[[OLD]] A Handful of Daffodils (Forgotten Series, #7)

Chapter Nine

I didn’t really understand the small female. It wasn't just about her skin colour, it was about her. She acted like an Omega most of the time but she also acted in such a way that the only thing my wolf could suggest was prey. She wouldn't look at me, always avoiding my gaze but when she was forced to, her eyes were wide and she would freeze, her dainty body seeming to lock up as those wide brown eyes would stare at me without blinking.

She acted like fucking prey.

It bothered me. I didn’t understand it and I certainly didn’t like that I didn’t understand it. My wolf would flick his tail at her behaviour. She was classed as prey to him and that was that. However there was a lingering scent of shifter on her but I didn’t know if it was because she has been around shifters her whole life or there was something else there.

The enigma of her had been bothering me for days. I couldn’t mindlink to her, she had no connection but I couldn’t tell if that wass because she wasn’t part of the pack. There was no pack connection to her and with her colouring I could see Stenton being enough of an ass to let her live on the pack territory but never be part of the pack itself. Him and his numerous tirades about keeping the pack pure-bred. I scowled darkly at it, my mind filled with dozens of babies lost in the last year and the loss of my Chrissie that was still like a gaping, bleeding wound in my chest.

I could hear the little female in the nursery, cooing to Maeve. Her tone was happy and light and I appreciated that she knew how to take care of her and that she was kind and not stand offish. I didn’t want her in my home, under my roof and protection, but if I was forced to have just that, I was glad she was a kind female to be stuck around Maeve.

I scowled at the coffee table, reaching over to rub at a deep scratch it had. I had never noticed it before but after she had cleaned up the living room, it was something I had been drawn too. I knew I must have caused it as some point, lost in my grief for Chrissie, but I couldn’t remember when. It was unsightly but it was a reminder that I would never be the same again. Not after losing her.

“She didn’t finish her bottle before she wanted to sleep, sir. I am going to put it in the fridge for later.” At the soft words I gave a slowly nod and I was aware of the fridge door opening and then closing softly. She was so damned quiet. If I wasn’t a shifter I knew I would have a hard time even hearing her at all. It was a faint swish of her skirts and her barefeet on the floor that betrayed her presence in the house. So soft a sound if I wasn’t aware of it, I would have missed it.

“You were called Minnie by the Alpha yet your brother called you Menza. Why is that?” The words came out clipped and I could almost feel her tension in the air as she froze in place and my wolf twitched. She was so damned timid.

“Menza...” Her voice trailed off and I knew she was giving that bolstering swallow she liked to do before she would say more than five words to me. If I was correct she would- I heard her give a shaky inhale and my eyebrows twitched downwards, there it was. The female couldn’t talk to me properly and she was always scurrying around me as if she was terrified I would strike out at her. Which was grating. I would never hit a female. “Minnie is what my father wishes for me to be called.” It came out shaky but even and I blinked before frowning

“And Menza is?” I doubted it was a nickname. There was no sense in a nickname like that. It was far too odd to make any coherent sense.

“The name my-my mother gave me.” She gave a shaky exhale and I knew that if I were to look over at her she would be shaking like a leaf.