Mated to the Grumpy Alpha

Chapter 3

CIARA | CORBETT’S LANDING

I THREW MY GRANDMOTHER’S SALT AT A WOLF. I HAD BEEN AIMING THE SKILLET.

The tin hangs on a nail inside my front door. Gran put it there when I was twelve and told me never to move it. I dropped the skillet, grabbed the tin and ran down the steps.

“Declan!” I yelled. “Get down!”

The wolf was nearly on him. I threw a whole fistful past Declan’s arm and into its face.

It screamed. I have heard plenty of animals in pain, and never one that sounded like that. It rolled across my lawn and got up running, then crashed off into the cedars.

“Sorry!” I yelled after it. I still have no idea why I apologized.

Declan turned around slowly. He stared at the tin in my hand and then at my face.

“What did you just do?”

“I panicked. It’s salt.” I held the tin up as proof. “It came from the No Frills in Minden.”

“That’s not what it is.”

“It is. I was there when she bought it. She used a coupon.”

Headlights swung into the drive. A truck stopped crooked on my lawn and Jonah jumped out of it, already talking.

“Was that Ansel? I passed him on the road with his tail on fire.” He saw me and lifted both hands. “Hi. It’s Jonah, from yesterday. I’m so sorry about the feed store.”

“So am I,” I said. “Who is Ansel, and why does he hate my garbage cans?”

Nobody answered me. Declan sat down hard on my bottom step, as if somebody had cut his strings.

“You can’t sit there,” I told him.

He did not move.

“He can’t stand up, is the problem.” Jonah crouched in front of him and looked into his eyes. “How long has it been now, Dec? Thirty hours?”

“Leave it.”

“He hasn’t slept since the feed store.” Jonah stood and turned to me. “Ciara, how do you feel today? I mean in yourself.”

“Embarrassed. Hungry. My face is on the internet with a sad song.”

“Any pain? Trouble breathing? Like somebody pulled something out of your chest?”

“No. Should I have?”

He rubbed both hands down his face. “When one of us rejects a mate, it hurts her. Most women can’t get out of bed for a week.”

“I went to work. I took a hair elastic out of a cat.”

“Yeah. That’s the problem.” He pointed at Declan. “It all hit him instead. He can’t sleep and he can’t shift. On Thursday he’d have put Ansel on the ground in two seconds.”

The wolf prints were still in my flower bed. The man who had stood in front of them was slumped on my step with his shirt on inside out.

Gran used to tell me stories about wolves who walked around as men. I’d thought they were bedtime stories. You would have too.

“Shift,” I said. “You mean into one of those.”

“Into one of those,” Jonah agreed. “He’s bigger, and a lot nicer.”

“He rejected me in front of Maud Hollis and a sack of birdseed. Nice is a stretch.”

“He thought it would protect you. He’ll tell you why himself, if he ever learns to talk.”

“Protect me from what?”

Jonah glanced at Declan. Declan kept his eyes on the grass and said nothing.

“Jonah.” Declan’s voice was barely there. “She doesn’t owe me anything. Take me home.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Take him home.”

“He won’t sleep at home,” Jonah said. “We tried. I sat up with him until four.”

“That isn’t my problem.”

“It isn’t.” Declan looked up at me. “Go inside, Ciara.”

“Stop telling me where to go on my own porch. You don’t get to dump a woman and then give her directions.”

He opened his mouth to answer me. Then his head tipped sideways against the porch post, and his mouth stayed open.

He was asleep, in the middle of losing an argument.

Jonah stared at him with his mouth open, then turned to me.

“That’s the first sleep he’s had since Friday,” he said. “He was falling over at home. He gets near you and he’s out.”

Not my problem, I told myself firmly. I went inside and got Gran’s old wool blanket anyway.

I put it over his shoulders without touching him. Up close he smelled of woodsmoke and he looked younger with his face slack. The scowl was the only thing holding him up.

“Who scuffed my salt?” I asked Jonah. “That gap wasn’t there this morning.”

“Somebody who wanted Ansel to walk straight in.” He kept his eyes on the cedars. “I’ll find out who. You have my word.”

“I don’t know you well enough for your word to mean much.”

“Fair.” He nodded at the man on my step. “Can he come back tomorrow night? Just to sleep here. I’ll bring him over and take him home after. You won’t hear a peep.”

“I haven’t heard a peep out of him yet.”

“Then nothing changes.”

“One hour,” I said. “On the porch, never in the house. Forty dollars a night and I want cash, because I’m saving for something.”

“Forty? My motel in Barrie was cheaper than that.”

“Your motel didn’t come with a salt line.”

“And what if he turns into one of those on my porch?”

“Then he’d be doing better than he has all day. I’ve been begging him to manage it since lunch.”

Jonah didn’t even blink. He pulled out his wallet and handed me two twenties.

“Deal,” he said. “He’ll pay you back himself. He hates owing people.”

I took the money inside and found Gran’s old pickle jar under the sink. I washed it and wrote CLINIC on a strip of masking tape. The twenties went in first.

Then I made a cup of tea and drank it at the kitchen table. From there I could see the porch through the screen door. I told myself that was only so I’d know when the hour was up.

At ten past midnight Jonah shook him awake. Declan sat up with the blanket around him and looked straight through the screen at me.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Ten past twelve. You went over, and I don’t give refunds.”

“You should have taken that money from me,” he said. “Not him.”

“Then bring your own cash tomorrow.”

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t a smile, but it was trying.

“You snore,” I told him.

“I don’t.”

“He does,” Jonah said. “Ask anybody on the Ridge. We hear it from the road.”

He folded the blanket in four and left it on the step. Then he walked to the truck on his own two feet.

“Same time tomorrow!” Jonah called out the window. “He’ll bring his own forty!”

I locked the door behind them, twice. My phone was on the counter with a missed call from Amrit. He had called at eleven forty and left a voicemail.

Amrit never calls after nine. I pressed play.

“Ciara, I’ve seen the video.” His voice sounded old and far away. “I know who that man is. Let him sit on your step if you must.”

I heard him take a long breath.

“But don’t you ever ask him inside that house.”