The Lost Pack (Paige) novel Chapter 2

** Alaric’s POV **

The number still doesn’t work. I stare at my phone as if the answer might magically appear if I glare hard enough. It doesn’t.

The message thread is painfully short.

Me: Safe travels.

Me: Did they catch you up?

Me: It’s Alaric, btw. You know, the guy who helped you escape.

Me: Are you okay? Do I need to come and rescue you already?

That’s it. Just a one-sided conversation that’s been mocking me since she left. I tap the call button anyway; maybe she just missed the messages.

The phone rings once, then immediately disconnects… again.

“Still trying?” Bastian’s voice drifts across the cabin.

I don’t look up. “No.”

“Right.” His tone says he absolutely does not believe me.

I lean back on the couch, stretching my legs out across the small coffee table in front of me. The lodge we’re staying in tonight smells faintly of pine and old smoke. Temporary housing while we deal with a supply delivery tomorrow morning, or something like that.

Honestly, I stopped paying attention to the details when the girl from the coffee shop decided to live rent-free in my head. Which is ridiculous. I’m an Alpha; I don’t chase women. Usually, women chase me. Yet here I am, texting a number that clearly isn’t hers… again.

Bastian closes the book he’s been reading and sets it aside with a quiet thud.

“You do realise,” he says calmly, “that if she wanted you to have the correct number… she would have given it to you.”

I glance at him finally.

“You do realise,” I counter, “that if I wanted your opinion, I would have asked.”

He arches one blonde eyebrow at me, and I scowl before returning my attention to my phone.

The contact still reads: Crazy Coffee Girl

I know her name; it’s the one that haunts my every thought. But Crazy Coffee Girl just fits her better. Poppy is a delicate flower, and Crazy Coffee Girl is… well, she’s crazy and wild, and she has a defiant streak that calls to me.

Which also irritates me. Who gets on a bus and vanishes like that without a word? Someone who doesn’t want to be found. The thought should make me drop it.

Instead, it makes me more curious. The memory flickers back without warning. Her standing there with that defiant little smirk. The way she read the number aloud while typing. The moment she stepped onto the bus, and the look she gave me through the window.

I see it now; she was unapologetically amused. My lips twitch slightly. She has no idea the dangerous game she has just started, because I never back down from a challenge, and that’s exactly what this feels like. “She gave you a fake number,” Bastian says helpfully.

“I noticed,” I huff.

“Most men would take the hint.”

I shrug. “You should have realised by now that I’m not most men.”

That earns me a long, silent look. I ignore it.

The bus station moment replays again in my head. The way her hand had felt in mine earlier. Warm and small, but not fragile. There had been something else there too. Something I couldn’t quite place.

She’s definitely not human, wolf, or witch. She’s just… different, and now it’s bothering me. I know rumors usually hold some truth, but I don’t believe in goddesses, not living ones walking the earth, anyway. So I’m not even entertaining that possibility right now.

“You’re distracted,” Bastian says after a minute.

“I’m not,” I snap, too defensively.

“You’ve checked that phone fourteen times in the last ten minutes.” He scoffs.

“I’m waiting for a message.”

“From the wrong number?”

“Yes.”

He exhales slowly through his nose. “Are you aware of how crazy that sounds?”

I shrug. “I enjoy a challenge.”

“That’s not a challenge,” he says. “That’s a rejection.”

I snort. “You’re assuming she rejected me.”

Bastian leans back in his chair, stretching his long legs. “She gave you the wrong number.”

“That doesn’t mean she rejected me.”

“It literally does.”

I shake my head. “No, it means she made a mistake, or she just didn’t want me to find her yet.”

His brow lifts slightly. “Yet?”

“She likes the game.”

“You spoke to her for what, twenty minutes?”

“Twenty seven,” I correct automatically.

Bastian studies me as if I’ve just confirmed something interesting. I ignore him and grab my phone again, opening the message thread like it might have magically updated in the last ten seconds. Nothing. Still just my increasingly pathetic list of unanswered messages.

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