Chapter Three
Jillian
He was there the next morning, his mouth slightly open, one arm slung over his forehead as though he just couldn’t deal with life. It was all too much for him.
After making him some pancakes with my last scant cup of mix, I dressed in my overalls and white shirt and headed for the fields.
But before I did, I took one last look at him. He was out cold, that much was certain. I remembered my first shift, back when I was just hitting puberty. It had been a violent phasing, bloody and painful, and not at all the way my tattered romance novels portrayed it. Not at all. So, I knew what he was going through. After my first shift, I had slept for a few days and eaten my weight in whatever I could get my hands on.
After that, the pack moved me to my cabin. I wasn’t told why, just that the alpha had commanded it. I didn’t have many belongings, even back then, so I packed my things and did as I was told. That’s what shifters in a pack do—they obey the commands of the alpha without question.
I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to whip out a piece of paper and chicken scratch out my argument as to why I didn’t want to live out here alone.
Not that I could even spell alone.
In his sleep, the man was beautiful. One of his legs twitched, and it scared me, mostly because I had been standing there for the Gods knew how long, staring at him like a stalker.
I even had a hard time shutting the door to the cabin and leaving him there. It just seemed wrong for some reason.
“Jillian, you’re late. You’re never late. What’s the problem?” Alex, the lead on field work tapped his pen on his clipboard while shaking his head in disapproval.
I almost rolled my eyes. He knew better than to ask me a question that required anything but a yes or no answer. Everyone in this pack knew better than to even talk to me. The move to the dilapidated cabin came with the pseudo-shunning of the entire pack.
Never had found out exactly what crime I’d committed that day, just had to deal with the punishment in silence.
I gave him a tight shrug and moved on. It wasn’t like he could take my lateness out of my pay or anything. There was no pay. I worked for my place in the pack. And sometimes, I thought I worked my ass off just to be able to stay in this pack, since my spot in the hierarchy was the lowest of the low.
Didn’t matter. I’d enjoyed the solitude, until last night.
Now, more than anything, I wanted to plow through my work for the chance to get back to him. To Dean.
Crouching, I worked the rows of the fields, picking the weeds out and trying and failing to hide from the sun. It beat down on me until my clothes were drenched with sweat. After a while, the noise around me stopped, and I realized everyone else was packing it up for the day. Alex was shouting at some people about the good work they’d done but when I passed him, he turned, giving me his back instead of any kind of praise.
Don’t know what I expected, I hadn’t received an ounce of praise from anyone in this pack in my life.
Usually, I would take my time on my walk home, enjoying the sights and the sweet symphony of the animals around me, but this afternoon, I was in a hurry. I had to see him. The desire had throbbed in my chest throughout the day and fueled my steps, making them faster and faster the closer I got to my house.
He was in there. And even if it meant showing him my limited writing, I wanted to find out more about him.
What his last name was. Where he came from. What did he like to eat. Any of it. All of it. My wolf pushed me on, pressuring me to get there even faster. I listened to her, after all, she’d been my sole companion in this life so far. She kept me strong when I felt like falling. She was my rock when the whole world turned to sea.
I made a clamor of going into the cabin so that he would know someone was coming in and not freak out. But my heart fell right into my feet as I realized I was alone again.
He was gone. I could feel it like a hollowness in my bones. Like the marrow had been stripped from me, leaving me feeling like an empty blackness. Still, even though my senses had never lied to me, I rushed to the bedroom to find his pallet bed folded up and neatly placed on my bed. My bed was made, and as my bare feet padded on the brick floor, I realized someone had swept. The broom leaned against the corner of the room, not in its place, but I would keep it there from then on.
I collapsed into the nearest chair and sighed. Maybe I shouldn’t have left at all this morning. Maybe he would still be here.
Disappointment didn’t even begin to cover the ache in my chest.