Chapter 7 Hunter and Tara

Shadows and Ghosts

Tara pov

The grocery store in Silver Creek, Nevada was nothing like the small-town markets I had grown up with. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in a harsh white glow that made the packaged foods look artificial and uninviting. I pushed my cart slowly down the cereal aisle, checking items off the list my father had written in his careful handwriting.

*Oatmeal. Bread. Milk. Eggs. Coffee.*

Basic necessities for our small apartment above Murphy's Garage, where my father had found work as a mechanic. It wasn't much—two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a living room that doubled as my father's office space—but it was ours. More importantly, it was over a thousand miles from Silverstone territory and the memories that still haunted my dreams.

Four months of rebuilding. Four months of learning to be human among humans, of suppressing my wolf during full moons, of pretending that the constant ache in my chest was just a side effect of adjusting to a new life rather than the phantom pain of a severed mate bond.

I reached for a box of granola bars, adding them to my cart with mechanical precision. Shopping had become a meditation of sorts—a mindless activity that let my thoughts drift without focusing on anything too painful. Today was one of my better days, when I could almost convince myself that I was healing, that the sharp edges of my heartbreak were finally beginning to dull.

I turned the corner into the produce section, mentally calculating whether we had enough money left for fresh fruit this week, when I saw him.

The man stood with his back to me, examining apples with the kind of intense focus that seemed familiar in a way that made my stomach drop. Dark hair that looked like it might curl slightly at the ends. Broad shoulders that filled out a simple gray t-shirt. The way he held himself—confident but not arrogant, alert in the way of someone accustomed to being responsible for others' safety.

My cart stopped moving as if my hands had forgotten how to push it. My heart hammered against my ribs, so loud I was certain everyone in the store could hear it. The carefully constructed walls I had built around my emotions over the past four months crumbled in an instant, leaving me feeling raw and exposed under the harsh fluorescent lights.

*It can't be him. It can't be.*

But even as my rational mind tried to provide logical explanations—similar build, common hair color, my own desperate imagination—my wolf stirred restlessly beneath my skin for the first time in weeks. The part of me that had been dormant since we had left Silverstone suddenly lifted its head like a hunting dog catching a familiar scent.

The man reached for a bag of apples, and I caught a glimpse of his profile. Strong jaw. Straight nose. The kind of features that belonged on magazine covers or movie screens, devastatingly handsome in a way that had once made my teenage heart flutter with impossible dreams.

My breath caught in my throat. *Hunter.*

For a moment that felt like eternity, I was eighteen again, standing in the pack meeting clearing and watching my mate—my mate—look at me with recognition and something that might have been longing before his expression hardened into cruel indifference. I could almost hear his voice cutting through the night air: "You are not strong enough, not worthy enough, to stand beside me."

The memory hit me like a physical blow, and I had to grip the handle of my shopping cart to keep myself upright. Around me, the normal sounds of the grocery store continued—the hum of refrigeration units, the distant beeping of checkout scanners, a child crying somewhere in the next aisle. Life is going on as if my world hadn't just tilted off its axis.

The man turned slightly, reaching for a different bag of fruit, and I got a clear look at his face.

It wasn't Hunter.

The relief that flooded through me was so intense it left me lightheaded. Similar coloring, similar build, but this was clearly a different person. Older, with laugh lines around his eyes and a small scar on his chin that Hunter had never had. He was a complete stranger who just happened to share some physical characteristics with the man who had shattered my heart.

I sagged against my cart, feeling foolish and shaken in equal measure. Four months, and I was still seeing ghosts. Four months, and my body still reacted to shadows and possibilities like a trauma victim jumping at car backfires.

*This has to stop.*

I forced myself to resume shopping, adding bananas and oranges to my cart with hands that trembled only slightly. The stranger with Hunter's coloring moved past me toward the checkout lanes, and I deliberately avoided looking in his direction. I had embarrassed myself enough for one day.

By the time I reached the dairy section, my heartbeat had returned to something approaching normal. I was reaching for a carton of milk when my phone buzzed with a text from my father.

*Working late tonight. Client emergency. There's leftover soup in the fridge.*

I smiled despite my lingering emotional turmoil. Dad had thrown himself into his new job with the kind of dedication that impressed even his human employer. Murphy, the garage owner, had quickly recognized my father's skill and work ethic, promoting him to head mechanic within two months. It was good, honest work that let him use his hands and problem-solving abilities without the political complications of pack life.

I was typing back a response when a voice behind me made my blood freeze.

"Excuse me, miss?"

My fingers stilled on my phone screen. The voice was wrong—too light, too young—but for a moment my traumatized mind heard echoes of another voice, deeper and more commanding. The voice that had once whispered my name like a prayer before learning to speak it like a curse.

I turned slowly, expecting to see the stranger from the produce section asking about something mundane like whether the organic milk was worth the extra cost. Instead, I found myself looking at a teenage boy with sandy brown hair and kind eyes, wearing the red vest of a store employee.

"Sorry to bother you," he said with the earnest politeness of someone working his first job. "But you dropped this back by the apples."

He held out my wallet—brown leather, worn at the edges, a gift from my father on my sixteenth birthday. I must have pulled it out to check our remaining grocery budget and then forgotten it when I had seen Hunter's doppelganger.

"Thank you," I managed, taking the wallet with hands that shook slightly. "I didn't even realize..."

"No problem. Happens all the time." The boy smiled and headed back toward his duties, leaving me standing alone among the refrigerated cases with the uncomfortable realization of how thoroughly that moment of mistaken identity had rattled me.

I finished my shopping quickly after that, moving through the remaining aisles with mechanical efficiency. At the checkout line, I smiled and made small talk with the cashier, played the role of a normal young woman doing normal errands. But underneath my calm exterior, my mind was churning.

Four months of careful healing, of slowly rebuilding my sense of self, and one glimpse of a stranger had nearly undone it all. How was I supposed to move forward if I was still this fragile? How was I supposed to build a new life if a random man in a grocery store could send me spiraling back into that night in the clearing?

The drive back to their apartment took me through the heart of Silver Creek, past the small businesses and local restaurants that had become familiar landmarks in our new life. Me and my father had chosen this place specifically because it was small enough to avoid the territorial disputes of major pack lands but large enough to blend in among the human population.

Most days, I liked the anonymity of it. I could walk down the street without everyone knowing my business, could reinvent myself as just another young woman starting college classes at the local community center. Here, I wasn't "the girl Hunter Blackwood rejected." I was just Tara, a quiet student working part-time at the local library while my father fixed cars.

But today, the anonymity felt isolating. Today, I was acutely aware that I was living half a life, suppressing fundamental parts of myself to maintain our carefully constructed human existence.

As I pulled into the parking space behind Murphy's Garage, I caught sight of myself in the rearview mirror. I looked different than I had four months ago—older, more self-contained. My dark hair was shorter now, cut in a practical bob that framed my face nicely. I had lost weight, though whether from stress or our more modest food budget, I wasn't sure.

But my eyes were the same. Still too green, still too expressive, still carrying shadows of pain I couldn't quite shake.

*Maybe I'm not healing as well as I thought.*

The realization was both discouraging and oddly liberating. I had been putting pressure on myself to "get over it," to move on and leave the past behind. But maybe healing wasn't linear. Maybe it was normal to have setbacks, to see familiar faces in crowds of strangers, to still feel the ghost of a bond that had been severed but never forgotten.

I gathered my groceries and climbed the narrow stairs to their apartment, already planning to tell my father about my grocery store adventure. He'd probably laugh—gently, with the understanding of someone who knew exactly what I was going through—and remind me that recovery took time.

And maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe tomorrow I would see a dark-haired stranger and feel nothing more than passing curiosity.

Or maybe I wouldn't.

Either way, I was still here. Still breathing, still moving forward, still choosing hope over despair one day at a time.

It would have to be enough.