The Alpha’s Fated Choice (Alpha's Fated Encounter Trilogy #1)

“Another martini, Sophia,” one of the customers calls out, tapping his empty glass.

“Right away, Mr. Willow,” I reply.

I always thought being a bartender was all about mixing drinks and chatting with new and interesting customers. The idea had been a charming one, but when I finally got my bartender’s license, my tiny little dream got shattered. Oakrest is a small town, one of the few that litter the South Alliance’s coast on the Atlantic Ocean, and there are not a lot of people allowed entry here. I see the same faces every day. Most of the customers who sit at the bar prefer to drink in silence, and at this time of night, there are usually not many other people out and about. The ones who do come in have dinner and then leave.

As I set the martini in front of a gloomy-looking Mr. Willow, I know better than to ask what is bothering him. Perhaps my current stain removing activity will be the highlight of my day. It certainly distracts me from the problems plaguing me at the moment, problems regarding a blue-eyed shifter.

The only reason I figured out he was a shifter was because he bled from the scratch I gave him. He clearly takes scent blockers, like I do. Of course, his two wolf companions also helped me identify what he was. I know for a fact that he’s not part of the pack security team. It’s not as if I know every face in town, but I do know most of the shifters. But if those three guys are from out of town, how did they manage to get in?

Oakrest is one of seven towns on the Atlantic coast of the South Alliance. It is heavily guarded to prevent infiltrations—or at least, that’s what I was told when I first arrived here. Not that I ever asked many questions.

Sighing once again, I pick up the second glass and study it, glaring at the red smudge.

“Tonight, either you become spotless or you go in the trash!”

“Stop talking to the drinkware, Sophia.” Reese Dale, one of the waiters, walks past me without batting an eye. “People already think you’re crazy.”

I blink and look around. There are a few eyes on me but only because these people have nothing better to do than watch me.

I decide to cease my one-sided conversation and actually focus on removing the lipstick marks. Not that it matters.

I have spent nine years stuck in this town—nine years that have not been easy at all. Nobody here cares about my orphan status. However, the fact that I don’t have a wolf is something that is considered shameful. I try to keep to myself, but when I first came here as a traumatized sixteen-year-old girl, the pack security assigned to this town had been informed about me down to the last detail, I imagined, because within a couple of days, nearly everybody knew that I couldn’t shift, that I had a latent wolf, and that I was behind the incident at the orphanage in Ricker Town, where the main pack resides. Even now, I catch people staring at me, but most of them seem to have accepted me or to prefer pretending I don’t exist.

Mindlessly, I stare down at the glass I’m wiping. Nine years haven’t made a difference. There are those who like to remind me that I am lacking, who like to use their words to hurt me. This town is nothing short of a prison for me, one that I have strived to break free of. I have spent so much time trying to build up my savings so I can buy my freedom. If that blue-eyed shifter outs me as a cage fighter to the pack security, I’m done for. There will be no going back. I’ll be tossed into a real prison this time.

My wiping is getting more and more aggressive as fear pumps through my blood. I’m sure the shifter did not see my face. But what if he’s waiting for me when I go back to the gym tomorrow? I heard with my own ears what he and his companions were discussing. They had suspected that there was a wolf shifter taking part in the cage fights, and their suspicions were proven true. Even if that man did not see my face, he saw my claws. And he noticed my strength. He knows what I am.

I can’t go back there. But if I don’t, how will I earn the money to get out of this hellhole?

A hand drops onto my shoulder, and I jump, a frightened “eep” slipping from my mouth as the glass escapes my grip. Before it can shatter to the ground, the person behind me catches it.

“If you wipe that thing any harder, you’re going to break it, sweetheart.” Elsa Boleyn, the owner of Dancing Bear, is standing behind me, wearing an amused expression on her face. “Something on your mind?”

Elsa is a human woman in her mid-fifties. She doesn’t look her age, though. If anything, I would say she appears to be in her early forties, a very attractive woman with a no-nonsense air about her. She’s been in Oakrest longer than I can remember, and she has a good relationship with the pack. In fact, she always seems to have her nose wedged deep in the pack affairs of this town. But then, she’s also respected and feared. I have never understood her role here, but even the most foul-mouthed, bad-tempered shifter doesn’t run his mouth off at her. There’s something terrifying about Elsa.

My boss knows I’m a shifter. Elsa is one of the rare humans who has been allowed to do business in shifter territory. She has been running this bar for as long as I’ve known her.

I was sixteen when I first arrived in this town. It was Elsa who gave me my first job here, as a dishwasher. It wasn’t fancy, but it gave me something to do and distracted me from the horrible memories that plagued my every waking moment. Elsa has always looked out for me.

I stare at her, my heart thundering in my chest as I struggle to find my voice. “N—No. It’s nothing. Sorry. I was lost in my thoughts. I was…This stain won’t go away.”

“I see.” The dark-haired woman shakes her head in exasperation, her tight curls bobbing with the movement. “The customer over there has been trying to get your attention for the past five minutes.”

I look over to see a thin man holding out his empty beer mug toward me, looking annoyed. “Any day now would be nice.”

“Sorry, Rhode.” I head over to his end of the bar. “Let me get you that refill.”

“I’ve been calling your name, but you’re on a different planet, it seems.” Rhode Dickson is a schoolteacher down at the town’s middle school, and he’s usually this amount of cranky once he has a couple drinks in him. “If you can’t focus on your job, just quit.”

I give him a tight smile. “Sorry about that.”

I can tell he wants to say something else, but one glance behind me to where Elsa is watching us has him hunching his shoulders and looking down at the newspaper in front of him instead.

I pour him a beer from the tap and slide his glass over to him.

Elsa gestures to me with her chin, and I follow her to the back, wondering if I’m in trouble.

“You’ve been looking stressed out since yesterday. Do you need a day off?”