Page 7 of Ancient Promises
“If I didn’t say so Monday, thank you for everything, Diem. You should let me pay you, by the way.”
“I’m happy to volunteer my time. Sharing my love of reading with kids is reward enough, but you could always buy me lunch.”
“You’ve got it.” He smiled and turned into the office, and she continued on her way to the library.
She grabbed a letter opener from the tiny office in the library and opened the first box, checking that the contents matched the order form.
It was tedious work to log the new books into the system, assign and print bar codes, and attach them with tape, but by the time second period rolled around and Autumn came in with her first through third grade combined class and Diem got to see all those excited faces? It was worth the boring work.
“I think you might like this one,” she said, handing one of the brand-new books to a girl named Sadie. “It’s got a dragon and a fairy princess battling an evil ogre.”
The girl’s eyes went wide as she took the book. “Are there really dragons?”
“I suppose so, but I’ve never met one,” Diem said. “Do you think there are?”
Sadie hugged the book to her chest. “Oh yes, definitely. A dragon shifter would be so cool to see. He could be green or maybe blue.” She tapped her fingers on the book cover, which had a large green dragon flashing fangs and spewing fire. “I can’t wait to read this!”
“Enjoy, kiddo,” Diem said.
Autumn came up. “The kids were so excited to come here this morning. They watched the clock like hawks and counted down the minutes.”
“I love hearing that.”
“Thanks for volunteering your time,” she said, then left after a young boy asked her for help.
Diem surveyed the library with a sense of pride as four young children, arms loaded with books, chatted happily and headed to the desk to check out.
“On my way,” Diem said. “It’s a great day for books.”
* * *
Diem walked into the bookstore a little after twelve and switched the sign to say she was open. She’d been on her feet for over five hours, but she was happier than she’d been in a long while. She loved the bookstore, but working with the kids in the library had filled her with joy too. Tomorrow would be even better, she was sure. She couldn’t wait to see which kids had read books overnight and would want to return them and check out more.
Rolling her neck with a sigh, she headed up the interior stairs and dropped her purse on the couch, then changed into leggings and a tunic, pairing the outfit with her favorite comfy pair of tennis shoes.
The morning had sped by, but the afternoon was surely going to crawl since she was doing her annual spring cleaning, a much-dreaded task that involved pulling books from shelves, dusting, and returning them to the correct order, not to mention climbing up and down a ladder to make sure the tops of the shelves and all the knickknacks she had for sale were clean too.
Her wolf paced in her mind, letting out its lion-ish growl. Blond like a lion, her wolf couldn’t howl like a purebred wolf.
Damn, she hated that term—purebred.
Even thinking it made her skin crawl.
Her father’s pack had tossed the term around like a volleyball, using it to slap those who weren’t fully wolf. She’d lived her whole life on the outside of things. Part of the pack but not part of it, everyone wondering if she’d look like a wolf or some crazy combination of wolf and lion.
She was lucky, she supposed, that she hadn’t been born a few decades ago, when she might have been slaughtered at birth, and even her biological mother might have been killed as well for cavorting with a non-lion.
She couldn’t even say that she’d ever really lived infearof being killed for being a hybrid, but she’d certainly felt the disdain from the purebred wolves.
She’d decided she’d had enough of being on the outside and never really being part of things and accepted exile from her alpha. She’d originally planned to go to Florida, where a large commune of hybrids and exiles lived and worked together, but then someone in the pack told her about Cider Falls and Alpha Rehlik, a purebred wolf who’d been exiled and started the pack to give all exiles a safe place to live.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had only been a few years.
She’d come to Cider Falls with a suitcase and no clue what she wanted to do with her life. After interviewing with Rehlik that first day she’d arrived in town, he’d given her the only available place at the time—the apartment over what had once been a toy store. She’d found a box of children’s books in the storage room and asked if she could open the store, suggesting a bookstore that could also double as a toy and gift shop, and he’d been happy to help her get things going. It had taken her a full year to get the shop to where she wanted it, and she was super proud of herself for all she’d accomplished since then, including a monthly book club and summer reading challenge for the town kids.
Someone opened the door and set off the little bell.
She peeked around the register. “Oh, hi, Jewel,” she said, greeting the former FSA Hunter, whose job had been to find and capture exiles who didn’t register with a new group within seventy-two hours of exile. She was now mated to Trace, Rehlik’s number two in the pack, and worked with the security team.