His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 8 — Maplewood

The bus pulled into Maplewood at 7:14 in the morning.

I knew the exact time because there was a clock above the driver's seat — a round, plastic thing with a crack across the face that split the number three in half — and I'd been staring at it for the last twenty minutes, watching the minutes crawl by like they were walking through honey.

The town was smaller than I'd imagined. Main Street ran three blocks long, lined with brick buildings that looked like they'd been standing since before anyone could remember to tear them down. A hardware store. A post office. A laundromat with a flickering sign. A diner called Mabel's Kitchen with a hand-painted specials board out front that read: *Meatloaf $8.99 — Our Coffee Will Change Your Life.*

I stepped off the bus and the driver handed me my backpack with a grunt. The door hissed shut. The bus pulled away, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with $102.71 in my pocket and a town I'd never seen stretching out in the early morning light.

This is it. This is home now.

The word felt wrong in my mouth. Home was a territory with borders you could feel in your bones. Home was the smell of pine and the sound of howls and the warmth of a pack, even a pack that hated you. This was just... a place. A place where no one knew my name.

That was the point.

* * *

I found the boarding house on my second walk through town. Hill Street, third house from the end — a narrow Victorian with peeling blue paint and a sign in the window that read ROOMS $75/WK. The woman who answered the door was thin and suspicious and smelled like cigarettes and lavender air freshener.

"You got ID?" she asked.

"I lost it," I said. "Moving cross-country. Long story."

She looked at me — took in the dark circles under my eyes, the too-loose clothes, the way my hand kept drifting to my stomach like I was checking on something precious. Whatever calculation she was running in her head, it came out in my favor.

"Seventy-five a week. Cash. No pets, no noise, no drama. Kitchen's shared, bathroom's down the hall. You want it?"

"Yes."

"First week upfront."

I counted out seventy-five dollars in crumpled bills. She handed me a key — an actual brass key, not a card, not a code — and pointed up the stairs. "Third door on the left. Water pressure is garbage. Don't complain about it."

The room was small. A twin bed with a faded floral spread, a nightstand with a lamp that worked if you jiggled the switch, a window that looked out onto an alley where someone had parked a bicycle with no front wheel. The walls were paper-thin — I could hear the television from the apartment next door, some morning show host laughing too loudly at something that wasn't funny.

It was the most beautiful room I'd ever seen.

I sat on the bed, put my hand on my stomach, and let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding for three hundred miles.

No one knows I'm here. No one is looking for me. No one knows what I am.

The mark on my neck was quiet. The baby was quiet. Even the nausea had settled to a low, manageable hum.

For the first time since the marking, I closed my eyes and didn't dream of running.

* * *

The diner was two blocks from the boarding house, and it was hiring.

I saw the sign in the window on my third day in Maplewood — HELP WANTED, DISHES & PREP — and I stood outside for ten minutes before I went in. Not because I was nervous about the job. Because I was nervous about the *people*.

In the territory, I'd known exactly where I stood. At the bottom. Below everyone, beneath contempt, a weak-blood who scrubbed pots and stayed out of the way. Here, I was nobody. No status, no rank, no scent that marked me as lesser. The freedom was dizzying.

The inside of Mabel's Kitchen was everything the outside promised: worn linoleum floors, red vinyl booths patched with duct tape, a long counter with spinning stools, and the smell — God, the smell — of bacon grease and fresh coffee and something sweet baking in the back. My stomach growled. The baby kicked, or maybe that was just my imagination this early. Either way, the message was the same: *feed us.*

"You the one looking for work?"

The voice came from behind the counter. I turned, and there she was.

Mabel was sixty-four years old and built like a fireplug — short, dense, with silver hair cut blunt at her jaw and hands that looked like they'd wrung a few necks in their time. She was wiping down the counter with a rag that had seen better decades, and her eyes — sharp, dark, miss-nothing eyes — were already taking my measure.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Name?"

"Nova."

"Nova what?"

I hesitated. Surnames were a pack thing. Territory thing. "Just Nova."

She raised an eyebrow but didn't push. "Dishwashing. Prep work. Six dollars an hour, cash, under the table. You show up on time, you don't steal, you don't do drugs in my bathroom. Got it?"

"Got it."

"When can you start?"

I looked around the diner. Morning rush was ending — a few old men nursing coffee, a woman with a toddler eating pancakes, a teenager in the corner booth scrolling through his phone with one hand and eating fries with the other. Normal. Human. Safe.

"Now," I said.

Mabel looked at me for a long moment. Those sharp old eyes traveled from my face to my hands — scarred, calloused, the hands of someone who'd been scrubbing pots for years — to the way I held myself, coiled and watchful, like I was expecting something to come through the door at any second.

"Girl," she said slowly, "I don't know what you're running from."

My heart seized.

"But you're safe here."

I wanted to believe her. I really did.

* * *

I started that afternoon.

The kitchen was small and hot and loud — the dishwasher roared like a wounded animal, the grill hissed and popped, the cook (a quiet man named Hector who spoke mostly in grunts and pointed at things) kept up a steady rhythm of flipping burgers and fryer baskets. I stood at the sink up to my elbows in suds, scrubbing plates and pots and pans until my hands were pruned and my back ached and the nausea was a distant memory because I was too busy to feel it.

It was the best afternoon of my life.

Not because the work was fun. It wasn't. It was hard and hot and my feet hurt and the dishwasher kept splashing dirty water onto my already-ruined shoes. But no one looked at me like I was garbage. No one called me weak-blood. No one sniffed the air when I walked past and wrinkled their nose like I smelled wrong.

I was just... a dishwasher. A girl with no last name who showed up on time and worked hard and didn't make trouble.

It was the closest thing to peace I'd ever felt.

Mabel let me take home the leftover meatloaf at the end of my shift. "It's just going in the trash otherwise," she said, not meeting my eyes. I ate it cold, sitting on my narrow bed in my narrow room, and it was the best thing I'd tasted in months.

This could work,* I thought. *I could make this work.

The mark on my neck pulsed once — barely a flicker, like a candle flame in a draft — and then went quiet again.

I pressed my hand over it and closed my eyes.

Stay quiet. Stay gone. Let me have this.

* * *

Mabel looked at me with those sharp old eyes and said, "Girl, I don't know what you're running from, but you're safe here." I wanted to believe her. I really did.