Daughter of the Alpha

Chapter eleven

"Is it true!?"

There was no Hello or Good morning or How are you? from Lily that morning, the phone ringing endlessly next to her bed had been what had woken her up in the first place. She groaned and tried holding the phone a little away from her ear to not go deaf from the shouting on the other end. She hadn't gotten much sleep, it had taken hours for her body to calm down, for her mind to stop bringing her back to the porch, reliving the evening kiss by kiss. "Uh, is what true?" AJ asked groggily.

"That that was the old drifter from the hunting cabin yesterday at the Spring Ball?" Lily almost screamed in her ear, causing AJ to drop the phone in her tangled sheets. Not that it mattered, Lily's voice streamed through the phone as if she still had it in her hand. "The man you were dancing with! The hobo? Really?"

Finally, AJ managed to pull the phone up from her messy bed and tried cutting through Lily's endless shouting. "Lily, Lily, Lily, calm down," she hissed. "It's just Dylan, it's alright."

"Just Dylan?" Lily shouted, "Just Dylan? Yeah right, you two looked pretty cozy out on that dance floor. There was no just about it."

"It's not like that," AJ quickly defended herself, "He's just a friend." She was technically right, he was just a friend, they hadn't even talked about being anything other than that. "It's just Dylan," she continued.

"You two weren't acting as if you were just friends," Lily scolded her, "The whole village is talking about it." AJ snorted in a laugh that she immediately tried covering up in a cough. The whole village? That couldn't be, the ball was only last night and it was still morning. "Alright, maybe not the whole village," Lily conceded with a sigh, "But I'm fucking curious. How do you know him all of a sudden?"

"I just- I just went back to apologize about, you know, looking in through the window that night," AJ explained, untangling herself from her sheets and stumbling out of bed. Her feet screaming at her to get back in bed. Resisting the urge she lumbered over to her vanity and sat down, gazing lovingly at the carved wolf there. "And we started talking, we- yeah..." AJ trailed off, fighting the urge to giggle. "He's a good friend now."

"AJ, he's dangerous," Lily corrected her sternly, "You heard the rumors, he's apparently a murderer and a thief."

"He is none of those things, he's just Dylan." AJ rolled her eyes at her friend. "A wolf a little down on his luck, that's all. I can't believe you would listen to those rumors anyway, you didn't believe them when we went to go spy on him that night."

"No but, I mean, now he's all hot and stuff," Lily said in a defeated sigh, "I mean, I don't know." AJ almost laughed when she heard Lily realizing her reasoning was anything but valid. "Oh fine." Lily groaned. "I just have a bad feeling about this man, don't tell me I didn't warn you when he turns out to actually be a murderer, even if he is all hot now."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll remember not to come crying to you," AJ said in a laugh and then decided to change the subject. "How did you go last night anyway? Any new potential mates present themselves?"

Lily groaned. "No, none at all, there were no interesting ones this year. Well except for your drifter. I still haven't lost hope with Lukas Mallard, if I could only get him talking. But in the end, I just danced mostly with Dave, and I ended up spending the rest of the night on the backseat of his truck," she said with a disappointed sigh, but then caught herself. "I mean, not that it was bad, it was- it was quite good but I was just hoping I had snatched a mate at that point." And then she realized what AJ had done. "Don't you change the subject, little missy. We're talking about your lone wolf in the woods. I have a bad feeling about this, AJ, I haven't heard so many disapproving whispers about anyone before he showed up. And he was dancing with the Alpha's daughter only, that just spells trouble, you know that right?"