Unwanted Fates | Book Two ✔️

Twenty-four | Grow

"C'mon. Grow, dammit."

After a week of practice and a day squatting around the vegetable patches, Sylvie was spent. Her bones ached from the exertion.

"You've provided us with enough food to sustain us through winter. So I think you can relax now, Vee," Rosie said, walking the perimeter, passing a tomato the size of a softball between her hands.

"You know you don't have to do this, right?"

"I know," Sylvie replied, even though she knew she definitely did. Not pulling her weight wasn't an option, no matter how often Kian tried to convince her that pack hierarchies don't expect high-ranking shifters to participate in the 'menial' jobs. 

For one, she wasn't a shifter, and two, she resented the idea that providing for the people who sheltered, fed and trained them was menial. Kian shut right up soon after that argument.

"How did you even know you could do this," Rosie asked then, standing at Sylvie's side. "Making the plants grow..."

"I didn't know," Sylvie replied with a shrug. "Natalie made a joke about it, and I just tried. It was all guesswork."

"Well, it's cool as hell."

Smiling, Sylvie stood, brushed the dirt off her palms onto a pair of overalls she borrowed from the laundry, and turned to the wheelbarrow of oversized fruits and veg. That day's crop harvest was two giant pumpkins, a dozen brassicas, two cucumbers a meter long and a bucket full of berries. Her heart swelled as she spotted Rowan's eyes flick sidelong at her, his posture relaxed and a half-smile quirking his full lips. 

Damn.

"Look out!"

Sylvie yelped as Rosie gripped her shoulders and forced her arms to turn the barrow out of the way of a rapidly approaching tree.

"You don't want to lose all the food you've just grown!"

Blushing and suppressing a fit of giggles, Sylvie locked her eyes on the path ahead, pushing the large load to the kitchens of the main house. Packhouse, Rosie reminded her every day that week. "But only Rowan lives here, so how can it be the 'Pack house'?" she had asked in a huff.

"Just is," Rosie had replied.

At that moment, she wished she could disappear into the 'pack house' and not feel the burning heat along her side where she knew Rowan's gaze raked. After his gallant rescue and trip to Amira to reapply healing salve, he had been much softer with her, not speaking much but staring openly across the spaces they shared like schoolchildren at recess. 

It wasn't lost on Sylvie that the full moon was approaching once more, and they would be forced to have sex whether she liked it or not, and she discovered 'liking him'— at least as a person— didn't hurt half as bad as hating him with a blinding passion.

Her retrospection halted as Kian jogged down the side entrance of the packhouse, where Sylvie usually accessed the kitchens.

"Hi!"

"Hi!" Sylvie lowered her barrow to throw her arms around Kian and kiss him hard. 

He stiffened and forced them apart by tilting his forehead against hers. "Ouch," he whispered. "Less primal passion, please."

Rosie choked behind them and declared she was heading off, but Sylvie only waved her away, her brow furrowing.

"Are you rejecting my love?"

Kian chuckled and tucked her unruly waves behind her ears. "Of course not, but I imagine that kiss was owed to someone else."

Sylvie's jaw hung slack, and she detached herself from Kian crossing her arms in a huff. "I'd never kiss you and think of anyone else, Kian."