Land of Wolves

Chapter 28

The warm gust of air that hits my face as I push open the library doors feels fantastic. Today's wind is brutal, and the snowfall that started last night hasn't let up. The snow is beautiful, but it's cold as fuck.

I pull my coat tighter around myself as I look around the building.

It's old, but it's well-kept. I assume it was already used as the town library before the wolves took over, and it seems they repurposed it for themselves. Long shelves span the entirety of the room, and I can just barely make out tables and couches behind them.

To the left looks to be an office, and in front of it is a woman behind a checkout desk. She's already looking at me, her expression hard.

She looks a bit older than me, maybe in her early thirties, and the scowl on her face seems misplaced. Her bright red sweater and snowman earrings scream happy, cheerful woman, but her expression screams pissed. I assume she's head about the cheating rumor, then.

I force my lips into a smile as I approach.

"Hey!" I chirp, eager to seem friendly. "Caleb said I could come here and read up on mate bonds."

Her eyes travel to my exposed hands, and it takes everything in me not to cringe and hide them away. It's no secret what happened to them, and I'd rather she take her fill of them now than spend the entire time I'm here trying to sneak peeks.

She doesn't even try to hide her disgust.

"Yes, Alpha Caleb called and warned me. Come," she says, standing and gesturing for me to follow.

Am I supposed to call him Alpha Caleb now? She practically spit the title at me. I know that's how most people refer to him, but he always encouraged me to call him Caleb. I tried using the title once when we were in public, thinking it was polite, but everybody within hearing distance turned and looked at me like I was crazy.

Mates don't refer to one another with titles.

But I guess I'm no longer his.

I clear my throat and follow the woman.

"What's your name?" I ask.

She hesitates, clearly debating whether to answer, before turning her head and looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

"Mary."

She doesn't ask for my name, not that I'm surprised, as she leads me to a sitting area behind the library shelves. I try to ignore all the pointed glares I receive, and I stare at Mary's heels as she orders me to sit at a small table in the center of the room. I'm sure she chose this spot on purpose, but I don't make a fuss as I lower myself into the chair.

Scanned images already sit on the table, the pages stapled together so they don't get out of order.

"Why has Alpha Caleb forbidden you from reading our texts?" she asks.

My pulse is pounding in my ears. I hadn't considered how odd his request to scan the pages would look. He has no reason to hide anything from me just because I cheated on him.

Mary taps her toe against the ground, waiting impatiently for my answer. I'm sure all the other nearby wolves are tuned into our conversation, too. Why wouldn't they be? They're probably wondering the same thing themselves.

How am I supposed to answer that?

Caleb says the wolves would hate me if they knew I was a member of HPAW. Cheating is despicable, but he's confident they'll eventually move past it. Being a part of the organization that has tortured and murdered so many of their kind is unforgivable.