The Alpha I Shouldn't Want

Chapter Six — Shift

° AUTHOR'S POV °

They didn't stop until they reached the stream.

It cut through a clearing about three miles from the estate, water clear and cold, running fast over smooth stones, sunlight scattering gold across the surface.

Sera had spent half her childhood here — skipping rocks with the twins, arguing about whose turn it was to catch fish with bare hands, once nearly drowning Kaiden after he'd startled her with a very convincing snake impression that turned out to be a stick.

Kieran slowed to a stop at the water's edge and she slid off his back, legs a little unsteady from the ride.

Both boys shifted back a moment later, dressed again almost instantly — pack members learned early how to carry spare clothes tied at their ankles, a habit that saved everyone a great deal of awkwardness.

Kaiden dropped onto the grass with a groan, stretching out like the run had personally wronged him.

"I forgot how far that clearing is."

"You forget everything," Kieran said, settling beside him, more composed but visibly tired around the eyes.

Sera sat between them, dipping her fingers into the cold water, letting it wake her the rest of the way up.

For a while, none of them said anything. It was easy, comfortable, the kind of silence that only happened between people who'd known each other long enough not to need filling it.

Kaiden broke it first. He always did.

"So," he said, entirely too casual. "Tell us about him."

"Who?"

"You know who. The human. Adam."

"Adrian."

"Whatever. The one you dated in the city."

Sera groaned and flopped backward onto the grass, arm thrown over her eyes. "How do you even know about him?"

"Kieran mentioned it."

"I mentioned it once," Kieran said, "because you wouldn't stop asking why she came back different."

"I'm not different."

"You're quieter," Kieran said, and there wasn't any judgment in it, just observation, the way he catalogued everything. "You used to tell us everything before you finished thinking it."

"Maybe I grew up."

"Maybe," he agreed, though he didn't sound convinced.

"How did you even know." Sera turned to Kieran with a questioning gaze.

He just shrugged.

Kaiden propped himself up on an elbow, grinning like he smelled blood in the water. "So what happened? Did he break your heart? Do we need to hunt him down?"

"Nobody's hunting anybody."

"I could find him. I have connections."

"You have Kieran, who has a library card."

"That counts as connections."

She laughed despite herself, pulling her arm away from her face to look at the sky, pale blue and cloudless above the canopy. "It wasn't dramatic. We just weren't right for each other. He deserved someone who actually wanted to be there."

"And you didn't want to be there?"

She hesitated. That was the question, wasn't it. The one she'd been avoiding answering even to herself for the better part of two years.

"I don't know," she said finally. "I think some part of me was always somewhere else."

Kieran didn't say anything. But she felt his gaze on her, quiet and considering, the way it had been at breakfast, the way it had been for three days now, like he was slowly working out an equation she hadn't given him all the numbers for.

She was grateful, for once, that he didn't push.

Kaiden, less inclined toward subtlety, flopped back down onto the grass. "Human relationships sound exhausting."

"They're not that different."

"They don't even shift. What do you even talk about."

"Things that aren't shifting, Kaiden."

"Sounds boring."

"You're boring."

"I am literally the least boring person in this pack."

"Kieran is going to fight you for that title."

"Kieran's idea of excitement is a footnote."

"A well-sourced footnote," Kieran said mildly, and Sera laughed hard enough that she had to sit up, water from her fingers dripping onto the grass.

It was easy like this. It always had been. The two of them had a way of pulling her out of her own head that no one else ever quite managed, not even Valerian, who mostly just let her sit in it until she worked her way out on her own.

Valerian.

She hadn't meant to think of him. The thought arrived anyway, uninvited, the way it kept doing lately — his gloved hands, the broken goblet, the careful step backward on the training field.

She must have gone quiet, because Kaiden nudged her with his foot.

"You disappeared somewhere."

"Sorry. Just tired."

Kieran was watching her again. She could feel it without looking.

"Sera," he said, carefully, like he was choosing the words the way he chose his footing in a fight. "Can I ask you something?"

"You're going to whether I say yes or not."

"Fair." A small smile, gone as quickly as it came. "Why haven't you shifted?"

The question landed the way it always did — not sharp, not cruel, but heavy, settling into her chest like a stone dropped into still water. Kaiden's easy grin faded. Even the birds in the trees seemed to go quiet, though that was probably just her imagination working overtime.

"I don't know," she said honestly.

"You're twenty-three."

"I'm aware, Kieran."

"Most wolves shift by thirteen. Fourteen at the absolute latest."

"I am aware of that too."

It came out soft but harsher than the previous words she said.

°^°

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