Emma found herself at the Main Street Diner with Mason later that evening. She didn’t even really remember the day. She’d powered through it, ignoring everyone’s looks and judgement. Leslie had caught on and had kind of shielded Emma like a protective mama bear.

Which should have been Cheryl’s job.

No. Emma shouldn’t need a mama bear to protect her. She was supposed to be an alpha.

Except that having an alpha spirit didn’t mean she had all the answers or that she was always strong. She was just as stupid and sometimes weak as everyone else.

Well, not everyone.

Emma should be at the Elliot house dealing with clan stuff. She should be talking to the other members of her clan, trying to clean up this mess.

But instead she was sitting opposite the silliest man she had met, watching him eat.

He gave her an uncomfortable expression, shoving his food in his cheek. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” Emma poked at her food with a fork, not eating.

“It might help.” Mason shoveled an overflowing fork of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

How did he have any room left in there? “I’m fine.”

The look on his face said he didn’t believe her.

She forced a bite of meatloaf down. Emma knew she needed to eat. Spending all day at the school had eventually pushed the situation with Cheryl out of her mind, save for the moments she could feel people looking at her. The hairs on the back of her neck would prickle. She had always been able to sense it when people were looking at her. Probably because of Mal. He could pull back, but he was never completely off. At times, she loved it, but today, she wanted him to disappear completely. If only for that reason.

“Well, thank you for helping out today.”

She sighed. “It’s my job.”

“It’s not. Your job is at the bakery. And you don’t have kids. Why do you spend so much time at the school?” He scooped up a spoonful of corn.

“Clan alpha’s daughter, straight up clan duties.” She shrugged. “I like volunteering, so things like this are fun for me.”

“You didn’t seem like you were having a lot of fun today. Not after the kids started showing up anyway.”

“Coming from a different angle isn’t going to get me to talk about it.”

“How’s your meal, hun?” the waitress asked, stepping up to the table. She pointed the question at Emma, who had barely touched her food.

“Oh, it is wonderful. Actually, could I get a to-go box and a strawberry milkshake for here please. Extra cherries.”

Emma raised an eyebrow at Mason.

He raised an eyebrow back and dipped a nod.

A smile cracked across Emma’s lips.

The waitress just stood there, waiting, her pen poised.

Emma held up two fingers. “Make that two milkshakes, please.”

The waitress looked at Mason for confirmation.

He nodded without taking his eyes off Emma.

That man could really make her feel self-conscious, for not being the big-dick-alpha-asshole type. He watched the waitress walk away. “You still haven’t guessed my spirit animal.”

How sad was it that this was still the best conversation she’d had all day? “You really could just tell me.” Emma eyed him sideways, lips quirked to the left and eyes narrowed. “Elephant.”

“You saw my face.”

“I’m still not convinced you aren’t a unicorn.” The conversation was ludicrous, but it was getting her mind off Cheryl and that was what she needed.

“Unicorns aren’t real, which we’ve already discussed.”

“Aren’t they, teacher man?”

Mason shook his head, finishing off his last bite of potatoes. “If you could shift into something other than a bear,” he said, pointing at her with his fork, “what would you shift into?”

“A bear,” she said simply. The waitress returned with a box and Emma focused on scooping her uneaten food into it.

“Have you forgotten how questions work?”

Emma groaned. “Fine.” She’d never even thought of this, or what she would want. Her life had been mapped out for her since she was born with an alpha-potential spirit. “I would change into something that could fly, I guess.”

“A toucan?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“They can fly. And their beaks are like a party with wings.”

She looked up to see a huge grin on his lips that lit up his face. That man—for all that he was a nerd like no other—was handsome as hell. “How scientific of you. I thought you were a teacher.”

“Well, they are part of the Ramphastidae family, derived from the Greek roots ramphos and –astus, meaning literally big beak. They also—”

Emma threw up her hands and laughed. “Okay, okay, Toucan Sam. I get it. And, for future reference, I don’t like Froot Loops.”

He sat back and chuckled. “Noted.”

She turned aside, the laughter still on her lips as their milkshakes arrived.

The waitress had made good on the request for extra cherries. As she set them down, a cherry rolled off a mound of whipped cream.

Emma caught it before it hit the table, popping it into her mouth. With her cheeks puckered in, she sucked the whipped cream off the cherry, raising an eyebrow at Mason.

He rolled his eyes and slid the other milkshake towards himself. “I don’t see what’s wrong with a toucan. They fly, and they live in the tropics.” He picked up his own cherry, gripping it between his teeth and pulling out the stem without ceremony. “But, I guess Emma isn’t a fan of rainbows and happiness.”

She laughed incredulously at him. “What?”

He ignored her. “How about…” Mason tapped his spoon on the table, mimicking deep thought. “A vulture. Practical, utilitarian flight machine.”

“Who preys on dead and dying animals. Pass.” Emma flicked her ponytail and batted her eyelids. “I’m thinking something majestic.”

“Peacock?”

Emma snorted and laughed through a mouthful of whipped cream. Then her phone buzzed. Suppressing her irritation, she pulled it out of her pocket and the momentary uptick in her mood spiraled back into dismal territory. Hey. Everything okay? Where are you?

Emma stared at the message. It was Jordan. Her best friend. Yet, she didn’t want to talk to him. If she talked to Jordan, she had to have the real conversations. They had to discuss things. He would comfort her, of course. But, she didn’t want comfort. She wanted… laughter. When was the last time she’d laughed at something without it feeling forced? She’d laughed more times in one morning than she had in two months. It felt good. And it was all because of Mason. The idiot shifter who had walked into her mundane bakery and damn near blew the cover off the entire shifter community.

Emma slid her phone back into her pocket without responding. She looked up to find Mason watching her, his intense green eyes crinkled in concern and question. He didn’t voice anything out loud, just waited, fingers toying with the cherry stem.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Emma staring into her milkshake, Mason stirring the whipped cream into his.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. Instead, it was strangely companionable, and Emma marveled at how easy it was to sit across from this man that she barely knew and feel such a thing. Joking around had a way of connecting through the stranger-danger gap, but now Emma didn’t feel like joking. She plucked the last cherry off the top of her milkshake and stirred the rest of it up.

Mason tapped either a bad song or a coded message on the table with his fingertips.

She smiled to herself. “I would be a golden eagle, if I could.”

Mason looked up.

Emma fell into his eyes, something catching just under her ribcage in a flutter. The green of his eyes glowed, accented by the presence of his spirit animal.

Mal stirred in response, coming forward into her own eyes. He growled a gentle approval and fell back.

“Eagles are majestic,” Mason said, his voice reflecting the more serious tone of hers. He held her gaze, milkshake forgotten.

Emma didn’t want to look away. Something between them shifted.

The change hit Emma square in the chest. Suddenly, she wanted to tell him everything, despite her protests. The easy laughter that had been so close to the surface with Mason drifted further away, pulling back and tucking away for safe keeping. Laughter was dangerous. It made her forget. Took her away. Let her just… be.

Emma forced herself to look down at her milkshake, spiraling the white into the pink ice cream with a spoon. Her phone buzzed again in her pocket. Not a text this time, a call. She really should answer.

Closing her eyes, Emma drew in a deep breath, willing the phone to stop buzzing. She wouldn’t reject the call. If she did, Jordan would know that she was ignoring him. For now, she could have just left her phone in her car.

“Someone is really trying to get a hold of you,” Mason said, pushing away his half empty milkshake. “You’re sure everything’s okay?”

“I’ll talk to him later. It’s just… clan politics.” Emma continued to play with her milkshake, though she didn’t drink any more of it.

“Clan politics?” Mason looked generally interested, leaned forward, elbows on the table. His thick rimmed glasses tilted a little to one side on the bridge of his nose.

“Didn’t you have a clan or a pack or whatever back—” Emma waved her hand vaguely in one direction. “Back wherever you came from. Where was that, again?”

“DC.” Mason shrugged and shook his head.

“Like, the east coast? What the hell brought you clear out here?” She looked at him incredulously. Emma had grown up in this area, and she had also never left it. Despite dreams of the east coast metropolitan scene. Seattle was decent, but New York? DC? Boston?

“You’ve never been?”

“It is one of my more distressing failings.”

Mason laughed. “Well, if that’s the worst of it, I think we’ll be okay. Cities are overrated anyway.”

“I’d like to decide that on my own, thanks.” Emma pushed aside her milkshake and mimicked Mason’s posture, elbows on the table, leaning forward. He made her feel excited about life. “So. Why did you move here?”

“My parents. They wanted to retire here.”

Emma perked up that the mention of his parents. “You’re sure you aren’t a rat?”

“Only if rats have a sleeper gene that mutates fur into quills.”

“Porcupine!” Emma slammed her hands down on the table, and the few other people in the restaurant turned to look at her and Mason. She blushed immediately, and then hunched over the table, pulling herself closer to him. “You’re a goddamn porcupine.”

Mason cleared his throat. “Very, um, DL of you.”

“DL?”

“Down low. Did you grow up in the woods or something?”

Emma jerked up an eyebrow. “Um… bear?”

Mason laughed and the looked around the room and then leaned in conspiratorially. “Maybe we should get out of here. We wouldn’t want to, you know, blow our cover.”

As if on cue, the waitress returned with their check. Mason swiped it off the table before Emma could protest and handed it back to the waitress with is card.

“Are you a gentleman, Mason Covey?” Because she hadn’t met too many of those. She’d always been the one in charge of everything from planning the day to paying for outings. This one small thing was… refreshing.

The smile he gave her was almost coy, if men could be coy. “When it suits me.”

The phone buzzed in Emma’s pocket again. What would make him stop calling? She looked up once at Mason and winced an apology. “I need to take this.”

“Sure.”

Emma slipped out the door of the diner and paced across the parking lot to her car. She had let the call ring out again. In her mind, she could see Jordan sitting back in their apartment, half bear and pacing across the floor rattling the fixtures with each step. He was going to be pissed.

Tapping the shortcut on her home screen, Emma unlocked her car and tossed her purse inside. The phone barely rang once.

“Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours.” Jordan’s voice growled, his bear coming through uncharacteristically.

“Chill out, Jordan. I am fine. What’s going on?”

“Cheryl is what’s going on.”

Emma’s stomach fell. Of course, it was Cheryl. Hadn’t she done enough today? “More than the way she called off the wedding? Because I was dealing with that.” Mostly.

“Can you come home, please? We really need to talk.”

Mason stepped out of the diner, looking around for Emma. She waved, and as he saw her, his face lit up. He jogged across the parking lot towards her.

“Emma?” Jordan asked in her ear.

What was she supposed to do? Oh, she knew the answer to that. “Yeah. I’ll be home in twenty, okay?” Because she was a dutiful daughter and always did what she was supposed to.

Jordan hung up without answering. What was going on?

“Everything good?” Mason leaned casually against Emma’s car, cocking a sideways smile at her in a totally Danny Zuko move. He only needed the leather jacket and a cigarette. And something other than Emma’s Toyota Corolla to lean against. But, the image still made Emma smile.

She shrugged, tucking her phone into her back pocket. “Clan shit. I’m gonna have to take off.” Disappointment twinged in her stomach as she said it. What was it about Mason?

“I’ve never been part of a clan or a pack. Is it always like this?”

Emma leaned against the car beside him. “Not usually. This week has been… a little rough. I’ll leave it at that.”

“Well, I have an unbiased ear if you ever want to vent. I’m sorry you have to go. Though, I suppose, now that you’ve figured out what I am, we don’t have anything left to talk about.”

“Porcupine.” She chuckled. She’d never even heard of a porcupine shifter before. “Really?”

Mason bowed dramatically. “At your service.”

“I’ll remember that when a need a new pen.”

“Or a needle. Or a boot scrubber. Whichever.”

Emma snorted. “Boot scrubber?”

“What? The quills get the dirt out of the cracks.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Emma straightened, arching her back in a long stretch and then tightening her pony tail. She looked at Mason, debated for half a second, and then said, “I’m trying out a new cookie recipe at the bakery tomorrow. You could taste test, if you want.”

He smiled, green eyes sparkling in the dim light. “Deal.”

Emma thought she might have seen the tips of his hair harden into spikes. But it could have been a trick of the light.

Oh, for hell’s sake. What was she doing?