Alpha Prime: Shiftily Ever After(30)

“Well, of course they are. I’d be worried if they weren’t. It would mean they’d been replaced by well-behaved doppelgangers.” Dakota glanced at the bedroom door, then held her finger to her lips, telling Naomi to shush while she strained to listen.

Naomi looked puzzled. She couldn’t hear them, but Dakota could.

“Why can’t we leave now?” John was saying.

“I wish we could stay. They’re not too mean.” Mary’s voice was plaintive. “There’s food all the time.”

“Shhh, keep it down. You know why we can’t stay,” Sarah said. “We’ll just wait ’til she gets her first paycheck, and then we can take that money, I’ll hotwire a car, and we’ll head out of town while she’s sleeping.”

“But we’ll have to go to school while we stay here,” John complained. “I’m not going. She can’t make me.”

Dakota walked over and yanked the door open. They all started, looking at her with guilty expressions.

“Pretty sure I can,” she said.

Sarah let out a snarl.

“You always sneak around and spy on people?” she asked fiercely.

“All the time. And when I get my first paycheck, I’m planning on putting it in the empty coffee can on the top kitchen shelf. You won’t have to sneak out. You can just leave. As for hotwiring someone’s car, that’s not the smartest idea in the world, because the police will be looking for you, and then Sarah will end up in juvenile detention and the younger kids will have no one to protect them. But do what you want. Just know that there are consequences.”

“Is that true?” John asked Sarah, looking alarmed.

“I guess,” Sarah muttered, staring at the floor.

“See, you need to think these things through,” Dakota said. “Dinner will be ready in an hour, by the way.”

“You don’t want us to stay?” Mary asked accusingly. “You wouldn’t even try to keep us?”

Dakota smiled at her, but her smile was tinged with sadness. “I do want you all to stay here, and be safe, and learn how to read and write, and have food every day, and learn how to do some kind of job so that you don’t have to steal food and clothes and risk going to jail. But I can’t force you to be here if you don’t want to. My father tried to do that to me, he even locked me in my room, and I ran away from home.”

John looked up at her. “Do you miss your father?” he asked.

She sighed. “I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

His brows drew together in a scowl. “I don’t miss my father. I’m glad he’s dead.”

“I killed him,” Sarah added boldly.

Dakota looked at the skinny little wisp of a girl who would blow over in a good stiff breeze. “Of course you did,” she said. “You know, you don’t actually have to say things like that to sound tough. There are people here who will protect you. I’d protect you. I already have.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Sarah looked away, her expression sullen.

“Dinner’s ready in an hour. You guys need to come out and help me chop some vegetables. You can go back to your plotting later.”

They’d just sat down to eat when a rap on the door made them all jump.

Dakota sniffed at the air as she stood up. “Anthea’s here.”

“How do you do that?” Naomi asked her. “It’s freaky. It’s like you’re some kind of Alpha Prime’s spawn.”

“Or I’m just a freak,” Dakota said, and walked to the door.

Anthea was standing there with her customary expression of annoyance, and she shoved several three-ring binders into Dakota’s hands. “Lesson plans for Monday. Study them. Show up half an hour early the first day. 7:30 a.m. sharp. I don’t tolerate lateness.”

“You’re the head schoolteacher?” Dakota said, trying to hide her dismay. Anthea would be a tough taskmaster.

“Do you always state the obvious?”

Dakota raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess. You’re like one of those Hollywood movie kind of schoolteachers. You’re tough but fair.”

“Nope, just tough.” Anthea turned abruptly and walked off before Dakota could invite her to join them for dinner. Which was kind of a relief.

* * * * *

Dakota spent the day poring over the study guides. That evening Hazel came to invite Dakota and Naomi and the kids to eat with the rest of the pack, so they headed over to the fire pit. There were a couple of dozen pack members there, sitting on folding chairs or standing by the grills where barbecue ribs were being cooked.

There were a group of female shifters there as well, some from the shuttle bus, some Dakota didn’t recognize. They were flirting and laughing, clustered around the men. Dakota couldn’t see Miles through the crowd, but she could feel him, and she knew exactly where he was standing, which unnerved her. She was far too tuned in to his presence.