“Guess what it is?” Nathan smirked slightly as he held the little cardboard box out to me. “I promise you won’t want to pass it up.”I looked up at Nathan a bit skeptically. He just smiled back at me and shook the box a little. Finally, I took it with a sigh and opened it up.And when I did, my eyes went wide.“This is…” I picked the sweet chocolate muffin out of the box and looked at it. I hadn’t had one of these muffins from the bakery in our town for so long, but I instantly recognized the signature powdered sugar topping and the oversized chocolate chips poking out of the top.“It’s from Jerry’s,” Nathan said with a grin. “Well… Just Jerry, now.”“What do you mean?” I asked, cocking my head. The little bakery in our town was known as “Jerry’s”, and it was named after the little old man who ran it all by himself.Nathan shrugged. “The bakery closed down quite a long time ago,” he replied, sounding somewhat wistful.I felt a bit sad at this. That bakery was one of our favorite place

“Fine,” I said quietly. “But I have conditions, too.”Nathan looked at me for a moment with a raised eyebrow. “Okay…” he said. “What are your conditions?”“Well…” I sighed and walked over to the table, and sat down. Nathan looked at me for a moment with his arms folded across his chest before he finally sat down across from me.“If it’s going to be for a year,” I continued, “and we have to uphold this fake relationship situation for the entire time, then I want to make something clear: we are not going to be in any sort of relationship other than friendship behind the scenes.”Nathan nodded slowly. “Go on…”“Rule one: all dates, public occasions, facing the media, Alpha Council visits, and family visits will be faked. Rule two: at home, I don’t want there to be anything else going on between us. I don’t want to do anything to destroy our friendship.”“Well, that’s fair,” Nathan said. “But what if either of us wants to look for a romantic partner?”I shook my head vigorously. “I think

My eyes widened. Nathan stared down at the ground and shook his head.“I can’t help you with that, Olivia,” he said quietly.I felt my heart sink. “Why not?” I urged. “I know that my dad would never have done anything to betray our pack. I need to know the truth about what happened.”Nathan slowly looked up at me with a dark expression on his face that I couldn’t quite read, which was only enhanced by the darkness of the room around us. “Gamma Kamran is dead,” he replied in a sad tone of voice. “What’s the point anymore?”“What’s the point?” I couldn’t help but scoff at my childhood friend’s choice of words. “I deserve to know why we were evicted. It’s not fair.”“I know it’s important to you, but I think that right now you should just be grateful that you’ve been allowed back,” Nathan replied.I watched in a state of shock as my childhood friend turned and walked over to the kitchen door. It felt as though he didn’t even want to be around me. Ever since I tried to hug him earlier, hi

I didn’t see Nathan at home for two days.He spent most of his waking hours busy with Alpha tasks, and when he was home, he was sleeping in his bedroom. It seemed that he wasn’t planning on taking back what he said about my dad, and I wasn’t going to get any help with my investigation.I didn’t want to bother making a scene anymore. Nathan already achieved his goal of using me to ruin his wedding. All that was left now for him to deal with was his father’s anger, but it clearly didn’t matter to Nathan because his father’s anger would only be directed at me anyway.But I wouldn’t give up the villa that my aunt left me. It was the one thing that I had left to me by my loved ones, and I was going to fight to keep it in my name.I hated to say it, but I didn’t trust Nathan to do the right thing. What if he found someone else down the road and decided to fight me over the villa again, claiming his purchase of it as having more of a legal standing over my aunt leaving me the deed?The only

My dad and I were evicted from the pack when I was just fifteen.Most kids shifted for the first time at age sixteen, so when I left with my dad, neither Nathan nor I had ever shifted yet. On my sixteenth birthday, however, like clockwork, I finally shifted.When I shifted into a wolf with golden fur, though, my dad’s eyes widened.“Olivia, promise me you won’t shift in public,” he said. He made me promise, but I didn’t ever get the chance to find out exactly why. I had a feeling that my wolf might have been special somehow, though.But I didn’t tell Nathan this. Not yet, at least. If I did eventually shift again and my wolf wasn’t anything special, I didn’t want to let anyone down — especially not Nathan.“You shifted before, right?” Nathan asked.I nodded. “A few times,” I replied quietly. “But when my dad died, I think my wolf went into hiding. She’s been dormant ever since.”Nathan’s face fell slightly. “Oh… And you don’t feel your wolf’s presence at all?”I shook my head, then fu