The Werewolf Motorcycle Club

DIANA

“What do you mean, you quit? You just started, we have a contract!” Murphy yells down at me through the speakerphone while I pack both mine and Aunt Peggy’s bags at breakneck speed.

I left my resignation on his voicemail half an hour ago. I should have known that he’d call back.

I’m trying not to wonder what Whitney or Jasmine have said to him, or how much they saw of what happened between me and the biker I killed.

It’s one of the reasons why I’m rushing so fast to pack up everything we own so we can leave. Aunt Peggy hovers nervously behind me as I throw things into trunks and open boxes.

She doesn’t know the full extent of what happened, but she knows it’s bad.

I came home from work hours early on the back of a stranger’s bike. A while later, someone stopped by to drop off the car I’d left in the Engleston Diner parking lot, then walked away without so much as a word said.

I don’t even know how Alaric pulled that one off. I didn’t give him my car keys.

“It’s not for me,” I say to Murphy calmly over the phone, trying not to picture the diner that he’s trying to drag me back to.

If what Alaric said is true, the body isn’t there anymore, just a faint red stain on the concrete to show where a man lost his life.

Alaric. My savior said that his name was Alaric, and that he was going to take care of everything for me, but that’s not good enough. I’m leaving this town. I’ll get another job somewhere else.

My life can’t depend on the trust of a stranger, especially not a man in a biker jacket. Today proved to me that I can’t trust the local motorcycle clubs, no matter how normal everyone else seems to think they are.

Unfortunately, Aunt Peggy and I can’t go far. She still needs to attend the local hospital, and I don’t want to disrupt her treatment.

But at least I can put some distance between me and this infamous MC. The Lost Angels, Alaric called them. Not like any kind of angel I’ve heard of.

How can a group of people live above the law like that and just get away with it? All of Engleston seems to be under their thumb; I remember how casual Alaric’s voice was as he told me that even the sheriff is one of them.

I have no interest in sticking around for when they find out I killed one of their precious members.

The fact that I killed a man is still sinking in, like dirt under my nails, and it’s taking everything that I have to keep it together so that I can move us on from this place.

Even after what he was going to do, how am I meant to walk these streets, knowing that he might have a family out there waiting for him? A family that I ruined, just like what happened to mine?

“I know a place we can go,” Aunt Peggy says quietly, after I hang up on Murphy and throw the last of her shoes into a box. “Woodview. It’s just a few miles away, and there’s a bus that runs from there to the Engleston hospital.”

She’s been incredibly understanding about me uprooting her from the house where she’s lived for decades, on a moment’s notice. She seems to recognize how traumatized I am, and I appreciate that she hasn’t asked many questions.

Still… “Woodview? It’s safe there?”

She smiles, a small, private smile like she has a secret. “The safest place I know.”

***

It may be the safest place Aunt Peggy knows, but Woodview seems very closed off to newcomers. I’ve spent all day asking around for either work or available homes to rent, and people have hardly given me the time of day.

Maybe it’s a sign that this place just isn’t for us. I’ve never been any good at reading signs, but after my second near-death experience it’s about time that I tried.

I can’t deny that it’s a beautiful place. As I walk out of the fourth restaurant that refused even to look at my résumé, I pause to admire the large public garden in the middle of the town square.

Tons of happy kids are running around everywhere, and the main street is so well kept that I’d have thought each store was recently renovated.

Whoever runs this place must have pretty deep pockets. I wonder, is that why the locals are so resistant about sharing information? If too many outsiders show up, maybe the charm would be lost.

Compared to the dingy streets and boarded-up windows around Engleston, this place is perfect.

They have a market, a local doctor, a school…the works! If I’m not going to be in a city, I definitely wouldn’t mind living somewhere like Woodview, and it makes me a bit depressed as I walk back to my car in defeat.

As I reach for the door handle, though, a large, tanned, and tattooed figure appears in the car window reflection behind me. I jump what feels like ten feet in the air from shock.

“I thought it was you, but I almost couldn’t believe it,” Alaric’s deep, honey-toned voice calls from behind me, and I hate how I’m almost instantly at ease again.

But it’s because he saved my life, isn’t it?