THE ALPHA’S UNWANTED PLUS-SIZE MATE

Chapter 12

Clara’s pov

The travelers came in during the tail end of the lunch rush, two men and a woman, road-dusty, packs at their feet, the kind of people who passed through Millbrook without staying long.

I was refilling coffee at the counter when I caught the first piece of it.

“—Moonridge pack’s still a mess over that rejection,” the taller man said, voice low but not low enough.

“Alpha Kael cut her loose in front of everyone on her birthday, and now the elders are climbing the walls about the Silvercrest deal.”

I kept pouring. My hand stayed steady even though the heat in my chest flared hard enough to make my fingers tingle the way they had in the woods.

The woman snorted. “She was nobody. Orphan girl, right? No rank, no alliances. He did what any smart Alpha would’ve done. But the bond’s apparently not dying clean. That’s the part that’s got people talking.”

“Talking’s putting it mild,” the second man said. “Half the pack says he should’ve kept her and dealt with the politics later.

Other half says he waited too long to reject her and now it’s poisoning the territory. Either way, her name’s still floating around. Clara something.”

Marnie appeared at my shoulder, voice low. “Table six needs their check. And stop gripping that pot like you’re about to throw it.”

I set the coffee down carefully and took the check over.

My wolf was fully awake now, silent and furious. The travelers didn’t notice me. Why would they? I was just the waitress in the green apron with a quiet face.

I came back to the counter in time to hear the woman again.

“Rumor is he’s been writing to her. Letters. Can you believe that? Rejects her publicly, then tries to clean it up in private. Silvercrest isn’t happy.

Their Alpha’s daughter’s been cooling her heels waiting for a formal claim that keeps getting delayed.”

The taller man laughed under his breath. “Bet the orphan girl’s long gone. Smartest thing she could do.

Moonridge doesn’t need the drama of a rejected mate hanging around reminding everyone the bond didn’t fade the way it was supposed to.”

I turned away before my face could give anything away.

The heat under my ribs was pulsing in time with my heartbeat, stronger than it had been since the clearing.

My hands wanted to shake. I locked them still and kept working.

Marnie followed me into the kitchen the second the travelers’ plates were cleared.

“You heard every word of that,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Every word.”

“You want me to run them out? I can make it clear they’re not welcome back.”

“No. They’re just talking. Talking doesn’t hurt anything.”

She crossed her arms and studied my face. “Your expression says otherwise. You’re white around the mouth.”

“My face can mind its own business.” I grabbed a clean stack of plates because I needed something to do with my hands. “They’re not saying anything I haven’t already heard in my own head.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to stand there and take it in your own diner.”

“It’s not my diner. It’s yours. And they’re paying customers who’ll be gone in an hour.” I pushed past her before the anger could climb any higher. “Leave it.”

The travelers finished their meal, left a decent tip, and moved on without ever looking at me twice.

I wiped their table myself.

The words stayed behind anyway, orphan girl, nobody, poison, letters, Silvercrest waiting. All of it true enough to cut, and none of it the full story.

Frank came in later than usual. He took one look at me and lowered his paper slowly.

“Who pissed in your coffee?”

“Travelers. Pack gossip from up north.”

He frowned. “The Moonridge business?”

I didn’t answer right away. He sighed and set the paper aside.

“People talk, Clara. Especially about Alphas and rejected mates and bonds that don’t behave. Doesn’t make them right.”

“They called me nobody. Said the smartest thing I could do was disappear so the pack could stop dealing with the leftover mess.”

“And yet here you are, still standing, still working, still not disappeared.” He tapped the counter with one finger. “That’s not nothing. Don’t let a couple of loudmouths on the road rewrite what you already know about yourself.”

I poured his coffee and didn’t trust my voice enough to reply. He didn’t push. He just sat there drinking it like ordinary company was enough.

By the time the afternoon lull hit I needed air that wasn’t full of other people’s opinions.

I walked the two blocks to Theo’s.

He already had the cup ready when I stepped inside, but one look at my face made him set it down slower than usual.

“You look like you want to break something,” he said.

“Travelers at the diner. They were talking about Moonridge. About the rejection. About me. They didn’t know it was me sitting ten feet away, but they used my name.”

Theo’s hands stilled on the counter. “What did they say?”

“That I was nobody. That Kael did the smart thing cutting me loose. That the bond is not fading is causing problems for the whole pack.

That he’s been writing letters like that somehow fixes a public rejection. That Silvercrest is still waiting on a claim he keeps delaying.”

I wrapped my hands around the cup hard enough that the heat from the ceramic bit into my palms. “They said the smartest thing I could do was stay gone and stop being a reminder.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think they’re right about one thing. Staying gone is smart.” I met his eyes. “But hearing it out loud still feels like getting rejected a second time, only this time by strangers who weren’t even there when it happened.”

Theo leaned on the counter, voice even. “You don’t owe them a reaction. And you don’t owe Kael one either.

The letters, the gossip, the politics, none of that changes the fact that you’re here, working, building something that doesn’t include any of them.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because right now you look like you’re still standing in that clearing listening to him say the words.”

I let out a slow breath. The heat in my chest was still present, but it had settled into something harder than the usual burn. “I’m getting there.”

He nodded once. “Good. Because the next travelers who come through and start telling the same story are going to keep telling it until someone bigger rewrites it. You don’t have to listen every time.”

“I heard it anyway.”

“Then hear this too: you’re not nobody. Not in this town. Not across the counter from me.”

I stayed until the coffee was gone. The words from the diner were still sitting under my skin, but they didn’t feel quite as sharp with Theo’s quiet certainty pushed up against them.

That night I sat on the edge of the bed with the previous letter still in the drawer and the memory of the travelers’ voices replaying in pieces. Orphan girl. Nobody. Poison. Smartest thing she could do was disappear.

I pressed my hand over the heat in my chest and stared at the wall.

They could talk. The pack could gossip. Kael could keep writing letters I burned or ignored. None of it changed the fact that I’d walked into the woods on purpose and felt something answered.

None of it changed the fact that I was still here, still standing, still refusing to shrink into the version of me they preferred.

I lay down, jaw tight, and let the anger settle into something useful.

They wanted me gone and forgotten.

I wasn’t planning on making it that easy.