Claimed by the Alpha Who Rejected Her

CHAPTER 4

Lila's POV

There was a note tucked under the porch mat before Lila had even knocked.

She almost missed it, the sun barely up, Ryder half-asleep on her hip, her arms full of the one duffel bag she'd grabbed before deciding the rest could wait. But the corner of folded paper caught against her boot, and something about it, maybe the careful fold, maybe the fact that nobody should have known to leave it there made the hair on her arms rise before she'd even bent to pick it up.

A single letter was written on the outside. G.

She shoved it into her jacket pocket before Ryder could see, telling herself it was probably nothing. A neighbor's grocery list. An old flyer. Anything but what her gut was already insisting it was.

She'd made it into town before sunrise on purpose. Werewolves kept late hours, and the fewer of them awake to watch her unload a car outside her mother's house, the better. Driving through Sparkle Hollow again after ten years should have been the hard part. Instead, it was standing on this porch with a stranger's handwriting burning a hole through her pocket that had her heart going like a rabbit's.

The door flew open before she could knock a second time.

"Look at you finally, finally home!" Mara didn't wait for an invitation. She hauled Lila and Ryder both through the doorway and straight into the kitchen, wrapping her arms around Lila so tight it might have lasted three seconds or three years; Lila genuinely couldn't have told you which.

She let herself sink into it. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remember what home was supposed to smell like.

Then she stepped back and nudged Ryder forward. "Say hi to your grandma, baby."

Ryder, never one for eye contact with people he didn't know yet, dropped his chin and let himself be folded into Mara's arms without much protest.

"I made peanut butter cookies," Mara told him, and his head came up fast, eyes wide. "I remembered."

"Did you remember that?" he asked, like it was the most unbelievable thing anyone had ever told him.

"It's been a few years, not a lifetime," Mara scolded gently, ruffling hair so much like his father's that Lila had to look away. "I don't forget things about my grandson. There's steak and kidney in the oven too."

Lila's stomach picked that exact moment to growl loud enough for the whole kitchen to hear.

Mara arched a brow at her. "You're skin and bone, Lila."

"I could gain twenty pounds and you'd still say that." Lila crossed her arms, mostly because it was true. She hadn't fed herself properly in longer than she wanted to admit most of whatever she had left over after a shift went toward making sure Ryder had a roof and a full plate.

"Sit. Both of you." Mara was already steering her toward the breakfast bar, the same one Lila used to do homework at, the same one she'd once sat at with her headphones jammed in as far as they'd go, praying it would drown out Kane Draven's voice on the other side of the archway.

That was ten years ago, she reminded herself. It didn't stop the memory from landing like a slap.

"I should get the car unpacked first," Lila tried.

"The car isn't going anywhere." Mara physically pushed her onto the stool next to Ryder. "You drove all night. Sit."

Lila opened her mouth to argue and the front door swung open before a single word came out.

She didn't even need to turn around. She knew that stride, that particular way of taking up space in a doorway like he owned it. Werewolf hearing might have failed her at birth, but ten years hadn't erased the memory of her own brother's footsteps.

"Where's my baby sister hiding?" Ethan's voice boomed through the house before Lila could brace for it.

Mara had the nerve to look surprised. "I had no idea he was coming, I swear it."

"Liar," Lila muttered, right before Ethan's arms swallowed her whole and lifted her clean off the stool, squeezing until her ribs protested.

"Missed you, kid," he said into her hair, setting her down only to ruffle it exactly like their mother had done to Ryder a minute earlier. "Ten years is a long time to go without a decent hug."

"Get off." Lila shoved a hand through her hair to fix it, glaring at him even as her face went warm.

Ethan's grin only widened. He tilted his head, and something sly crept into his expression. "Funny thing our new alpha was asking after you just yesterday."

The floor seemed to tip under Lila's feet. "New alpha?"

Mara's smile faded into something softer, sadder. "You've been gone a long time, sweetheart. Things changed."

"And nobody thought to call me?"

Ethan shrugged, unbothered. "You're the one who left."

She had no argument for that. When she'd walked away from Sparkle Hollow, she hadn't just walked away from the town. She'd walked away from the pack entirely, cutting every thread that could have pulled her back including whatever thread might have carried news like this.

"Who," she made herself ask, though some ugly, certain part of her already knew, "is the new alpha?"

"Kane, obviously." Ethan said it like it should have been the easiest guess in the world, chest puffing with something close to pride. "And I made a second."

If Lila hadn't been stuck on the first half of that sentence, she might have laughed at the second. Of course Kane had made Ethan his second. The two of them had been stitched together since before either of them could walk.

"I never should have come back," she said, and her hand found her car keys in her jacket pocket without her telling it to brush right past the folded note still tucked in there, still unread, still burning. "Maybe we will find somewhere else to stay."

"Would you quit being so dramatic?" Ethan caught her shoulder, gripping it in a way that was meant to be reassuring and mostly wasn't.

"Would you quit being insufferable?"

"Never," he vowed solemnly.

"Then we have a problem."

"Enough, you two I feel like I've been dropped back ten years," Mara cut in, and both of them had the decency to look chastened.

"We should go," Lila said again, reaching for Ryder but Ethan got there first, hauling the boy into a hug that lifted him half off the stool.

"Kane teasing you when we were kids doesn't mean the door's closed now," Ethan said, holding her gaze without flinching. "Just stay a few days. Let me and my nephew catch up."

Every instinct in her body said drive. But Ryder didn't have time left for her instincts. He needed the pack, whether her pride liked it or not and if she was honest with herself, standing exhausted in her mother's kitchen with the smell of cookies and steak and kidney thick in the air, some small, tired part of her needed it too.

"Fine," she said at last. "One condition. Neither of you breathes a word that we're here. Nobody."

Ethan and Mara traded a glance before answering together. "Deal."

It didn't ease the knot in Lila's stomach, but it was something.

She waited until Mara had swept Ryder off toward the cookie jar and Ethan had wandered out back to grab the rest of the bags before she finally pulled the folded paper from her pocket. Her hands weren't quite steady as she opened it.

Four words, in handwriting she hadn't seen in ten years but would have known anywhere.

Welcome home, Gracie Lila.

She'd been in Sparkle Hollow less than twenty minutes. Nobody outside this kitchen was supposed to know that.

Kane already did.