AURORA ☾ Leah Clearwater ✔

Chapter 19... Stranger

☾

Emily

Setting my engagement ring aside and rolling up the sleeves of my lavender shirt, I set to work making muffins. I needed to make at least two dozen, maybe more. Pulling out my big yellow bowl, I began flitting around my little kitchen, pulling ingredients out of the white cupboards and setting them on the counter. Flour, sugar, blueberries...

Humming as I went, I combined everything and folded it together with my favourite wooden spoon. It was quick work because I had done it a million times before. Once all the ingredients were mixed, I got out my extra large muffin tins, the ones where each muffin was more like a small cake and divvied up the batter between each cup.

I was not good at being idle. To be fair, I never had been. I left nothing to the last minute; I had always been the person who did their homework days or even weeks in advance. Even when I relaxed if you could call it that, I had to be doing something... Painting, baking, weaving, anything.

But since I had moved in with Sam, whatever part of me was driven to perfection had only intensified. Initially, I had focussed on perking up the house and making it our own. I painted cupboards and planted flowers. Now that was finished, though, there were other things for me to work on.

Our house—our home—had become pack headquarters, and there was always so much to do. And I loved it. The guys ever-increasing appetites never ceased to amaze. It required a lot of food preparation but I took to it like a fish to water. There was something comforting about having a strong, simple purpose here.

Once each cup had been filled, I slid the tray into the heated oven and set a timer. Now I had some time to kill; I gazed around my kitchen, searching for something that could be cleaned, or straightened, or refreshed. My eyes landed on the blue pitcher that sat on the table. It was cracked, so it was only used for flowers now... but the bunch it held were old. They were drooping sadly against the pitcher's spout.

After glancing at the oven timer to make sure I had enough time, I grabbed the chipped blue vase from the table and headed outside. I dumped the old flowers in the compost bin, then wandered over to the tree line to collect some wildflowers. I added some daisies, bluebells, and even a handful of dandelions... I liked their bright yellow. I added a few marigolds from the flower box to finish off the arrangement.

The timer went off just as I re-entered the kitchen. Leaving the freshly filled pitcher of flowers on the table, I went back to the oven and pulled them out. As I grabbed a paper plate to put them on—it was never a good idea to use real dishes for the pack's usual eating frenzy—I heard voices outside, carrying through the little window by the front door.

Perfect timing, I thought, popping out the last round of muffins and adding them to the paper plate.

"You guys hungry?" I asked in a sing-song voice. I turned towards them with a smile, though the right side of my face wouldn't quite cooperate.

It was the usual group but they weren't alone. There was a stranger with them. 

"Oh," I said, surprised to see a new face. "Who's this?"

She was young, small—though everyone looked small next to the pack—and pale. Her long dark hair was damp, her full lips pursed with uncertainty. Her emotive brown eyes were pulled wide as her gaze grazed the scars that curved along my face, before falling to the platter of muffins I was holding.

"Bella Swan," Jared said, with a shrug. "Who else?"

The girl, Bella, glanced away for a moment, pink tinting her pale cheeks.