MATED TO THE ALPHA AND HIS BETA - Season 5 Episode 77

Stella

Even if we hadn’t met right after my family and I got back to Constantine, I’d have known my Aunt Selena from her resemblance to my mom. Not just in the shape of her face or color of her eyes, not even by her scent, which my wolf-self caught at once. Something else connected my mother’s sister to her, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“Too much wine,” I said to the woman I bumped into.

She looked at the glass of amber fluid in my hand and rolled her eyes before turning back to her companion. The two of them giggled and looked sideways at me as I tried to get past.

A hot blush spread up from my chest, up my throat and into my cheeks with their unfamiliar plumpness. I blinked hard to hold back a rush of embarrassed tears.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” I said to the two of them. “It’s just so crowded in here…”

The first woman, a blonde, turned back to face me with her eyes wider than they ought to be. She let them skate over my hair, my face, down to my clothes and back again. Then she shrugged and returned to her friend.

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Stung by the dismissal, I pushed past them. My beer sloshed over my hand as I got buffeted by people who were dancing, drinking, and laughing. Everything I wanted to be doing, except I wasn’t. I needed to find a place to get out from the crush of all these bodies.

I wasn’t used to being around so many people.

My heart pounded. Even in Brightsky, I hadn’t been surrounded like this. I’d been a child for most of the time I was there, though, so much smaller than everyone else. Being in a group of people who

towered over you should have felt scarier than this did, but suddenly, I wanted to run out of The Silver Crescent as fast as my longer legs would take me.

Too bad for me, because I’d pushed my way to the opposite of the bar, as far away from the front doors as I could get. If I wanted to leave, I’d have to fight all the way back through that pushing, laughing, celebrating crowd. Instead, I decided to shrink back against the wall and watch everyone else having a good time.

I didn’t like the beer very much, but I took slow sips of it so I didn’t look even more like an idiot. I smiled with my new face and tried to bop along with the beat of the music. As much as I tried to look like I was waiting for someone, I could tell that I just looked…

“Weird,” I whispered to myself.

Selena wasn’t weird. She’d left the dance floor to grab another drink at the bar. She was laughing, tossing her hair over her shoulders as she tipped her head back. She shook her finger at the bartender as though the woman had said something naughty, and then they both laughed together.

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“Excuse me. Hey, ’scuse me!” A male voice poked me into turning to face him.

The guy trying to get past me had four mugs of beer in each hand. Golden, foamy liquid splashed over the rims of the mugs as he got jostled from behind. Some of it splashed on my arm, soaking the sleeve of the blouse I’d picked out so carefully.

“Can you move?” he growled, his lip curling and his eyes flashing with the light from his wolf. “C’mon, kid. Shift it.”

“Where do you want me to go?” I gestured at the wall behind me and the table at my side. The rest of the space was filled with people.

He rolled his eyes at me kind of like the first woman had, and then twisted his body to press past me. More beer splashed, wetting my other sleeve. He was ruining my outfit, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. As far as I was concerned, my night was already ruined.

The guy set down all eight beers on a table surrounded by a group of men and women who looked only a little bit older than I looked. My aunt joined them after a minute, not sitting but greeting them all with a fist bump, a hug, or a kiss on the cheek.

None of them were asking her to move out of the way.

I downed the rest of my beer, now warm, and put the empty mug on the thin railing behind me. I gave myself a little pep talk.

“Come on, Stella. I mean Elleah. You came here to dance, so get on out there and start dancing!”

With my head spinning, I ducked and wove through the throng and found a spot on the dance floor just as the song changed to something slower. Smoother. All of the people jumping and twirling around me either left the floor or paired off, leaving a lot of suddenly open, empty space.

And me standing in it, obviously, terribly, and embarrassingly alone.