Page 53 of Chasing The Alpha's Son
“What is your problem?” I ask, loud enough that people stop their conversations to look. She’s been a dick to me since we bumped into each other at the Plaza, and I’ve had it. “Seriously? What is up your ass?”
Olivia’s face falls but she doesn’t respond. She drops her mug in the snow, turns, and walks away—as if I’m not worthy of her presence, not worth an apology.
More faces have turned to watch and now I feel like all eyes are on me. Mason and Katie are watching with concerned expressions. Clayton is scoffing, enjoying the show. Mia looks kind of unimpressed, and when she whispers something in Jasper’s ear I can’t take it anymore.
Screw the glühwein, I need to get out of here.
I stomp out of the clearing and away from the bonfires, ignoring the pitying glances, heading back through the trees and up the giant staircase, toward the packhouse. When I reach the top of the stairs, huffing on the outside and raging internally, the glow of the packhouse shines through the glass doors onto the snow—a golden welcome mat—but I turn and look back down into the valley.
Shadows dance across the mountainsides, a wolf howls in the distance. Everyone down there is playing a game, telling spooky campfire stories about made-up monsters, howling at nothing so they can be blessed like their ancestors who walked up a mountain one time. They’re reveling in fake superstition, pretending their lives could be anything but perfect, and turning people who aren’t like them into the enemy.
I glance up at the moon and I swear it looks fuller than before—redder, too.
MERRY FREAKING CHRISTMAS
I’m woken by a knock at my door. Blearily, I wrap a sheet around myself and roll out of bed.
“Merry Christmas!” Katie says, holding a long sock stuffed with presents.
“Ah!” I wrap my arms around her and give her the best best-friend hug I can muster at whatever ungodly hour it is—I haven’t even looked at my phone yet. “Merry Christmas, Squishface.”
“Here, take your stocking!”
Katie hands over the stuffed sock and I take it gleefully. This is one of my favorite traditions we have. Around the time we both turned thirteen, our parents decided we were too old for stockings—a travesty of the highest degree. So Katie and I decided every year our gifts for each other would all come stuffed in the biggest, longest, wooliest sock we could find.
“Aaaaand, here’s yours!”
I run to the cupboard to grab out Katie’s stocking. The good thing about stocking presents is they have to be small, which means it was easy enough to shove them all in my duffel bag. And wrapping them each individually, as is our custom, was a great way to take my mind off Jasper and the whole blood wolf thing when I got back to my room last night.
“Gosh,” Katie says, squeezing my dad’s old football sock in different places, “so lumpy.”
“Can we open them?”
“Absolutely!”
We jump onto my bed and pull out each little parcel, unwrapping them one by one. My first gift from Katie is a stress ball that looks like the moon. That one will definitely come in handy. There’s a long, thin one that I know is a pencil, and I can’t believe it when I unwrap it to findKatie & Max 4evaetched into the side in gold lettering. There’s also a Pop-it Fidget Mat, a cool ring with this trippy stone that I bet Katie found at a flea market, some chocolate, a pair of gloves I mentioned I wanted once when we were scrolling through the winter collections at our favorite stores, and finally, at the bottom, a flat rectangular present. I unwrap this last gift and I cannot believe it when I reveal two tickets to see the New York City Ballet company’s production ofThe Red Shoes.
“These must have cost a fortune!” I shout as I tackle Katie into the pillows. “And so sneaky shoving them all the way at the bottom.”
Katie sits up but keeps holding my hands.
“I know we haven’t really gotten as much time together to do all our normal Christmas stuff, so I wanted to get you something that we could go to, just us.”
“Thank you so much.” I pull her into another hug and notice an unwrapped present on the mattress.
“You haven’t opened your last present?”
Katie bites her lip, grins, then grabs the tube-shaped parcel.
So far, Katie has unwrapped a kitschy bracelet I found in a vintage shop that Aisha took me to in Brooklyn, some chocolate and Santa-shaped marshmallows, a new glittery phone case because her old one isn’t so glittery anymore, a moisturizer I know she loves that costs way too much, and a squishy, peach-scented Disney plushy.
She gives me an excited look and opens her final present. Tossing aside the budget wrapping paper, she carefully unscrolls the piece of paper. For a moment she stares at it, tears brimming in her eyes, then she looks at me, smiles, and says, “Max, it’s beautiful.”
Even though I drew it, she holds it so that I can see—which is ridiculously cute. “It’s us.”
I’ve drawn Katie and me from a photo we took almost a year ago now, standing on the Red Steps in Times Square—a photo from before the Blue Moon Festival, before mates, and before Jasper. We look young and really happy.
“Thank you!”
