Chapter 1
The snow was truly beautiful, I had always enjoyed looking out at it. So long as I could be wrapped up warm, looking at it - watching it fall through my window. That was my happy place.
That was my happy place.
But that’s gone now.
Ever since my mother died, and my father tried his best to instantly replace her; I’ve not felt happiness. That was almost 3 years ago now. It was only 6 weeks ago that he announced to me that we were leaving our beautiful home, that held all my happy memories… and now here we were. The land wasn’t a million miles away, I knew of it but had never visited before. It was always freezing here, there was always snow on the ground. So I could no longer just watch the snow fall occasionally and enjoy it’s beauty; I now had to be in it everyday. That was one of the reasons I never ventured this way. But there were others.
Since moving here, I’d barely seen my father let alone speak to him. He was now completely under the spell of his new woman - a manipulative ignorant woman, but I was grateful; she’d hardly ever said 2 words to me. We just occasionally existed within the same space, but that was all. I knew I was nothing special, quite a plain girl by all accounts, but the way she looked at me? Was like I was the most foul thing she’d ever encountered.
Well I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow them to dictate my life anymore. So I was going to focus on me. My priority now was simple - education and work. I was going to earn and save to be able to get away from this place and hopefully start again.
Shaking my head ever so slightly to attempt to shake the thoughts out of my head, and bring me back at the present. I focused my eyes and looked around me, leaning against the bar while the regulars all focused on their own drinks.
I’d only been working here about a month, but I was already pretty used to many of the people in the town. Whether they were just happy passers by or arguing and angry drunks, I thought I’d seen most of what this town had to offer.
A gaggle of women came through the door at that point, giggling and swooning as they wandered in. “… but he is so sexy though!” Giggled one of the women as one of her puckered her lips and pretended to kiss whoever had got their hearts racing. “Oh I would do anything for even just one of them!” I rolled my eyes, that statement gave them away; now I knew exactly who had caused this over cheesy performance.
Dustin, Matthew and Scott.
‘The triplet alphas’. They were of course well known in this town, but their stories extended a lot further than this town; pretty much everyone with a 1000 mile radius knew of them. They had become alphas at an unusually young age due to the death of their parents. An outside pack had attacked for apparently no reason, and destroyed the alpha and his mate as well as their closest supporters. Thankfully for these lands the triplets had managed to take it back, but their family was lost forever. Since then, they had become somewhat reclusive. They had to focus on such intense training to be ready, now they knew what terrible things lurked all around. They also had to learn how to lead their pack, without the guidance of the elders. With all that they had on their hands, they didn’t venture out much, much less find their own mates.
They were unbelievably attractive, sexy in an obvious way - but they also had the sultry look down to a tee. But that isn’t the reason for their affectionate, if not comical nickname.
‘The T-birds’. A clear hint of the obvious - the ‘it’ guys from Grease, the film every teenage girls loves! But they gained the nickname for one simple reason, the pack members affectionately referred to the triplets as; ‘Dusty’, ’Matty & ‘Scotty’.
Every time I heard a swooning girl referred to them as the T-Birds I could practically hear how hard my eyes were rolling. Maybe I was immune to their charms? But to be fair to them I thought, I’d never really seen them. I had only caught 1 quick glimpse since I moved here.
The rest of my shift went by painfully slowly, apart from serving the occasional beer to the older regulars or pretending to enjoy mixing cocktails for the loud giggling group, nothing else of note happened.
After calling last orders, and finally being able to lock up I did the usual cleaning and organising ready for tomorrow. Glancing at the time, just as I was heading to my car I let out a big sigh. I had so much college work to do when I got home, but it was already the early hours of the morning. Climbing into my car, I came up with a plan - big pot of coffee, couple of hours of essays and then crash out until morning before getting up to do it all over again.
Turning onto the long country road, to head back to the house the car started making an awful noise and juddering. Great, I sighed.
The snow was already so thick here, as it hadn’t stopped falling for the past 6 hours on top of what was already on the ground. Shivering, I grabbed what jacket I could find and got out the car. As I got out the car, I looked down and couldn’t believe my eyes. My tyres had all been slashed. “You can’t be f***ing serious?!” I shouted out to the surrounding woods, as I kicked one of the deflated tyres. Exacerbated I looked around my surroundings, as I tried to work out what I was going to do now. I was still a minimum of 30 minutes from home, the snow was still coming down thick and fast and I was already shivering so much it was painful. Just as I was weighing up my options, I span around in response to some snapping branches behind me.
