Five

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t completely naked because I was and still am in my panties, but that’s still a whole lot more skin than I wanted him to see. And he covered me with a sheet, which means he didn’t want to see any more of me either.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t see much.”

His quiet voice has me spinning my head to my other side, cutting off a cry of pain when my leg twinges, and there on the floor beside the bookcase, with a book draped over a raised denim covered knee, is Mack.

I should’ve known he was already in the room, but with his scent everywhere, I wasn’t paying attention.

“Uh, thanks?” “No worries.”

After closing the book, he shoves it back in the bookcase before rising smoothly to his feet. I’m desperate to know what he was reading, but I’m also desperate for him to leave so I don’t have to look into his face and know he saw me naked, stretched out on the floor like a beached whale.

I know I’m not fat since I’m built like most shifters, lean and athletic, but still…

At the door, just before he leaves, he turns and regards me steadily for a long moment. “My priority was making sure you were okay.”

Relief surges through me.

“And are you okay?” he asks when I don’t respond. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

“Good,” he murmurs, and then he pulls the door open, keeping his back to me. “But what little I saw, I liked. A lot. Now, get some rest and I’ll bring up some lunch.”

Then he steps out and closes the door behind him. For an eternity, I do nothing but stare.

Why does the thought of him liking me make me feel warm all over?

And why for the first time since I ran from Shane, is there a smile stretching across my face as I settle back in bed?

The next morning, I’m sitting at the dining table in a cozy red and gray Shaker-style kitchen with six shifters, including Mack and Bennett, and I can’t stop thinking about how small this pack is.

Back in the Boones, my father’s pack, we viewed six as a small family, not an entire pack. But, given that I was a rare exception, the sole child in a family of two, just my father and me after my mother died, I think I recovered more quickly than any other shifter would have to learn a pack could be this small.

If I hadn’t been an omega, I’d have been raised with the other children my age, but because of what I was, I was mostly alone or with my father’s beta, Moses.

No one really knew what to do with me, or where I fit in. I thought that would change when I met my mate. I spent years dreaming and daydreaming that I’d find a place that I belonged, and where I would fit, but it was worse at the Dacre pack. A lot worse.

Don’t think of that here, Aerin. No one wants an uninvited guest crying at the breakfast table.

Not when breakfast has barely even started.

Although I’ve mostly been keeping my gaze fixed on my plate so I don’t draw any more attention than I have already; the Winter Lake pack has been darting glances filled with as much curiosity about me as I must have about them.

Tina, the girl with the sunny smile and gold hair sitting beside the gruff-sounding, dark-haired guy she introduced as her mate, Warren, seems the friendliest so far. He has to be even taller than Bennett, but his sweet smile convinced me that their height and size are about all they have in common.

The other two pack members haven’t said a lot. The guy that Mack introduced as Chris glanced at me once and hasn’t again. Either he’s starving because he’s barely looked up from his plate, or he’s just not that interested in me. Penny, the red-headed girl sitting beside Mack, is the one who seems the most curious about me since she’s the one peeking at me more than the others.

They seemed nice when Mack introduced everyone to me. Quiet though. I’m not sure if it’s because Bennett, the one shifter whose name I have no trouble remembering, has warned them against talking to me.

It wouldn’t surprise me if he had, since he barely looked at me, much less grunted good morning before slumping into his seat opposite, dressed in a pair of stained and worn blue overalls that tells me he wasn’t just filling the truck at the gas station. He works there. Out of everyone at the table, he also looks the oldest, or maybe it’s the heavy scowl on his face that makes him appear so much older than the early twenties everyone else seems to be.

Mack has set a place for someone else in the seat beside mine. Who this person is is a mystery because, from the conversations I’ve been eavesdropping from my table mates, I haven’t heard even one mention of who it might be. All I know is, it has been another member of this tiny pack since Mack said there were seven of them.

But I don’t dare ask because if there’s one thing I’ve learned during my runaway and the many hours I’ve spent on buses, it’s that questions lead to more questions.

Mack, however, is proving to be an exception to that rule. Every question I’ve asked hasn’t led to him asking one back, which he’d have every right to do since I’m a complete stranger, and potentially a threat.

A threat? Maybe if you’d stop hurting yourself then someone would consider you a threat, but right now? Not so much.

Considering I’m a strange shifter who’s wandered into another pack’s territory, I’m lucky to be alive. If Mack wandered into my father’s, or Shane’s pack, he wouldn’t last five minutes. But here I’m being cared for. I’m being treated better, at least by Mack, than I ever have at my father’s pack or my mates’.

The other day, Mack brought up a meal for me. Somehow, he guessed I loved tacos, how I don’t know, but when he walked in with a plate of both chicken and beef tacos, I could’ve kissed him.

After he handed me a clean t-shirt to wear, turning his back so I could tug it over my head, he helped me sit up as painlessly as he could and set the tray in my lap.

While I ate, he leaned against the wall beside the open window and chatted away about the people of Winter Lake, like how Mr. Pilsner who visits the library every Monday will fake having weak knees so Nancy from the flower shop will come out and help him down the library stairs. It was strangely entertaining, even though I had no idea who he was talking about.

For someone who’s spent days—years, if I’m honest—eating alone, being always alone, it was a pleasure I’d never had before. So I ate slowly, hoping to draw the moment out until I reached my last mouthful and had to stifle a massive yawn.

Mack reacted at once, straightening from his lean and setting to work. After he cleared the tray away, he helped me lie down. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was him pulling the sheets over me.

Then it was morning and Mack was gently waking to ask me if I wanted to come down and meet the rest of the pack at breakfast.

Although I wanted to tell him I would’ve preferred to stay alone in bed, I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not with the memory of everything he’d already done for me still so fresh in my mind.

So, I accepted the invitation to breakfast, his offer to carry me to the bathroom, and then his help to slip into a pair of his sweatpants and another clean t-shirt before he carried me down the stairs.

“You want more bacon, Aerin?” Mack asks when he notices I’ve eaten the five pieces on my plate and I’m just now turning to the scrambled eggs.

I eye the massive pile of gloriously crispy bacon on the other side of the table on a large white platter. I tell myself I’m being greedy since no one else has gone back for seconds yet. And even though I know no one will think anything out of the ordinary if I wanted seconds, or even thirds, since we shifters eat a lot, I hesitate. “Umm.”

“So, yes then?” Mack grins at me. After another pause, I nod once.

Mack turns to Bennett and snaps his hand out. “Bennett. The bacon.”

I forget all about the bacon and lean back from the table, my body tense and ready for the inevitable explosion I imagine is a hairbreadth away.

But when Bennett lifts his head from his plate, calmly picks up the platter of bacon, and hands it over to Mack without a word, I’m more confused than ever.

I shift my focus to Mack, who has his hand out expectantly, waiting for the plate.

He doesn’t look like he’s about to dive to the floor, which I would fully expect anyone to be in the process of doing if they gave an order like that to an alpha. But he’s not the only one acting like it’s perfectly normal for a beta to speak that bluntly to an alpha. The rest of the pack are still quietly chatting among themselves as they eat their breakfast and sip their orange juice or coffee.

Maybe they’re keeping their head down to avoid attracting Bennett’s attention.

My gaze goes back to Bennett, as I wait for the alpha of the Winter Lake Pack to pull Mack up about ordering him about. If anyone from Shane or my father’s pack ever spoke to them like that, they’d be lucky if they were still breathing after.

Once Mack takes the platter from a nonplussed Bennett, he’s forking bacon on my plate when he must sense I’m distracted. He glances into my face. “You okay?”

I snap my mouth shut, which is when I realize I must’ve had it hanging half-open all this time. “Uh, sure. Just surprised.”

For a second confusion clouds Mack’s face, and then it clears away as if he’s just realized something. “You mean about the way I spoke to Bennett.”

“Uh, well, yeah actually.” “Oh, it’s just the way we are.”

I glance over at Bennett to confirm if what Mack is saying is the truth or if he’s merely waiting for Mack to lower his guard before lunging across the table at him. My worry is more about self- preservation because I’m sitting next to Mack, which means there’s a strong possibility that I’ll be a casualty if I don’t get out of the way quick enough.

Bennett just looks confused.