The Green Witch and the Alpha

Chapter 12: Sam

“What do you mean it’s not fair to him?” Mimi scoffed, “It’s not fair to you! He can screw anybody he wants and you’ll never know unless you catch him. This is completely unbalanced.”

During the long, early morning drive to the city for the farmer’s market, I told the others everything Ian had shared with me about betrayal pains and the rejection process. Mimi, of course, zeroed in on the part where Ian would know if I was with someone else due to betrayal pains but I, being a human, would not experience them.

“From what Moira said, werewolves take monogamy very seriously, so it’s a non-issue,” I countered.

“Good thing I’m not a werewolf then,” Alex commented. “But everything I’ve seen online in that database and on the message boards backs up what Moira said about werewolves after they meet their mates.”

“Hold up,” I said, “You really found them?”

“Oh, yeah,” Alex answered. “Just found them last night. I was going to tell you about it today. I haven’t really had time to go into a deep dive. But let me tell you, werewolf life is straight up wild. There seems to be a large number of werewolves who wait for their mates before doing anything, and I mean anything. Even kissing. But then there’s a substantial number who will apparently screw anything with a pulse until they meet their mate. It’s weird how there’s two extremes like that.”

“Oooooh, ooh, tell us more!” Mimi shrieked while bouncing in the front passenger seat.

Alex was driving and grabbed her ear, “Mimi!”

“Sorry, Alex,” Mimi whispered as she sank down in her seat. “Please tell us.”

“There’s not a whole lot more to report right now. I only glanced at a few conversations. Hey Sam, I’ll go ahead and tell you this: Hunter's Moon has its own group on there and there’s a whole thread about Ian and his mate. There are some conspiracy theories saying that he already found his mate and she died or ran away or something. Since he’s older and has a reputation for being stern and serious with no chill, they think his mate either died or rejected him and it was covered up.”

“What the hell?” I started laughing. Ian did seem to take things very seriously, but he’d also been nothing but sweet and kind to me. I wondered if he knew about these rumors that were running through his pack.

“Oh, and I also found out he’s apparently a straight up beast when fighting, too.”

“What do you mean?” I cut in, wondering why Ian would be fighting. I mean, he was a tall, jacked werewolf but he came across as a straight-laced businessman. He ran a real estate company and wore expensive suits and a Rolex. Why on Gaia’s green earth would he be fighting enough so that his pack members would discuss it online?

“It looked like they were talking about sparring during pack training,” Alex continued. “It almost sounded like they were training for the army. They even kept referring to ‘pack warriors’ in their discussions.”

“I thought you hadn’t done a deep dive yet?” I observed. “Sounds like you went pretty far into exploring this.”

Alex chuckled, “Oh, this is all just the tip of the iceberg. The discussion threads I’ve mentioned were the recent ones so they were at the top. There were also tons of others below these where I just took time to read the topic in the title.”

She paused for a moment, “We are on there; our coven is a topic of conversation in what looked to be a very popular discussion.”

Mimi looked at me, her eyes widened with shock, then turned back to Alex.

“What were they saying?” Mimi said softly.

“I don’t know,” Alex replied. “I just saw the title and honestly, I didn’t want to read it yet in case it pissed me off. Nothing is going to ruin our fun tonight, not even petty comments made by werewolves who have never taken the time to get to know us.”

Mimi must have noticed the worried look on my face.

She smiled at me and declared, “We don’t know that the comments are all negative. There have got to be good things on there, too. Jimmy said the werewolves who applied to work with us seemed to be really excited about it.”

“Speaking of Jimmy,” Alex interrupted, “It’s time to wake him up. Our exit is two miles out.”

I nudged Jimmy's arm then tapped him lightly on his chest. He pulled out his earplugs, lifted one side of the sleep mask he was wearing to peek at me, then covered his eye again to go back to sleep.

I thumped him on the head, “It’s time to get up, sleeping beauty.”

Five minutes after we got on the road he stretched across the seat, laid his head on a pillow in my lap, and wrapped my arm around him while saying he needed to sleep. He’d probably been working late in his lab and we had to leave so early this morning, it was possible he hadn’t gone to bed at all. Considering he had brought the herbal refreshment for tonight’s activities, I tolerated him invading my space for a couple of hours.

Jimmy inhaled loudly through his nose then sat up and slumped over on his side of the back seat. He yawned as he pulled the sleep mask on top of his forehead. He looked so cute like this; like a sleepy little boy instead of the snarky brainiac who thrived on riling up people for his own enjoyment.

I slapped the pillow into his stomach, “We’re about 10 minutes away. Remind me after we pack up today there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

He nodded and hugged the pillow tight. Jimmy better be fully awake when it’s time to unload the truck. Alex always hustled but Mimi was easily distracted; I was going to be very grumpy if we opened our stall late.

“Hey Sam,” Alex called out, “We have the new awning and banner packed, right?”

“Yep!” I replied, “I checked them off the list after making sure they were packed with everything.”

We’d had a custom awning and banner made with our new logo after my repeated requests. Our logo had “Green Gate Farms” in a nice strong font, with a beautifully crafted gate. The artist we’d hired had drawn various vegetable stalks and vines to make the fence and gate, with a crescent moon and a few stars above it all. We had chosen a rich emerald green for both and I was excited to see them up today.

The farmer’s market we were going to today was held in the parking lot of an old warehouse, situated near a neighborhood that had been rapidly gentrifying. Since this area had historically been a food desert, we typically sold out of all our produce and garden starts. We also brought a few boxes of our candles, teas, and aromatherapy items and had slowly been building a clientele at this particular market for those items.

Today ended up being fantastically busy and almost everything was sold, which made breaking everything down a quick process. We dropped off several large boxes of produce we’d reserved for a local food pantry then headed to Coco’s place to rest before going out tonight.

Jimmy reminded me on the way that I had wanted to ask him something. I told him about the patch of wolfsbane I’d found during my hike earlier in the week. His eyes glinted with what I hoped was excitement and not mischief. It was hard to tell with him and for all I knew he had some evil genius type of plan already in the works.

He wanted to dig them up before the equinox and suggested we keep an eye on the weather forecast. Hiking and digging in muddy soil was never fun. We also had to plan this for a day when both Jimmy and I were not needed at the farm but at least we had a few weeks to make it happen. Hopefully, no unsuspecting hikers would stumble across it before we could remove it.

When we arrived at Coco’s condo, Alex and I elected to take a nap in the guestroom while Mimi and Jimmy watched movies in the living room. I wanted to be well-rested for dancing when we went out and I had not slept very well last night.

The dream with the old man and the vines had returned the night before.