Free Web NovelChapter 15: The Party
James’s POV
He still didn’t know how to ask her to wear the dress. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
He’d been standing at his office window for twenty minutes watching the party setup and avoiding the problem. It should have been simple. He was the Alpha. He’d issued instructions to the entire pack about her name without thinking twice. He’d reorganized the kitchen schedule, redirected clothing and soap toward her, walked boundary fences in the dark for weeks working through feelings he couldn’t name. He had done all of these things.
He could not figure out how to say, casually, "wear the green dress tonight."
The problem was that nothing felt casual anymore when it came to her. Every interaction had weight now, his own doing, because he’d been the one to change the terms of things, and he didn’t know how to walk into the kitchen and make a simple request without it meaning more than he was ready to say out loud.
He was still standing at the window when the knock came.
"Come in."
Juda entered first, which meant business. Steve the Gamma was behind him with a folder under his arm.
"The Goldmoon report," Juda said. "You asked for a full workup."
James moved to his desk. "Let’s hear it."
Steve opened the folder. "Clean history. Small pack originally, very mobile, always registered moves with the council on schedule. The former Alpha built a significant business operation. Commercial property in the city, served as their pack base while they were urban. High birth rates, high mate-find rate, regular intake of outside wolves including some former rogues. Stable by every measure."
"And the new Alpha?"
"Took over when his father passed, two years ago. Since then he’s pursued the land acquisition that brought them here. Everything by the book." Steve paused. "The business is the notable part. It’s large enough that you’d likely know the name."
James waited.
"Goldband Electronics."
James sat back.
He did know it. Everyone knew it. Goldband was mid-market consumer tech, good products at accessible prices, the kind of company that had expanded from a regional operation to something genuinely national in about a decade. He’d used their equipment. He’d probably passed their products in every electronics store he’d ever walked through.
"The Alpha runs it?" he said.
"Took over full operations two years ago alongside the pack leadership transition." Steve closed the folder. "From the financial profile, he’s done well with it. The land purchase here was significant and they paid in full."
James drummed his fingers on the desk once. A wealthy, stable, well-regarded pack moving onto adjacent land with a young Alpha who’d inherited both a business and a leadership role simultaneously. That was a lot of pieces in play at once.
"Keep the file open," he said. "I want updates on their settlement progress. And when the formal introduction visit gets scheduled, I want at least two weeks’ notice."
"Understood." Juda hesitated at the door. "One more thing. Richard asked me to remind you that the party starts at dusk and you promised to be there."
"I’ll be there."
"He also said, and I’m quoting directly, that if you show up in a work shirt he’s going to announce your presence with an airhorn."
James closed his eyes briefly. "Tell him I heard him."
They left. He sat for another moment with the Goldband name sitting in his head, the nagging feeling that the Alpha’s name specifically meant something he hadn’t placed yet, and then he picked up his phone and went to find something to wear that wasn’t a work shirt.
He walked past the kitchen on his way upstairs.
She was at the counter in her regular clothes, apron on, clearly about to start prep before someone had told her she had the night off. He stopped in the doorway.
She looked up. That slight careful shift in her expression that she still did when she registered him, the automatic adjustment, the waiting.
"You’re off tonight," he said.
She blinked. "I know, Alpha James. I was just going to prepare a few things ahead for tomorrow so that--"
"You’re off tonight," he said again. "That means the kitchen isn’t your problem until tomorrow morning."
She looked at him. He could see her working out whether to push back, deciding not to, accepting it.
"Okay," she said, which was new. A month ago it would have been "yes, Alpha James" with her eyes down. Now it was just okay, quiet and direct.
He almost said it then. The dress. He was right there and she was right there and it would have taken four words.
He didn’t say it. He nodded once and went upstairs.
He was going to have to work on that.
Trishelle’s POV
She didn’t know what to do with herself. fгeewebnovёl.com
That was the honest truth of it. She’d been given a free evening, told the kitchen was off limits, and now she was standing in the basement in her regular clothes listening to the sounds of setup happening above her and outside, and her hands kept looking for something to do that wasn’t there.
She sat on her mattress.
She stood up again.
She looked at the green dress on the shelf.
She’d worn it twice now, both times to the garden, both times under the apron so it stayed clean. She hadn’t worn it as an actual piece of clothing yet, the way it was meant to be worn. She’d been saving it, though she couldn’t have said clearly for what. It felt like the kind of thing that needed a reason.
A party was a reason.
She took it off the shelf and held it for a moment. Then she changed into it, tied the wrap at her waist, and looked in the small cracked mirror.
The green was good against her skin. She’d known that the first time she’d tried it on but she’d been in the basement alone with no one to tell and nowhere to go, so the knowing had just sat there uncollected. Now she looked at herself in the mirror in the green dress with her hair loose and clean from last week’s lake visit and thought, with a careful, private honesty, that she looked okay.
She looked okay.
She went upstairs.
The training yard was unrecognizable.
String lights ran between the trees in long, warm rows, low enough to give the whole space a glow that softened everything. Tables with white cloths. Coolers lined up along one fence. Speakers somewhere producing music at a volume that invited movement rather than demanding it.
She stood at the edge of it and just looked for a moment.
"Hey." One of the she-wolves she recognized from the laundry rotation was holding a box. "Can you help with these? They go along the far fence."
Trishelle took the box before she’d thought about it. String lights, still coiled. She carried them to the far fence and started winding them through the rails the way the other ones were done, methodical, starting at the corner post.
Someone came to help from the other end without being asked and they worked toward each other in the middle, and the woman on the other end, whose name Trishelle thought was Mara, smiled when they met in the middle.
"Looks good," Mara said.
Trishelle looked at the fence. It did look good.
She helped with the tables after that, snapping cloths out flat and tucking the corners, then moved to the coolers when someone pointed her toward them. The pups were everywhere underfoot, chaotic and delighted, arguing about who got to blow up which balloon.
One of them, a small girl with two missing front teeth, ran up to Trishelle with a half-inflated balloon and held it out with complete confidence that this was a reasonable thing to do to a stranger.
"I can’t get it," the girl said. "It’s too hard."
Trishelle took the balloon. Blew it up. Tied it off and handed it back.
The girl’s face did the thing small children’s faces do when something they wanted appeared. Pure, uncomplicated joy. She ran away without saying anything and Trishelle watched her go and felt something in her chest go warm and soft and a little painful all at once.
She kept working. She helped with the utensils, lined them up in their proper order out of habit, organized the napkins. Someone handed her a drink and she took it without thinking and only realized after the first sip that she was holding something that was just juice, cold and sweet, and she stood there in the middle of the yard with a drink in her hand like she was just a person at a party and felt the unfamiliar weight of that.
She smiled.
She didn’t plan it, it just happened, the way things happen when you’re not on guard against them.
James’s POV
He came out of the pack house at quarter to six and stopped on the back steps.
She was at one of the tables, laughing at something one of the warrior’s mates had said, her head tipped back slightly, the green dress catching the light from the strings above her. Her hair was down. She looked like she belonged there.
The mindlink had been buzzing for the past twenty minutes and he understood now what the noise was about.
Three separate people had made comments. Quiet, curious, appreciative. Not malicious, just the ordinary observation of a pack noticing something they hadn’t noticed before, that the kitchen omega had a smile that apparently required attention when it appeared.
He stood on the steps and looked at her across the yard and felt something in his chest that was specifically and inconveniently tender.
He wanted to cross the yard and stand next to her. He wanted to be close enough to be the reason she smiled like that. He wanted it clearly and with no confusion about what it was, and the wanting of it scared him slightly, which was new.
He stepped down into the yard instead and went to find Richard.
Richard was behind the bar setup talking to two of the she-wolves and wearing the expression of a man whose birthday party was going exactly as planned. He looked up when James approached and handed him a drink without being asked.
"She’s wearing the dress," Richard said.
"I noticed."
"You’re welcome." Richard sipped his drink and looked out at the yard with a satisfaction that James found slightly excessive. "Trust the process, Alpha."
"I don’t actually know what your process is," James said.
"I know." Richard smiled. "That’s the point."
James looked at him for a moment, that prickling awareness again, the sense that the full picture was slightly out of his eyeline.
He let it go. The evening was good, the pack was in high spirits, and she was laughing in the green dress under string lights and looking like she’d always been allowed to be here.
For now, that was enough.
He kept Richard’s drink and went to join his pack.
