THE ALPHA’S UNWANTED PLUS-SIZE MATE

Chapter 11

Clara’s pov

I told Theo I was going for a walk after my shift and he immediately frowned.

“In the woods?” he asked, wiping the same section of counter he always wiped when he was worried. “After the strangers last week?”

“It’s still light out. I won’t go far.”

“Clara—”

“I need air that doesn’t smell like coffee and bacon grease.” I leaned on the counter. “I’ve been cooped up between the diner and that little room for weeks.

My head’s too loud. Walking helps.”

He set the towel down and looked at me properly. “You sure this is about clearing your head and not about whatever’s been making you press your hand to your chest every other hour?”

I didn’t answer right away. The heat was already present, low and familiar. “Maybe both. I won’t know unless I go.”

“Take your phone. And text me when you head back.”

“I will.”

“I mean it. If you’re not back by dark I’m coming looking. I don’t care if you think that’s overprotective.”

“I’ll be back before dark.”

He gave me a long look, then nodded once. “Be careful. And don’t brush it off if something feels wrong out there.”

“I won’t.”

I left before he could change his mind or I could change mine.

The trailhead sat just past the last row of houses, where the paved road turned to packed dirt and the trees closed in.

I’d driven past it a dozen times and never stopped. Today I did. I locked the truck, shoved my hands in my jacket pockets, and started walking.

The air smelled different out here, damp earth, pine, the faint metallic edge of coming rain.

My wolf lifted her head the second the town noise faded.

The heat in my chest, the one that had been living under my ribs for weeks, pulsed once like it recognized the place.

I kept walking.

The path was narrow but clear. Birds moved in the canopy. Somewhere to the left a squirrel scolded. Ordinary woods sounds. I told myself that was all it was.

I needed the movement. I needed to stop sitting still while letters arrived and dreams left the memory of gold light in my hands and strangers passed near town making my wolf lock on like a warning.

After ten minutes the path dipped into a small clearing. I stopped. The heat rolled harder, sudden and warm enough that I pressed my palm flat against my sternum.

“Not now,” I muttered.

It didn’t listen. The warmth spread down my arms the same way it did in the dreams.

My fingertips tingled. I flexed them, half expecting to see the gold glow from the nights I woke up shaking.

Nothing visible in the daylight. Just the sensation, stronger than it had ever been inside town limits, flickering in small waves that matched my pulse.

My wolf pushed forward, not frantic, just intensely present. She wanted me to keep going. Deeper.

I took another few steps. Then a few more. The trees thickened. The light filtered green through the leaves.

The heat in my chest settled into a steady burn that felt almost like recognition, like the woods themselves had been waiting for me to stop avoiding them.

I stopped beside a fallen log and sat, elbows on my knees, breathing through it. This was the first time I’d come out here on purpose.

The first time I’d let the restlessness pull me instead of shutting it down with work and routine. And the power, whatever it was had answered immediately.

A branch snapped somewhere to my right.

I stood fast. My wolf went alert but not alarmed. I scanned the trees. Nothing moved. No scent of the rough strangers from the mill road. Just woods and the low, insistent pulse of heat under my skin.

“Hello?” I called, feeling stupid the second the word left my mouth.

Silence.

I stayed still another minute, listening hard. When nothing else happened I started back toward the trailhead, faster than I’d come in.

The heat didn’t fade. It stayed with me, flickering in small waves every time my boots hit the dirt, like it was testing the edges of whatever I’d just woken up.

My hands still tingled. I kept flexing them, half afraid the gold would appear in the open air where anyone could see.

By the time I reached the truck the sky had started to turn the softer color of late afternoon.

I sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, hands on the wheel, and waited for my pulse to slow.

The heat was still there, lower now but present, like an engine that hadn’t fully powered down.

My phone buzzed. Theo.

You heading back?

I typed back: On my way. Woods were fine.

His reply came fast: Good. Coffee’s still hot if you want it. And I want the real version, not the fine version.

I almost smiled. Almost.

I drove straight to the coffee shop. Theo looked up when the bell over the door rang and studied my face the way he always did when he was checking for cracks.

“You okay?”

“Define okay.”

“You don’t look okay. You look like something happened out there.”

I sat at the counter. He poured the coffee without asking and set it in front of me, then stayed standing, waiting.

“The heat I’ve been feeling,” I said after a minute. “It got stronger out there. A lot stronger. Like it was waiting for me to stop ignoring it.

My hands tingled. Same feeling I get in the dreams when everything goes gold.”

Theo rested both hands on the counter. “And that scares you.”

“It confuses me. I don’t know what it is. I only know it started after I left where I came from, and the dreams, and now this.” I wrapped my hands around the cup to hide any leftover tremor. “I went out there to clear my head. Instead it felt like I flipped a switch I didn’t know I had.”

He was quiet for a stretch. “You going to go back?”

“Probably. Not today. But yeah. I think I have to figure out what it is before it figures me out first.”

Theo nodded slowly. “Then next time you go, you tell me. I’ll stay in town with my phone on. No arguments. And if the flickering gets worse while you’re out there, you turn around immediately.”

“Deal.”

I finished the coffee. The heat in my chest had settled again, lower now, but present. Waiting.

My wolf felt the same way, calm, watchful, like she’d finally been given something real to focus on instead of just the leftover ache of a rejected bond and letters she couldn’t burn fast enough.

I drove back to the diner as the light faded. Upstairs I locked the door, checked the windows, and sat on the edge of the bed with my hands open in my lap. No gold light.

Just the memory of the flicker in the clearing and the certainty that the woods had answered something I’d been carrying since the night the bond snapped and Kael rejected me in front of everyone.

I didn’t understand it yet.

But for the first time I wasn’t sure I wanted it to stop.