It's Christmas. The coldest and my favorite holiday. After working almost nonstop for 72 hours for the restaurant's holiday campaign, I was declared fired. Nowhere to go.“Olivia. Give me your apron.”My eyes widened as my boss’s cold words silenced the kitchen. It came out of nowhere, and when I turned to look at him, it was clear that he wasn’t making a joke or playing a prank on me. His aging, stern face looked entirely indifferent as he held out his hand for m
The tall hedges that surrounded the property reminded me of the days I would spend with my childhood best friends, Nathan and Alvin, as we would play hide and seek amongst the thick branches. The cupolas on either side of the house reminded me of how we would climb up there against my aunt’s wishes so we could look at the birds’ nests, and how we would get a good scolding from my aunt afterwards. Inside, I could see a light on upstairs in my aunt’s bedroom. Seeing that light filled me with a bit of warmth, and I paused for a moment to look up at it with a smile on my face. “Olivia?” a somewhat familiar voice suddenly said. It sounded different, gruffer, but I still recognized it immediately. I spun around to see my aunt’s gardener, an old man named Clint, standing behind me in his wool sweater and worn overalls. “Clint,” I said with a smile. The gardener, who was getting on in years now, walked up to me and wrapped his arms around me. He had a limp now, which he didn’t have
I blinked slowly, still taken aback by this sudden and unexpected interaction. We hadn’t seen each other in such a long time, and Nathan looked so… different now. He looked so much more mature than the rambunctious teen who I last saw before my dad and I got evicted by the old Alpha. “Nathan,” I muttered, smoothing down my messy hair from a night of sleep, “it’s… it’s good to see you. You’re so tall now.” Nathan stared at me for a moment. There was what looked like a ghost of a smile playing on his lips for the briefest of moments before his face turned stony. He seemed to drink in my appearance, as though he was appraising me. “You look good,” was all he said. I thought back to what the operator on the phone told me last night. Nathan, my childhood friend, was getting married now. He looked so mature now, but it still felt odd to think of him as a groom-to-be. It made me wonder… “Who is your bride?” I blurted out. Nathan looked at me in a surprised way for a moment, almos
“Your villa?” Nathan’s voice sounded disbelieving. “This isn’t your villa. This is my wedding house.”“What?” I scoffed. “You have to be joking.” Surely Nathan was just playing a joke on me. My aunt left me the deed to the house with my name on it, and her gardener, Clint, never mentioned any of this. Maybe Nathan was in charge of the renovations, and it was supposed to be a surprise.But the more that I thought about it, I was only reminded of how he had mentioned his fiancee’s needs when he was talking to the builders.“Isn’t it obvious?” Nathan asked. “This is my wedding house. I paid a high price for the most beautiful villa in town.”This all felt unreal. My aunt’s villa was my childhood playground. My aunt and I didn’t have the closest relationship, but I spent a lot of my time here growing up. I knew this house and its surrounding property like the back of my hand. In fact, I had spent a lot of time as a kid talking to Nathan about how I would change this place if I owned it my
On the day of the wedding, I got dressed up and arrived at the church where the ceremony was held.Really, I was wearing a cheap dress with the tags still on it so I could return it after the wedding. Even though my aunt left me the villa, I still didn’t have much money to my name after being evicted from my pack for a decade, and so I didn’t exactly have the luxury of buying fancy new dresses for nice occasions.For this very reason, I felt as though I was sticking out like a sore thumb as I walked up the front steps to the church.Inside, I immediately realized that the church was full of people who I knew from my childhood. A lot of my childhood friends from grade school were in attendance. While many of them looked in my direction, no one said anything to me.In fact, I felt like an outcast; and that was only solidified when Nathan’s father, Colin, turned around in his seat and shot me a dirty glare.Colin was the previous Alpha of the pack. After he joined forces with the pack el
Nathan placed his hand on my belly and smiled up at me while the rest of the wedding guests watched us with shocked faces. “Olivia, I promise that I will take care of you… And our baby,” he said.The bride’s face was as white as a sheet. The entire church, which was just murmuring angrily over the scene before them, now fell so utterly silent that the sound of Layla’s white lily bouquet falling to the floor echoed throughout the walls.All I could hear, however, was my own heart beating too fast inside my chest as I wondered what the hell was happening today. Not only did Nathan refuse to marry his bride, Layla, but he also claimed that he would take care of me! And our… baby?! We hadn’t seen each other in a decade. This couldn’t be possible; it had to be a joke, or a bad dream, or a nasty prank…“What is all of this, Nathan?!” Colin, Nathan’s father, shouted. His loud, domineering voice boomed throughout the dead silent church and was the only thing to finally drown out the overwhelm
Layla gracefully put the tiara on my head, announced the end of her engagement to Nathan, and walked out with her father and several other people, who I assumed were all from her pack, in tow. The church was silent for several long, painful moments, and all I could do was stand there in Nathan’s spell.After those moments were up, Nathan’s father stormed up to him and shouted, jabbing his finger into the center of Nathan’s chest angrily.“You are a disgrace!” Colin shouted, causing the rest of the wedding guests to gasp again. “You are a disgrace to the entire pack! Do you realize the weight behind your actions today, or are you too thick in the head to fathom what you’ve just done? After everything I’ve done for you, too… All you do is destroy our pack’s credibility over… Over some hussy!”The wedding guests gasped again. By now, women were leaving with their children and were pulling their gaping husbands along with them, and the church was rapidly emptying.“I’m sorry, father,” Nat
“Why choose me, then?” I whispered.It wasn’t fair that Nathan suddenly decided to choose me to take the fall for wanting to pull out of his wedding at the last moment. Unless he had real feelings for me, it felt totally unwarranted.Any honest man would have ended the wedding privately without causing a huge scene; he could have talked to his fiancee when he found her kissing her bodyguard, but instead he decided to drag me into it.And in a strange way, I didn’t want to shatter the illusion that maybe Nathan chose me out of all of the other pretty girls in the church because he may have actually had secret feelings for me after all these years.But, much to my dismay, Nathan simply shrugged at my question. I felt sickened by his blase attitude about the entire situation. “Everyone else around here knows each other well,” he said. “Since you’ve been gone for ten years, you’re the only one around here who’s untestable.”Nathan was right; only fated mates knew who their fated mate was.
OliviaI gripped the edges of the podium, my knuckles whitening from the strain as I stared out over the sea of faces. All eyes were trained squarely on me, awaiting my words. But I was frozen.A tremor of nausea wormed its way up my throat as I stared out at them. What was I thinking—how could I have ever agreed to this? Speaking to crowds had never been my forte; that was Nathan’s arena, not mine. I was just the woman behind the scenes, the young mom who had never gone to college, the one who had been handed her job by her husband…Suddenly, a flicker of motion off to the side caught my eye—Nathan, standing just at the edge of the stage with his arms folded across his chest. Even from this distance, I could feel the weight of his steady gaze, that piercing Alpha stare that always seemed to see straight into the depths of my soul.He must have sensed my faltering because, slowly, deliberately, he offered me the faintest of smiles and a single, reassuring nod.And just like that, the
Olivia I looped my arm through Nathan’s as we stepped down from the podium, the applause from the crowd and the flashing of cameras having finally subsided after what felt like an eternity. “It’s over,” Nathan beamed, giving my arm a squeeze. “That wasn’t so bad.” I couldn’t help but grin back at him. “No, it wasn’t. You were great up there.” And he really had been great; the press conference had been an overwhelming success—any lingering doubts or trepidation we had harbored before had been utterly blown away by the sheer force of the crowd’s enthusiastic response. For so long, it had felt like we were fighting this battle alone, like the victims who had suffered under Dan’s horrific operation were little more than nameless, faceless casualties. But today, we had finally given them a voice. Their stories had reached the masses, had resonated and struck a chord with everyone who watched. Nathan had handled all of the questions that were thrown his way with poise and ease
OliviaI rapped my knuckles lightly on the door to Nathan’s office. A moment later, his voice called out, “Come in.”Stepping into the room, I placed my hands on my hips upon seeing the scene in front of me: Nathan was standing in front of the mirror, his shirt still untucked and his tie loosened. His desk was a mess of papers and folders, and it was clear that he had been checking over his notes last-minute before the press conference.
OliviaI wiped a bead of sweat from my brow, slowly turning to survey the progress that had been made in the park. The banners we had hung were a bold purple color, signifying our support of the women who had been affected by the trafficking ring.I couldn’t help but smile a bit as I looked at our progress. With the press conference today, followed by a festival to help raise funds for the shelter we were building, the park was bustling with activity as our pack members worked hard
NathanI leaned back in my chair with a weary sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose in a futile attempt to stave off the encroaching headache. Spread out on my desk was an array of file folders, legal pads scrawled with notes, and printed transcripts—a minefield of information that would need to be carefully navigated on the day of the upcoming press conference.It had been two weeks since Dan and Montgomery’s bodies were found in the confinement pit, and it had been a dizzyin
OliviaMy hands shook uncontrollably as I stepped up to the edge of the pit, clutching the metal grating until my knuckles turned white. A thick, cloying stench wafted up from the darkness below—the unmistakable reek of death and decay.Despite the waves of nausea already roiling in my gut, I leaned forward for a closer look.
OliviaThe air coming through the open windows smelled like the fresh sea breeze as we made our way from room to room, touring every nook and cranny of the newly completed cottage. It was perfect—cozy and quaint, while still boasting all the modern amenities one could want. But more than that, it was a sanctuary, a haven.A fresh start.
OliviaThe sound of power tools outside streamed in through the window while I folded the laundry, a distant backdrop to my swirling thoughts. I had grown used to the sound, and actually kind of enjoyed it. It was a reminder that life went on, that our family was growing.It had been a couple of weeks since I had made the decision to take a temporary leave from work in order to really focus on my family—on rebuilding that long-severed bond with my mother—and I was glad I did.
NathanI couldn’t stop the rage from simmering just beneath the surface as I made my way through the darkened forest toward the confinement pit. No one knew I was here—I was coming under the cover of night, my hair and face concealed by a hood.But I had to come. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dan and Montgomery, and I needed to see them.