THE ALPHA’S UNWANTED PLUS-SIZE MATE

Chapter 18

Clara’s pov

The news arrived with the morning regulars, the way most bad information did.

Frank set his paper down harder than usual and waited until I finished pouring his coffee. “You hear what’s coming out of Moonridge?”

I kept my face neutral even though the heat in my chest gave a low, answering roll. “Not lately.”

“Borders are soft. Scouts saying the wards are thinning in places. A couple of the outer markers failed completely last week. People are nervous. And that’s not the weird part.”

Marnie came out of the kitchen drying her hands on a towel. “There’s a weird part?”

Frank nodded, expression serious. “Construction crew working the north access road said they saw lights in the trees that weren’t flashlights.

Moving too fast, too high off the ground. One guy swears something paced them for half a mile without ever showing itself.

They’re calling it nerves. The ones who used to run with packs aren’t calling it that.”

Denise arrived a few minutes later and picked up the thread without needing an invitation. She slid onto her usual stool and accepted the oatmeal I already had ready. “My cousin’s husband drives the supply up that way. He said the air feels wrong near the old boundary stones. Like pressure sitting on your chest. Gave him a headache that didn’t clear until he was twenty miles out. He’s taking the long way around from now on.”

I listened, refilled cups, and tried not to let the words settle too deep. Borders weakening. Strange lights. Something pacing men who couldn’t see it.

The note under my door had warned that things in the old bloodlines were waking and listening.

This sounded like the listening had started answering.

Marnie caught me staring at nothing between orders and lowered her voice. “That land’s got history for you. Are you good?”

“I’m working.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’m as good as I need to be to finish the shift.” I moved to the next table before she could dig further.

The heat under my ribs stayed present, low and attentive, like it was listening to the same reports I was.

Theo had already heard the same stories by the time I took my break. He slid my coffee across the counter and studied my face.

“You’re hearing it too,” he said. “Moonridge borders. The lights in the trees.”

“Yeah. Frank and Denise both had versions. Construction crews, supply drivers. Same details.”

“You think it’s connected to what’s happening with you? The flares, the note, the shifter whose wolf went quiet?”

I wrapped my hands around the cup and watched the steam rise. “I think the timing is bad enough that I can’t pretend it isn’t.

The power started after I left. The note warned me about old bloodlines and the woods.

Now the place I ran from is having problems that sound like the same kind of wrong. That’s not a coincidence.”

Theo leaned on the counter, voice steady. “Are you going to do anything with that information?”

“Not yet. I’m still learning how to keep my balance when someone bigger than me tries to take me down.

I’m not ready to walk back into that mess because the wards are flickering.”

“Good.” He paused. “But if the strange part starts showing up closer to Millbrook, we need a better plan than ‘not yet.’ You already had one light show in the clearing when your power first answered. Another one near town is a different problem.”

I didn’t argue. I finished the coffee, went back to the diner, and worked the rest of the day with the reports sitting under my skin like a second pulse.

The strange part arrived that night.

I was upstairs after close, sitting on the floor stretching the way the trainer had shown me, when the heat in my chest spiked without warning. Not the slow build from anger or the deliberate focus of the mats.

This was sudden, sharp, and outward, like something had yanked on a thread connecting me to a place I couldn’t see.

I stood, crossed to the window, and looked out over the dark alley and the edge of the trees beyond the last streetlights.

For a second the darkness between the trunks looked thicker than it should have.

Then a pale, cold light flickered once, high off the ground, moving against the wind and vanished.

My wolf surged. The power under my ribs answered with a hard pulse that left my fingers tingling and my breath short.

I grabbed my phone and texted Theo.

Something in the trees behind the east end of town. Light that shouldn’t be there. I’m fine. Staying inside.

His reply came fast.

Do not go out there. I’m on my way.

I didn’t go out. I locked the window, checked the door twice, and stood in the middle of the small room with my hands open at my sides, waiting to see if the light came back or if the heat would flare again into something I couldn’t contain.

It didn’t.

Theo arrived twenty minutes later, slightly out of breath from the walk.

I let him in and told him exactly what I’d seen, the spike, the thickness in the dark, the single cold flicker that moved like it had purpose.

He listened without interrupting, jaw tight, then checked the alley himself from the window.

“Nothing now,” he said. “But I believe you. The timing lines up with everything coming out of Moonridge.”

“The reports mentioned lights in the trees near their borders.”

“Yeah. They did.” He turned from the window and leaned against the wall. “Whatever’s thinning their wards might not be staying politely inside their lines. And your power felt it happen. That’s not nothing.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. The residual heat was still present, lower now, but awake in a way that felt like a warning of its own.

The old bond sat quiet underneath it, unchanged, but the newer power was restless.

“I left to get away from pack problems,” I said. “Looks like the problems are deciding the distance doesn’t matter.”

Theo nodded once. “Then we treat this like training. One step at a time. You keep showing up to the mats. You keep me in the loop when the power acts up or the dreams change. And if those lights show up again, you do not go investigate alone. Clear?”

“Clear.”

He stayed until the feeling of being watched faded and the heat settled back into its usual low burn.

When he left I locked the door behind him, checked the window one more time, and sat back down on the floor in the same position I’d been in when the spike first hit.

Moonridge’s borders were weakening.

Something strange was already moving in the dark beyond the streetlights.

And whatever lived under my ribs had felt it happen and answered.