At least I’d chosen wisely in the clothing department, wearing cutoff denim shorts, a black tank, and flipflops. I’d also gone with the zero makeup mom-bun look, which was the easiest way to tame the absolute mess of hair I had going on. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but my hair was acting as strange as my life, channeling Rapunzel so that it was twice as thick as normal, not to mention down past my ass.
Torin wanted me to cut it. He’d mentioned more than once that my hair was a little out of control, so, of course, I took great pleasure in canceling every appointment he made with our local hairdresser. The fucking arrogance of that alpha, thinking he could dictate the length of my hair. Thanks to his archaic attitude, I would see the ends literally drag on the ground before I cut it to please him. Yep, there I went, showing him the one thing that truly controlled me.
My pride.
As I got closer to town, the foot and car traffic picked up, and every shifter who passed me waved and called out a greeting. My first instinct when pack members came close to me was to make myself small and get off the main path. A survival instinct that I’d no doubt never get rid of. Torma was a trigger for me, holding so many memories that I wished I’d lost. At least I had a plan now to escape; I just had a few little issues to clear up first.
When I reached the street, I stopped at the first shop: Baked Buns. It was a fantastic little bakery that had old-school red brick across its frontage and huge woodfire ovens lining the back walls, so everyone could see the delicious treats baking.
When I stepped through the door, the scents near killed me as my stomach grumbled and growled. Normally, I’d never have the money to spend on treats, not even as the alpha-mate because I refused to accept any of Torin’s “support.” But thankfully, during one of my tiny little rage-blackouts in my mom’s apartment when I’d trashed a bunch of shit, I’d found a packet of cash in an old cushion. Must have been one of my hiding places that I’d forgotten about.
Wherever it had come from, I was now cashed up enough to buy myself a nice pastry for breakfast.
“Good morning, alpha-mate,” Brenda, the cheery owner, said as she bustled out to take my order. “We’re so blessed to have you in our store today.”
Bleh. There went my appetite as an old memory assaulted me. When I’d been about twelve, this bitch had watched with a callous expression as a group of shifters had kicked the shit out of me in the field behind her house, on the east side of Torma. At the time, I hadn’t blamed her for not wanting to get involved, but even when she’d hurried off, no help had ever arrived for me. She hadn’t told anyone, and that was what I wouldn’t forgive.
At that age, I’d been lucky not to get raped; I was fairly certain it was only Jaxson and Torin putting their foot down that had stopped it from happening. I probably owed them for that.
Whatever.
“Brenda, hey,” I said to the petite brunette, forcing the dark memories down.
She leaned forward against her front cabinet, all of five feet, petite and pretty. Despite being at least fifty years old, she didn’t look much older than me. Her mate was an enforcer, their two-year-old twins absolutely adorable.
She lived the life I’d always wished I could, but now that I was here, it just tasted bitter.
“I’ll grab a jam tart, two of the apricot pastries, and a small jar of chocolate sauce,” I said, my voice quieter than I’d wanted it to be. Pushing the memories down only got me so far, and both my face and voice acted as mood rings in these situations.
She nodded before hurrying off to package everything up. As she bustled around, I wandered along the cold display, deciding to take advantage of the empty shop. “I have a few questions for you,” I called out. “If that’s okay.”
“Of course,” she said instantly, her voice still light and open.
That would probably change the moment she heard my topic of conversation.
“I’m trying to gather information about what happened in Torma after we woke from our stasis punishment. With my memory loss, I’m worried that I’ve missed something important.”
Her head jerked up from where she was sliding a pastry into a white paper bag.
“Has Torin not said anything?” she asked breathlessly, her dark grey eyes wide and shiny. “I mean, he’s your true mate, right?”
I shot her back my best fake smile. The one that said we were old friends and confidantes, and she should feel secure in sharing all of her secrets with me. “Of course, Torin and I have discussed it in detail, but he remembers nothing of significance and suggested that I question a few of the more upstanding citizens in the pack. In the hopes that from another perspective, there might be more information out there.”
Dropping Torin’s name burned my tongue, but I legitimately wasn’t above using his position in the pack to get the answers I needed. I had to get out of Torma soon, before Torin forced his will on me, but I couldn’t leave until the mystery was solved.
Someone had fucked with me and I was determined to find out who.
7
Brenda’s movements didn’t suggest she was panicked by my question, but I felt her unease. The only things that had stopped her from brushing me off, in the hope of avoiding an uncomfortable topic, were my words about Torin encouraging this. No one wanted to go against the alpha.
“In all honesty,” she said softly, “I haven’t really seen you in town since we were brought back from our stasis. We all figured that you were dealing with your bond, learning how to be alpha-mate.”
I paused. “Torin has only been an alpha of Torma for what… two months? Wouldn’t he be learning it too?”
She blinked. “It feels so much longer, but yes, I suppose that is correct. No doubt the many years under Victor acclimated him to the role much faster.”
The look on her face told me that she really hadn’t stopped to think about it, just going about her daily life for the last two months without questioning how the fuck we’d all been frozen for years.
How had none of them lost their minds too at the thought that the world around us had continued moving while we’d stayed the same? In stasis. Vulnerable to any who’d wanted to hurt us.
When I asked Brenda a condensed version of that, she shrugged. “Most of us never leave Torma anyway. And what’s two years when we live hundreds? We celebrated the release of our punishment, and now we live our lives. You should just be happy with your gifts, Mera. You’re our beloved alpha-mate, and through a quirk in fate, the sins of your family were wiped away in a single instant.”
My jaw ached at how hard my teeth were clenched. Everyone was feeding me the same line. Be happy with what you have; don’t worry about the past; move forward and enjoy your newfound popularity.
I could tell they thought I was being an ungrateful brat who just couldn’t stop poking and prodding at the fabric of our pack. But, seriously, there was something majorly wrong here. I felt it so deep inside that it was butting heads with my DNA.
A few other shifters entered her shop then, and I wasn’t able to interrogate Brenda any further. In reality, I already knew she held no other answers. Just like everyone else, she hadn’t questioned what had happened to us, already back to living her same day-to-day reality. If the Torma shifters had niggling doubts or worries about their time held prisoner, they were far better at pushing them down than me.