woods, the wind picked up again, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was only the beginning of more big trouble coming.
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