The little black notebook was ruined by the time they made it back to Mason’s car and his abandoned satchel. Mal had carried it back so Bones could have his treasure, but the bear hadn’t been particularly careful with the thing. The leather cover had holes in it, and the pages were damp along the edges with bear drool. The pen had been left back in the clearing.

Normally, such treatment of notebook would have been a tragedy, but Mason could have cared less. His thoughts were full of nothing but Emma laying naked beneath him, her face radiant with pleasure. He could still feel her skin against his and the way they just fit together. He might not be particularly experienced with women, but he knew enough to recognize that what he and Emma had shared was special.

Maybe it was the fact that she was a shifter. If the notebook hadn’t been ruined, he might have written it down for further evaluation—after Emma left. He could feel her watching him, even if he was hidden in the little cavity he and Bones had made in the bushes. His excuse that he had hidden his clothes there barely got him off the hook for another round of chastising.

It was a relief to put his glasses back on, the world coming clearly back into focus after most of an evening without. When he stepped out from the bushes, after making sure that Bones’ treasure was safely tucked away beneath a root at the base of the tree, he found Emma sitting a dozen feet away on a tree stump.

She had balanced herself on top of it, knees pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around them. She rested her chin on her knees, watching him. “You look like you just walked out of a business meeting.”

He shrugged. “You look like you just had sex in the bushes.”

“I call bullshit.,” she said with a smirk. “I guarantee I don’t have a hair out of place.”

She really didn’t. “Fine. You don’t. But I know better.”

“Mason Covey, I thought you were a gentleman.”

“I offered to give you a ride home. Isn’t that gentlemanly?”

“Only if you aren’t a shifter. I would rather run. It’s faster than driving all the way out to the cabin. You could have run with me.”

“I needed my glasses.”

She shrugged.

Mason pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at her. The fur had bristled out on her shoulders again and he realized she was cold. He had a jacket in his car, and he considered going to grab it. It was probably pointless if she was already covered in fur. But it would be the gentlemanly thing to do, and he had always prided himself on being a gentleman, despite what he said out loud.

He suddenly found himself in a strange conundrum. He and Emma had just had sex. Twice. And he had no idea what that meant, and that was his problem. Things were going to be awkward. Even if they wouldn’t have been, he was going to make them awkward if he thought about it. It just happened that way.

She tipped her head to the side. “What are you thinking about?”

Sex. But he didn’t want to tell her that. “Nothing.”

“Liar.”

Mason raked his hand through his tousled hair. His fingers hit something, and he plucked out a leaf, pointing a glare at Emma. “How do you not get covered in leaves and everything else?”

She shrugged a full-body shrug with her arms still wrapped around her knees. “It probably has something to do with not shifting in the middle of a bush.” Emma sighed and unraveled herself from her perch on the tree stump.

“You sure you don’t want a ride?” Mason gestured vaguely towards his car.

“The locals might not be a fan of you driving a naked woman around town. Just saying.” She stepped up to Mason, but didn’t touch him.

Mason felt like the clothes he wore had put up a wall between them. A barrier that he probably constructed himself in his head, but a barrier just the same. He drew a complete blank towards anything to say, so he stuck his hands in his pocket. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t know if that was okay. When they were in the clearing, in the middle of the woods, the world around them hadn’t seemed real, almost like a dream. Now that they stood at the trailhead, near a parking lot with his car and all the posted bear warning signs, reality seemed just a little bit too real.

“I really do need to be going, though,” Emma said, as if there was nothing awkward between them at all. “I have to make a couple of calls and it’s getting late. But we should get together tomorrow. I want to hear about how you’ve bonded with Bones over the last couple of days. I can see the difference, just from the first time I saw him.”

How was she so calm? “Right. Tomorrow sounds good.”

“Come out to the cabin. I’ll text you directions.”

Really? “Cool.”

Emma reached up and put a hand on Mason’s neck.

He stiffened.

She shook her head with a smile. “And, Mason? Relax a bit. Okay?”

Great. So, she’d picked up on that. He made a show of rolling his neck and shoulders, trying to shake off the tension that had gathered between his shoulder blades.

She’d touched him. Made the first move. Could he do the same? They were doing things out of order. He was a traditionalist. Trained that way by his parents. Be a gentleman. Take her to dinner. Walk her home. Not fuck her in the grass without a first date. Yes, he was indeed making things awkward.

“I’m relaxed. Completely.” He sent a transmission to his fingers, trying to move them to her rosy cheek. Nothing happened. “Completely.”

“Just fucking kiss me.” She pulled him toward her without giving him a choice.

The time that Emma had spent at the cabin since she first moved in had been brief. But, the place was hers. The idea hadn’t quite settled into reality yet, lost somewhere in the emotional hangover of what had happened in the last week. If that much shit had happened over the course of a few months, it would have been intense. And yet, after her evening with Mason, things seemed a lot less out of control. Even after having sex.

Emma hadn’t realized how badly she’d needed what he’d given her. It wasn’t just sex. Sure, it’d been a long time since she’d had that, too, but what Mason had given her… The way he’d looked at her. The way he’d touched her.

Maybe it was just the fact that it was Mason, but the sex had been better than what she remembered too. And different. Almost perfect. Even if she’d been a little concerned about Bones coming out and sticking her with quills.

She hadn’t wanted to leave. She wanted to make him give her a jacket or a blanket or anything to cover her up so that she could ride through town without drawing attention. Grudgingly, she even acknowledged the one tiny advantage to carrying a damn satchel. Not that she would ever ask Mal to carry her pack. It was bad enough that she had asked him to carry the notebook, and he hadn’t shut up since they left about how much he hated the taste of leather.

But, like it or not, Emma had obligations. She was alpha. Somehow, she still wasn’t convinced that she had accomplished it, even though she felt the connection to each person in her pack. Never mind the influx of shifter presence that she felt drawing on her mind all the time. Except, when she was with Mason. She could recognize the trouble that might cause, but she also had a hard time caring.

Times like right now, when she had obligations. Promises to keep. Whether or not she was alpha. Sighing, Emma dropped onto the old couch. It still smelled musty. She really needed to remember to leave the windows open when she left. Even after their short residence during Brett’s sickness, they hadn’t spent enough time there to make up for the prior years of neglect.

Her phone sat on the table next to the couch, right where she had left it hours ago. She stared at it, hating how immediately it reconnected her to her real life. Since everything with Cheryl, Emma and Mal had shifted every single night. While they were shifted, she couldn’t answer the phone. Couldn’t be reached. Not by Jordan or Cheryl or anybody else. Right now, she couldn’t even feel guilty about it.

Even as she watched, the thing buzzed. She had only been home for ten minutes. With a groan, Emma leaned over and picked it up, then laid out lengthwise on the couch. She hadn’t had a chance to fix the screen, and splinters of glass were chipping off around the edges. The spider effect of the remaining screen made it almost impossible to read the texts that were waiting.

There were four from Jordan, two from Joe, one from Brett and two from Juliet.

And one from Zander Fry. Call me. I need you.

Shit. The message was only an hour old, and Emma sat up, dialing his number immediately.

The kid had been doing so well. Emma’s stomach crawled up behind her rib cage as the phone rang.

And rang.

And rang.

Click.

“Hello?” His voice was quiet and thick.

“Hey Zander, it’s Emma. Is everything okay?” Emma slouched back onto the couch in relief.

“Yeah. I just needed to talk.”

He must have been sleeping. His voice perked up with every word and the tension behind Emma’s ribs fell back a little. “Sorry I didn’t answer earlier. What’s up?”

“I was having cravings. Worse than they’ve been in a while.”

“Cravings in the past tense. What did you do to stop them?”

“I shifted. I let her take over. We went down by the river. She took us swimming.”

Emma twisted the ends of her hair around her fingers. Zander didn’t sound as tired as she thought. He sounded…distant. Distant could be bad. “Swimming is good. Did it help?”

He was quiet for too long. “Yes.”

“Do you need me to come over?”

“No. I just needed to talk for a little bit. Thank you, Emma. I don’t mean to bother you.”

“It’s no bother. You know that. Just let me know if the cravings come back. Okay?”

“I will. I’m good now. I promise.”

The tension behind her ribs hadn’t completely gone away. But Zander was an adult, if a young one. She had to trust him. And let him make his own choices. And hope that he really would call her if he needed anything. That was what she was there for.

“It’s good to talk to you Zander. If you’re around tomorrow, stop by the shop. I think Cyn is making her lemon bars.”

“Sounds good. Thanks, Emma.”

“Good night, Zander.”

Emma let him hang up, just in case he decided to say anything at the last second. But the line clicked.

Volunteering was the one thing that Emma had always done. Besides baking. It gave her purpose. And the stories the residents at Troutdale Springs could tell had given her days’ worth of entertainment. Working at the school, she enjoyed spending time with the younger kids, even if she wasn’t sure she really wanted her own. When she’d started volunteering as a mentor for at risk youths, she knew it would be a challenge.

Emma was used to being around mundanes. She owned half a bakery with Cyn. She volunteered just as much on the mundane side of town as she did the supernatural. And, as intermingled as they were, it wasn’t terribly hard to keep the two separated if they were careful. Most of the kids in the at-risk program were mundane. Shifters didn’t tend to have those kinds of problems. Probably because they were such a tight knit group. No matter who they were, they had support. There were clan leaders, alphas, the high alpha. If there was an issue, someone was there to help.

When Zander had shown up at an open meeting, she’d been surprised to see him. He was the only shifter in the room besides her. So, she sought him out.

Later, when she asked Chuck about him, Emma was informed they’d been having trouble with him for a while. He was an otter shifter in a city full of wolves and bears. He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t part of the majority, but he tended to get along better with the mundanes than the supernatural. He fell into a bad crowd. Found unsafe pastimes that normally didn’t find their ways into the shifter communities. Drugs.

The problem with being a shifter was that he could metabolize them faster than his friends. Which eventually led to the Shadow Sisterhood stepping in. His friends called the cops when he consumed enough to kill any one of them. He passed out, but by the time they got him to the hospital, he was fine. Things like that raised questions.

The day he stepped into that meeting marked the time he decided to turn things around. Emma had been working with him for six months. And for six months, he’d stayed sober. They’d even downed their get-togethers to once a week or even less. The fact that he had called her now didn’t bode well.

Still, she had to trust him. She wasn’t a professional in helping the at-risk. Zander had others for that. She was just there to lend an ear or a shoulder to cry on.

Trust. Believe. She found either hard to do after everything that she had been through. Maybe she needed her own mentor. Or a therapist. Probably a therapist.

Emma clicked through the rest of the messages on her phone. They were the usual correspondences, if a little more persistent than normal. She wasn’t the only one having to adjust to her status as alpha. Though she thought they might be more concerned over the backlash over what had happened with her and Jordan. If anything, her alpha status should have made them pull back. All she had to do was command it.

Which she would never do. She would not be Cheryl. Emma had thicker skin than they gave her credit for. However, she did have to admit that if whatever this thing was between her and Mason turned into anything serious, explaining it wasn’t going to go super well. Not that she thought he was mate material. Yet.

Emma shook her head and dropped her forehead into her hands, elbows propped on her knees. She could still feel the little ball of stress hovering just behind her rib cage. It had been there a lot over the last week. Except for when she was with him. And now, with the excitement of what they had done together wearing off, she could feel it getting bigger. Threatening to swallow her. And talking to any of the people that were trying to get a hold of her wasn’t going to help.

Emma had never been someone to take risks. She bent the rules, but in a calculated manner. She planned. Studied. She didn’t really do things off the cuff. At least nothing big.

Yet, slowly, she had started to let Mason in. She was letting him see her without a filter. In little bits and pieces. He had seen that earlier when she kissed him for the first time. Her usual hesitancy towards intimacy had caused the rumors of her being a tramp, which somehow, over a decade later, still came back to bite her in the ass.

Emma glanced at the clock. It was only a quarter after eight. They had started their time together early. Even if she had to work in the morning, they still had time. She could function on less sleep if she needed to.

Jordan had told her once that she needed to work on settling her own needs. She gave so much to everyone else and she always managed to forget about herself

Emma wasn’t sure what had spurred that thought. But it was there. Staring her right in the face. She didn’t take care of herself. Even taking alpha… that hadn’t been for her. That had been for her brothers, for her clan. For the new generations.

Except, she had wanted to find some freedom for herself.

What did that mean?