The Forbidden Alpha’s Mate

Sienna's POV

"First time passing through, huh?" The question tumbled out before I could stop it, and I immediately regretted it. What else was there to say to a stranger nursing lukewarm coffee at six in the morning?

The diner had seen better decades. Outside, the old highway cracked and crumbled, slowly losing ground to the wilderness pressing in from every side. Weeds shoved their way through the asphalt of the lot, turning pavement to rubble one season at a time. One stubborn root had heaved up clean through a parking space, leaving it usable only for trucks with enough clearance to bounce over it. Just more proof that this scrap of a town, tucked deep in the Hinterlands backcountry, was being slowly swallowed whole by the land around it.

I made it my business to know every face that walked through that door. Every single one. Partly because the regulars and their spare change were the only thing standing between me and starvation, but mostly because I couldn't afford not to notice things. I was always watching. Always listening for anyone who might be like me.

This particular manunshaven, travel-worn, smelling faintly of gas station coffeewasn't the kind of threat I lost sleep over. Still, his tired eyes flicked up toward mine, and he muttered something vague about California and an open road, leaving me standing there with nothing clever to add.

I let out a breath. California. I missed it more than I wanted to admitnot the people, never the people, especially not himbut the trees, the fog rolling off the water. I shoved the thought down before it could take root. Not here. Not now.

That was the mantra I repeated to myself roughly a thousand times a day.

"Order's ready, Sienna!" Sal's voice cracked through the pass-through window, followed by the clatter of a plate loaded with greasy hash browns and eggs. Calling this place a diner felt generous some mornings.

I flashed the traveler a quick, apologetic smile and hurried toward the kitchen, the tray balanced against my palm like it weighed nothinglike I'd spent years doing this instead of barely half a year.

Sal was drying his hands on a stained rag when I passed. "I still don't get how someone your size hauls that much food without dropping a single plate."

I threw him a smirk over my shoulder. There was no way I'd ever explain the real reason. "And I still don't get how a man who cooks twelve hours a day stays built like a broomstick."

He barked out a laugh, the same one he gave every single week when I recycled that joke. It didn't matter that it wasn't originalthe routine was comforting, predictable, safe. I liked the rhythm of this place, liked that Sal paid me straight cash with no questions asked.

No bank account meant no paper trail. No paper trail meant I could vanish whenever I needed to.

"Two over-easy, double bacon, and the Jimmy Dean special," I called out, sliding the ticket across before grabbing the finished plate for table two.

"Need anything else?" I gave Mr. Henderson my best customer-service grin. He tipped like garbage, but he was harmless, and there was something almost sweet about how set in his ways he was.

"I'm all set, sweetheart." He was already reaching for his fork, eyeing the mountain in front of him: sausage, toast dripping in butter, more bacon than any doctor would approve of, and eggs buried under cheese.

That plate was a heart attack waiting to happen, but it wasn't my place to say so. Besides, I wouldn't be sticking around this town long enough to watch it catch up with him. Staying too long anywhere was a luxury I couldn't risk. My past didn't forget, and it definitely didn't forgive.

The phone rang, and my hand was already wrapped around a pen before I even lifted the receiver.

"Arthur's, this is Sienna." Arthur himself hadn't set foot in this place in yearshe'd handed the whole operation down to his son.

"Sienna, thank god!" Chloe's voice hit my eardrum like a siren, and I had to pull the phone away an inch. My hearing had never been exactly normal. "Any chance you could take my shift tonight?"

I hesitated.

The moon was nearly full, and my whole body hummed with restlessness, desperate for the one release I actually needed. It wasn't the kind involving menslim pickings around here anywaybut the kind that came from four paws hitting dirt.

"Leo's running a fever, and Brock's ghosting me again, that useless excuse for a boyfriend." She hit every soft spot I had: a sick kid, a deadbeat partner.

"Fine, yeah, I've got it," I said, exhaling.

"You're a lifesaver, seriously, thank you!"