Free Broken Heart 10 Some Lycan Hot by Michele Bardsley Page B

needed to leave downtown before someone saw her raccoon eyes and stained blouse. God, she was complete wreck. At least she’d been able to publically keep her composure—until today.
    Sandra backed her Mercedes out of its parking spot, and took lesser known streets out of town. Finally, she got to the narrow two-lane road that took her home.
    Despite the fury that vibrated in her bones and made her teeth grind, she drove carefully. The winding road was dangerous on a good day, much less on a wintry day like this one with her mind fogged with misery.
    Damn that woman! Sandra hadn’t become mayor because she took no for an answer. She hadn’t made Broken Arrow, Oregon a tourist destination by accepting defeat. And she sure as hell wouldn’t let her husband die! Alaya Bennington had something in The Winter Goddess that would help Garrett. And Sandra would dismantle the shop piece by piece until she found it.
     
    “ARE YOU OKAY?” asked Treese. Her long, rainbow-colored dress swished as she exited the stockroom and joined Alaya at the counter. “Why doesn’t anyone else in this town see that Sandra Ruthridge is a conniving, lying, thieving sell-out?”
    “Gratitude often blinds us to the faults of others,” said Alaya. She was tired and felt guilty, helpless. Sandra had many burdens as mayor, many of which she’d created by making decisions that benefitted her rather than Broken Arrow. All the same, her husband’s cancer had come as a shock and rattled the mayor to her core.
    No matter what drove Sandra to be controlling and arrogant, she loved her husband. Her grief was real. And so was her fear.
    Garrett was a gentle soul. A good man. He had tempered his wife’s hardness with softness. Without him, Sandra would be lost. Alone. Bitter.
    Feelings Alaya knew all too well.
    “Hey, you in there?”
    “Where else would I be?” Alaya patted her friend’s arm. “Sandra’s agony is no less tragic because she’s … prickly.”
    Treese sighed. “Your empathy is boundless—and not always deserved by those who receive it. Sandra’s pissed, and she doesn’t make idle threats.”
     
     
     
    CUT SCENE 2: ALAYA BENNINGTON 1.0
     
    ALAYA CARRIED THE guilt all the way home. Once, she had been able to offer comfort and solace to those in pain. As a priestess of the Moon Goddess, she had used her gifts to help the grief-stricken. Loss could wound the soul deeply, and some never healed from the devastation.
    Leaving her post as High Priestess had been a difficult decision. But with the goddess returned to her children, and Damian re-taking his crown of lycanthrope leadership, she was no longer needed.
    She tried to believe that lie. Exhausted, she flipped on lights, dropped her purse on the hall tree, and went into her bedroom.
    Sandra’s grief, her desperation, had brought everything back—living in the village where Roma and full-bloods lived as one people, nearly dying from wounds and burns, loving Darrius with her whole heart. Her whole being.
    “Whole” being the operative word.
    Alaya turned on a lamp, plugged her cell phone into its charger, and sank onto her bed, lifting a hand to her forehead. She tried to rub away the ache pulsing there, but she knew it would turn into a full-blown migraine if she didn’t tend to herself now.
    The headache was a hint from her body that her thoughts were poisonous. Spirit, body, and mind were connected, and oftentimes treating physical ailments started with healing emotional and spiritual lesions.
    The only cure for lies was truth.
    And her truth was an oh-so-bitter pill to swallow.
    She’d left the Order of the Moon Goddess because she was afraid Darrius would finally find her. She’d spent too long in hiding, too long justifying her choice as honorable, to admit she’d been wrong to let him go.
    Let Darrius find another wife.
    Let him have the family he deserved.
    Let him live free of the woman who was scarred and barren and burdensome.
    Alaya put her head in her hands