Mated to the Grumpy Alpha

Chapter 1

DECLAN

MY NEPHEW JUST ASKED WHAT A MATE IS. I SAID A FRIEND. I LIED.

Jonah choked on his tea. He had been reading my schedule off a feed receipt, and now the receipt was wet.

"A friend," I said again.

"Like Jonah?" Dustin asked through a mouthful of cereal. He was five and wore a milk mustache.

"Sure."

"Do you have a mate, Jonah?"

"Lots." Jonah buttered his toast with great calm. "A new one every week."

"They rotate," I said.

You would think an Alpha could handle a five-year-old before coffee. You would be wrong.

"Do you have lots, Uncle Dec?"

"I take people to dinner sometimes."

Pam had nagged me into six dinners last year. None of those women got a second one. My wolf sat through every course with his back turned.

His name was Axel. He was hard to impress.

"Mommy says Vivi should be your mate so you won't be grumpy." Dustin licked his spoon. "She also says you need one because you're getting old."

Somewhere in my head Axel yawned so wide that I felt it in my teeth.

"I'm thirty-two," I said.

"That's old."

"A fossil," Jonah said. "Practically."

"Did your mom tell you that?"

"I heard her tell Daddy."

I wiped the milk off his lip with my thumb. He let me.

Pam's note was still pinned under the cereal box. NO SUGAR BEFORE NOON, it said. The sugar was on his spoon.

Jonah smoothed the wet receipt flat. "Back to the list. Dinner at Silas's tonight. Council wives' tea tomorrow at ten. Fourteen women and a seating chart."

"I'll look at the chart after the county work."

"You said that about the tea in March. It's October." He squinted at the paper. "Noon is the Pruitt and Mercer sheep dispute. They both named the sheep, so it's personal now."

"I'll handle it."

"Sunday is the pantry audit and eleven pup blessings."

"I can bless a pup."

"With a speech. And a casserole, which also gets blessed." He sighed. "That's three days of Luna work, Dec. A Luna would be doing it. And Monday you owe the lumber yard a call about spruce prices."

"I have you."

"You have a Beta with a day job."

"Uncle Dec." Dustin tugged my sleeve. "I want a bird."

"Your mother said no pets."

"She said no puppies. She didn't say birds."

He had his mother's logic.

"The clinic in the Landing has strays," Jonah said. "Adoption only."

"Fine." I pointed at Dustin. "One small bird. A friendly one."

"Can it talk?"

"It can be polite."

Betsy's heater had one setting and it was angry. I patted the dash anyway.

I checked Dustin's seat belt twice. Pam checks it three times.

He had cereal in his hair and a rubber duck in his pocket. I did not ask. Some answers belong to five-year-olds.

"You're doing it again," Dustin said from the middle of the bench seat.

"Doing what?"

"Talking to her. Mommy says it's weird."

"I'm encouraging her."

"I'm naming the bird Steve. Any bird. The name works on all of them."

"Vivienne texted." Jonah scrolled. "Lemon bars or apple for Sunday?"

"Whatever she thinks is best."

"That's what you said last time. She agreed with you."

"She's agreeable."

"Silas told her the sky was green last month." He put the phone away. "She said it did look a little green."

I watched a hawk sit on a fence post for a mile and envied it.

Six weeks to the Hunt Moon Gathering. Clause Nine said an unmated Alpha got a Luna chosen by the Council. Everyone at that table knew whose daughter they would pick.

"I'd take any Luna at this point," Jonah said. "Even a Pruitt."

"Not a Pruitt."

"See? You have standards."

At the town's one stoplight Corrie Pruitt stood on the curb with her phone out. She waved it at us.

"Don't wave back," Jonah said.

"Hi, Corrie!" Dustin waved with both arms.

"She'll post that by lunch," Jonah said. "She posts whatever we do next, and she's never wrong."

My phone buzzed on the dash. It was Pam.

Did you tell him no puppies? the first text said. The second came before I could answer. Don't let him pick a snake.

"Is that Mommy?" Dustin tried to read it upside down.

"She says hello."

"She doesn't say hello. She says don't."

"She also says eat a vegetable," Jonah said.

"I had a pickle."

"A pickle isn't a vegetable."

"It started as one."

Corbett's Landing Animal Clinic smelled of disinfectant and wet dog. A woman came through the back door hip first with a clipboard and a green budgie on her shoulder.

She hit the doorframe and didn't seem to notice.

"She hit the door," Dustin whispered.

The room tilted toward her. My palms went warm, and orange peel and fresh bread came in with her.

Axel lay down in my skull and hummed. The sound came out of my chest.

Warm, he said. Take her home. Down, I told him.

"You're humming," Jonah said out of the side of his mouth.

"I'm not."

"It's a refrigerator sound. Stop it."

"Hi!" Dustin said to the woman. "Do you have a bird?"

"We do." She crouched and the budgie walked down her arm. "We don't sell them, though. They're free, and they come with a lecture. Do you want one?"

"Yes!"

"I'm Ciara. Loud or polite?"

"Loud," Dustin said.

"Polite," I said.

She looked from him to me. Her hair was coming out of its clip and she had a bite scar across one thumb.

"I have a parrot who swears in two languages," she said. "Does that count as polite?"

"Which two?" Dustin asked.

"English and Portuguese. Her name is Dolores, and she is mostly rude."

"Can I have her?"

"No," I said.

"Absolutely not," Ciara said. "But I like your style."

She stood and tilted her head back to look at me. "You're staring. Do I have something on my face? It's usually jam."

"Your ceiling." It was a lie and a bad one. "That beam is carrying more than it should."

It was not the ceiling.

She glanced up and back down, amused. "It's carried that load since 1962 and never once complained. Are you an engineer or a ghost?"

"Engineer."

"Of bridges," Jonah said. "He yells at them when they sag."

"Does that work?"

"Not once. He's committed."

"Good," she said. "Somebody should be." She turned to Jonah. "Is something wrong with him?"

"He's a little occupied."

"Uncle Dec needs a..." Dustin began.

I put a hand over his mouth. Axel's last word was still in my head, and it came out of me anyway.

"He needs someone warm," I said.

Her eyebrows went up. Jonah looked at the ceiling and shook.

"A bird," I said. "He needs a bird."

Dustin pried my fingers off his face. "Mate!" he said. "Uncle Dec needs a mate!"

"What's a mate?" she asked him.

"A friend."

She smiled at him. It was the first time she had smiled at anyone in the room, and I felt it in my knees.

"I can be his friend if your uncle is nice," she said.

Friend, Axel said. He rolled onto his back and showed me his belly.

I want to be more than her friend.