Despite my intention not to spend the night crying, I didn't make it through packing a single box before my cheeks were wet with tears and I was a second away from calling Marshall to tell him I'd changed my mind.
But I didn't.
I remembered the frustration he tried to hide at being forced to stay with me in Hardin instead of going with the rest of the pack to Dawley to rescue Talis.
I remembered the pack's relief that I wasn't in Dawley when Savannah was drugged, kidnapped, and nearly killed by the last remaining members of the Merrick pack.
And I remember Luka, Nathan, and Hallee chatting in the car on the way back from Dawley about the lone wolves who'd attempted to kill Jackson. News Regan must've shared with the rest of the pack while I was upstairs crying. Again, I caught the naked relief in their eyes when they turned to me. Relief that I'd been safe in Hardin at the time.
They care. I know they care. But if they knew how smothering that care can feel, to know that no one believes you can survive a day on your own, maybe they'd understand why I need to stand on my own two feet.
After waking from another restless night of tossing in bed, I dressed in a pair of black, baggy tie-waist pants, white sneakers, and a long-sleeve white t-shirt. At the last minute, I decided to leave my hair down because if I feel the urge to hide, I can hide behind my hair.
As I'm parking my tiny, two-seater Toyota in front of the Blackshaw main house, a three-story white clapboard farmhouse with a wraparound porch, it's early, not seven yet, and from the darkening sky, a storm is on the way.
I grab my purse and climb out of my car, taking in the spread of cars and trucks parked up in front.
Looks like I'm the last one.
Even Marshall's car is here, which I wasn't expecting. I told myself he'd probably be at work, or maybe Dayne would tell him not to come after his appearance at my cabin last night. But he's here, which means telling the pack I'm leaving will be a thousand times harder with him sitting at the same table.
I wish Savannah was here so I could sit with her in her cabin in the woods, but she's not. She and Jeremy are still in Paris, and from her regular updates, they're having a great time and aren't planning on returning anytime soon. They're even talking about heading to Rome next.
Shaking my head, knowing I'm just delaying the inevitable, I head up the wide porch steps of the wooden home set in the lush Colorado forest.
Even before I shove the door open, I hear them chatting away in the kitchen, and they sound… normal. From the conversation and the laughter and the arguments, it sounds like every other pack breakfast.
After taking a second to steady my taut nerves, I enter the door that is almost always unlocked, letting it swing shut behind me.
At the doorway of the large airy kitchen with an imposing island, I pause.
Without meaning to, the first person my eyes go to is Marshall, who's not wearing his usual, blue-stained overalls with his hair tied back from his face. Instead, he's in sweats and he's bent over his plate of eggs, bacon, and pancakes.
At the long wooden table covered with several large serving dishes, everyone else is spending more time chatting than eating. Everyone except Marshall.
Although I couldn't accuse Marshall of hiding behind his long blond hair, I can't help but think he's doing just that, as he empties his plate at a rapid pace. It doesn't seem possible that he's even tasting his food. He's eating too fast for him to be gaining any enjoyment from it.
"Jenna?"
I startle at Talis' call, tearing my gaze away from Marshall to our heavily pregnant dark-haired Luna, who's sitting beside Dayne. She has her large brown eyes focused on me with an intensity that has me thinking she's been studying me ever since I appeared in the doorway.
"Come sit next to me," she says, pointing at the empty seat beside her.
It's not my usual spot, but I cross over to her and drape my purse over the back of my chair before dropping into the seat.
No one is sitting where they should be. Well, hardly anyone is. Only Nathan and Hallee are sitting in their usual seats, next to each other. Next to Marshall, where I'd normally sit, is an empty chair that I can't help glancing at and wondering who will fill it when I leave.
If it feels so unfamiliar and strange with Savannah and Regan gone, I can't help but wonder how it must feel for Dayne, who's watching his pack leave, one by one.
"Hey, Jenna," Dean calls out across the table.
I turn to smile at him. I feel like I never see our resident computer guy, or software engineer enough. Although he drove the truck filled with Regan's belongings down to Dawley, he didn't stay as he had to get back to Hardin to work.
It's a big project he's working on with a company he can't talk about, but whoever it is, he's at pains to tell us all repeatedly, is paying him silly money to design a new product for them that's going to be game-changing. Revolutionary, he keeps saying. But that's all he'll say, and if anyone ventures too close to the laptop that's become an extension of himself, he slams the lid down so hard I'm surprised he hasn't broken it yet.
Nathan thinks he's working for the government, but I doubt it. Keeping the existence of shifters a secret is far too important to risk working with people who would have no compunction about hunting us all down and killing us if they learned about what we could do.
"Hey, Dean." I take the serving dish of scrambled eggs Hallee passes over.
"Any new orders?" Hallee asks.
I serve myself a single scoop of eggs and return the serving dish, ignoring Hallee's glance at what is a pretty tiny serving. Well, maybe it wouldn't be for an ordinary human, but for us shifters, we can put a lot away, which is why there's a mountain of food at every mealtime, and when Regan or Talis would make a casserole, there was never just one, but four large dishes.
I help myself to two rashers of bacon, again a small portion. "I closed the shop."
"But isn't this your busiest period?" Talis asks.
She's right, it is. We're heading into the back-to-school season which is usually crazy. I could see anything from one to two hundred orders a day. So many that Marshall and some of the others have come over to help me, or I've brought everything to the basement and created a packing station down there.
"Yes. But I'm too busy packing for my move, so I don't have time to pack orders." I put my fork down long enough to grab the three sticker packs from my purse that Hallee wanted before handing them over. "I know you said you only wanted one, but…" I trail off because of the silence at the table.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Nathan and Luka glance down the table. At Marshall, most likely.
"Packing?" Gavin asks. Other than me, he's the quietest in the pack. As he didn't come to Dawley because someone needed to stay and watch the house, he probably has no idea what happened.
I force myself to meet his confused gaze. "I'm leaving."
This time, the silence is longer, and I can't help but dart a glance at Marshall.
His gaze is on the empty plate in front of him, and his hair is mostly obscuring his face. But, as always, it's his hands that clue me in on his state of mind.
The grip he has on the fork in his hand is so tight that even though it's metal, I have serious doubts the fork is going to be unbent by the time he releases his hold on it.
"Well," Talis says briskly, "how's everyone doing this morning? I think it might rain later since the sky is so gray and gloomy."
I turn to her because Talis talking about the weather is… odd, at least for her. She's not one for small talk, and I realize I'm not the only one who thinks so. Dayne has stopped eating and is watching her with narrowed eyes. As if he suspects she's up to something but doesn't know what that something is yet.
Talis ignores him and everyone else at the table to shift her full attention to me. "Do you have any plans today?"
I blink at the abruptness of the question and almost immediately drop my gaze to her ear so I'm not meeting her eye to eye. "Uh, packing mostly, and I-"
"Oh, that can wait. I mean, we can all help do that later. It'll go much faster with us all helping."
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marshall's grip tightening around the fork, though he doesn't lift his head.
"I was hoping you might do something for me," Talis says.
I return my gaze to my plate and pick up my fork, though I have no appetite for breakfast. "Okay. What did you want me to do?"
"Dayne and I are organizing a surprise for Regan and Jackson, some furniture for their new home once it's built. A local carpenter is doing the work." Talis stops talking at the sound of a fork hitting the floor.
The sight of Hallee bent under the table confirms it was her, and she's busy retrieving her fallen fork. Seconds later, her head reappears, though her cheeks are strangely red.
"Well," Talis continues, "I'm going to need you to see him. His name's Kier. I've written his address down for you."
I put my fork down on the table and take the handwritten address she thrusts at me. "I don't understand. What do you want me to do?"
"Oh, didn't I say?"
I dart a glance in her face because she's behaving strangely. For her to be this bright and perky this early in the morning is in itself unusual, but for her to be pushing me to go see this carpenter when it's a task I'd expect Luka to go on doesn't make sense.
"You didn't," I tell her gently.
"Well, I just need you to go check how things are going. I'm sure he'll want to show you his workroom and maybe he'll give you a tour and-" Talis breaks off when Hallee has a coughing fit.
Nathan's eyes narrow with suspicion at the suddenness of her attack when she doesn't even have her fork in her hand anymore, so she can't be choking on anything she's eaten.
"So, what do you say?" Talis asks, drawing my attention back to her.
I take a second to scan the address. It isn't familiar, but I know what general area to head in, the most remote part of Hardin. "I guess I can go."
"Great. He's expecting you now."
I jerk my head up in surprise. "What?"
Talis climbs to her feet and hauls me to mine with one arm before leading me out of the kitchen, giving me no opportunity to stop her. "Kier's expecting you now. And it's probably best you go sooner rather than later. That way, you don't end up trapped in his cabin for days. I guess it might be romantic waiting out a storm in a cozy cabin with a hunky carpenter…"
Behind me, I hear a chair leg scraping against the kitchen tile and can guess all too clearly who it must be.
I don't look back because Talis is speeding up, practically sprinting me to the front door. "But I…"
"And here, take Dayne's truck. His tires are better for rough terrain." Talis tucks Dayne's keys in my hand, never ceasing in her mission to propel me to the front door.
We're almost there when I remember I left my purse hanging behind my chair in the kitchen. "But my purse, I-"
Talis doesn't slow. "No problem. It'll be waiting for you when you return. You'll like Kier, I think. He's quiet and an all-around nice guy."
She opens the front door and gently nudges me out.
I try one last time to get her attention. "But my cell phone-"
But as always, Talis proves herself to be a force of nature, while I'm the gentle breeze no one ever feels. "He's a shifter as well. Very handsome."
From behind Talis, at the entrance of the kitchen, Marshall appears with a thunderous expression on his face. "Talis," he snarls.
"I'll see you later, Jenna," Talis says brightly, and then slams the door in my face.
For a second, I stand there, listening to Talis telling Marshall to calm down and if he'll give her five minutes, she'll explain.
When I hear them retreat into the kitchen, I turn around and glance down at the car keys in one hand and the handwritten address in the other.
This must be what it feels like to be run over. Or like a sheep being herded. Or something.
One minute I was sitting down to breakfast, and the next, I'm agreeing to something that I'm still struggling to understand what I'm actually supposed to do. I don't even remember putting my fork down.
Speaking of forks, why was Hallee behaving so strangely? And how was Talis able to turn me into a ball of confusion, make Dayne and Nathan suspicious, Marshall furious, and Hallee flustered all in under five minutes? All at a time that Talis is usually more half-asleep than awake.
At the faint rumble of thunder, I glance at the gray, darkening sky and realize Talis was right about the storm. It looks like it'll be a bad one, and I have no desire to be stuck sitting it out with a strange shifter I didn't even know lived in Hardin, much less ever met. But clearly, Dayne must have known about his presence for him to be commissioning him to build furniture for Regan and Jackson.
I think about how unusual that is as I head for Dayne's truck and climb in. I never would've thought Dayne would agree to let a lone wolf live in his territory. For him to keep it secret from the rest of us is even more out of character.
As I'm starting the truck, I notice the fuel gauge is sitting near empty. Although I could stop at the gas station and fill the truck up, that would require me to be around people. To make conversation. The way I'm feeling, and how exhausted I must look, the less contact I have with anyone, the better.
If it were my car, I'd have no choice but to stop at the gas station because there's no way I'd make the journey there and back again. But near empty on Dayne's truck is still a couple of hours of driving, at least according to Marshall, who maintains all our vehicles for us.
"An hour," I tell myself, as I try to estimate the journey there and back again, "at a push."
So, despite a little anxiety about meeting a lone shifter on my own, I can't help but feel a little curious as well about this mysterious shifter who's been living practically in my back yard all this time, and I never knew it.
I'd have thought that I would pick up his scent when he was in town, at least once, but I haven't. I wonder why he lives so isolated, and what it is about him that convinced Dayne to give him permission to settle in Hardin.
After one last glance at the handwritten address, I toss the note on the seat beside me and start the truck. Just before I back away from the house, my stomach growls, reminding me that I should've eaten at least some of what was on my plate instead of nothing.
"Breakfast will still be waiting when you return, Jenna. So quick tour of his workroom, then back again," I mutter to myself, "and then back to packing."