Inside Out. Amy Lee Burgess

      “Mayflower.” My voice was mostly flat, but there was a tinge of horror buried in it. My mind reeled. Paul and Lauren had renounced me. I had no standing in Mayflower. I realized I had no idea who was Alpha and maybe that should be my next question.

      “Faith Newcastle and Scott Charest are Alphas,” Allerton replied after I asked.

      Faith. My cousin on Lauren’s side. Mayflower was not Lauren’s birth pack. She’d come from Aspenmoon in upper state New York. When she’d bonded with Paul, her twin sister, Lily, and her pack mate, Todd Marshall, had come to Mayflower with her. Lauren and Lily had been inseparable until Lily’s death from complications after the birth of her daughter Faith.

      I’d been five years old at the time. I remembered sneaking into the room where Lily had labored. It had been a hard birth and nobody had noticed me. I’d hidden behind a chair and watched without comprehension of what was happening. I only heard my auntie scream and my mother sob. There had been a lot of blood in the bed then all the women in the room cried so hard I barely heard the thin wail of my newborn cousin.

      Todd, Faith’s father, bonded with the duo who took over as Alphas, and raised his daughter with love and affection. I’d always been jealous of Faith’s relationship with her father. So different from mine. She’d never walked on eggshells the way I had. She never seemed to do anything wrong the way I always had.

      From her toddlerhood, she’d adored me. She’d followed me around and, when I came into a room, her face had lit up and she’d abandon any toy or person she played with to get to me.

      I had been equally smitten because she’d been a little doll of a child with pale blond hair and autumn brown eyes with the cutest rosebud mouth.

      We’d grown less close as we’d matured and the five-year gap became wider. By the time I’d left Mayflower to bond with Grey, she’d been a coltish fifteen-year-old and we’d had virtually nothing in common anymore.

      The passage of time seemed brutal suddenly. Wasn’t it just yesterday she was three years old and I was eight and we’d had tea parties on Grandmother Elaine’s front lawn with my dolls and her teddy bear?

      “Paul renounced me,” I blurted in an attempt to drive away useless memories of a time that would never come back.

      Allerton snorted. It was an undignified sound and indicative of how at ease he felt with me. The formality of our association became less each time we interacted, and I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with that. I liked to think of Allerton as lofty and untouchable. Always in control. In charge. Vulnerability unnerved me.

      “You are an Advisor to the Great Council. Whether your father likes it or not, you will have access to Mayflower or he’ll answer first to me and then to the Council. I’m relatively sure he won’t present a problem. A minor inconvenience perhaps, but only if you allow him that much. In your shoes I wouldn’t take a thing from him. You don’t have to.”

      I pictured Paul’s sour lemon face when I arrived on Mayflower territory. It almost made the idea attractive.

      “What’s wrong with the pack?” No more serial killers. No more conspiracy death. No more danger and drama. My heart was broken in enough pieces already.

      “That’s the question,” Allerton responded.

      * * * *

      Faith at twenty-seven was not the same as the Faith I remembered at fifteen. Back then she’d been all skinny legs and pink-streaked spiky hair, dressed in black with her nose in a book. Anti-social and rebellious.

      The short spiky, pink-streaked hair was gone, replaced by a sleek shoulder-length layered fringe with choppy bangs. She had my mother’s smile, which wasn’t surprising since Lily and Lauren had been identical twins. Instead of hyacinth blue eyes, hers were autumn-leaf brown and widely spaced—a legacy from her father.

      It was a gorgeous June afternoon and she sat at one of the tiny shaded tables outside the Starbucks on the corner of Cambridge Street, an untouched bottle of water on the table before her. She played with the straps of her white purse—a counterclockwise twist and unwind followed by a clockwise twist and unwind. Silver hoops dangled from her ears and matched the bangle bracelets laddered up her bare left arm. The short sun dress she wore was multi-colored with wide swirls of black. Her flat sandals were black and studded with silver rings and beads. I’d seen the same pair for twenty bucks at Target the last time I’d shopped there for throw pillows to match the cinnamon red of my living room walls. I’d seen the dress too—twenty-nine ninety-five.

      I’d been spoiled by Murphy’s money and by my own—earned as an Advisor to Councilor Allerton. I used to buy Target shoes and clothes, but I was more upscale now. Department stores for clothes and trendy shoe stores for designer name shoes. I despised myself for a moment and wondered if I’d forgotten my roots.

      Before I’d left the condo, I’d slipped my bond pendant around my neck and called myself a fraud as I did it. I hadn’t worn it for five weeks, but I had to if I wanted to avoid questions from Faith. I drew the line at the pack ring, though. Paddy O’Reilly was a fucking liar and I was damned if I’d wear his ring, even though I technically was still a pack member.

      I couldn’t think what to say when she abandoned her purse straps and looked at me without a smile. The naked worry on her face scared me so I murmured an awkward hello, pointed at the store and dodged inside for an iced chai latte—anything to buy me a few moments to sort myself out.

      Mayflower. Just the name conjured up a thousand, jumbled memories, and most of them weren’t good.

      My mouth tasted sour, so I sucked a mouthful of chai latte through the straw as I walked back to Faith’s table. Faith had still not touched her water, but she’d set her purse aside and now played with the bangle bracelets on her wrist. She didn’t look up when I pulled out the wrought iron chair opposite her and took a seat.

      “Nice