D.N. Leo - Author Facebook ad: “I threw out a billionaire alpha. He came back calling me…”

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🍓The strawberries were going to be a problem. Hazel Crimsonwood knew it the moment she caught Riot with his tiny black paws wrapped around the biggest one in the punnet, juice dripping down his grey fur like he'd committed murder. "That's the third one this morning." She snatched the basket away, ignoring his chittering protest. "These are for customers, not freeloading trash pandas with commitment issues." Riot sat back on his haunches, pressing one paw to his chest in mock offense. "Trash panda? After everything we've been through?" His voice carried that particular mix of wounded dignity and barely suppressed mischief that meant he was about to do something spectacularly stupid. "I'm a raccoon of distinction. A connoisseur. I'm doing quality control." "You're doing theft." Hazel loaded the last crate of vegetables into her beat-up truck, muscles moving with practiced efficiency despite the exhaustion that seemed to live in her bones these days. Five years of pretending to be human. Five years of waiting. Twenty-three days until the next full moon, when her power would finally— "We shouldn't go today." Riot hopped onto the truck's tailgate, his ringed tail twitching like a rattlesnake's warning. "Bad feeling. Very bad. Terrible, actually. My whiskers are practically screaming." "Your whiskers scream every time I don't let you finish an entire wheel of brie." She shrugged into her favorite jacket—red wool, hand-stitched by an elder whose face she tried not to remember. The puffed shoulders made her look broader than she was, which helped at the markets. Lone female vendors attracted certain types of attention she had no patience for. "This is different." Riot's usual theatrical flair dropped, leaving something genuinely uneasy in his black eyes. "Smells wrong. Like... like pack business." The words hit her spine like ice water, but Hazel kept her hands steady as she secured the truck bed. "There's no pack business in Woodend. It's a human town. That's the entire point." "Humans don't make my fur stand up like this." He demonstrated, puffing up until he looked like a disgruntled pompom. "Skip it. One month won't kill us." "One month without market money might." She climbed into the driver's seat, leaving the door open for him. "Rent's due. Feed bill's due. That alpaca medication isn't going to pay for itself." Riot scrambled up, settling on the passenger seat with a huff that sent strawberry-scented breath her way. "The alpacas are demons. Fuzzy, spitting demons who hate me specifically." "Everyone hates you specifically. You steal their food." "I redistribute it. There's a difference." The twenty-minute drive to Woodend Farmers Market passed in familiar rhythm—Riot providing running commentary on every cow they passed ("Suspicious"), every magpie ("Definitely government surveillance"), and every speed limit sign ("Suggestions at best"). Hazel let his chatter wash over her, a buffer against the silence that would otherwise let her think too much about what she'd lost. What she'd become. The market bustled with its usual Saturday morning energy. Families pushing strollers between stalls, elderly couples debating tomato varieties, hipsters photographing artisanal honey. Normal. Human. Safe. Hazel had just finished arranging her strawberries in perfect pyramids when she saw him. No—she saw the suit first. Charcoal grey, perfectly tailored, worth more than her truck. The man wearing it looked like an assistant or bodyguard, all sharp efficiency as he surveyed her produce with clinical attention. His fingers hovered over the strawberries like a surgeon selecting instruments. "How much for the strawberries?" His voice carried that particular emptiness of someone used to transactional relationships. "Twelve dollars a punnet." She watched him select three baskets, then add a bag of silver beet and some tomatoes without examining them. "Would you like to—" "No need." He handed her a crisp hundred-dollar bill. "Keep the change." Before she could respond, he was walking away, produce balanced in his arms like an offering, heading toward a black Range Rover parked at the market's edge. The windows were tinted dark as sins, but she caught movement inside. Someone sampling her strawberries. Then the window rolled down two inches. Just enough for her to hear the verdict. "Acceptable, but hardly exceptional. Rather disappointing for the price point." The voice was smooth as aged whiskey, dismissive as a casual execution. The words shouldn't have mattered. She'd dealt with worse customers—Karen from the book club who insisted her zucchinis were "too aggressive," or that couple who'd wanted their money back because her carrots weren't "singing with earth energy." But something about that dismissive tone, delivered from behind tinted glass like she wasn't worth facing directly, made her wolf stir for the first time in months. A low growl built in her chest, silent but there. "Oh no," Riot muttered from his hiding spot under the table. "No, no, no. We don't do confrontation. We're hiding, remember? Laying low? Being boring?" Hazel was already walking. The suit saw her coming and stepped forward, clearly intending to intercept, but she moved past him with the fluid grace she usually kept hidden. The wolf's grace. The predator's purpose. Her knuckles rapped against the window. Sharp. Decisive. The sound of challenge. "If you have feedback about my produce, you can deliver it to my face." The window hummed down, and Hazel forgot how to breathe. The man inside was... unexpected. Dark hair that looked professionally tousled, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and eyes the color of winter storms—grey with threads of silver that caught the light like lightning. He held one of her strawberries between fingers that had never known manual labor, examining it like it had personally offended his ancestors. But it was his scent that hit her hardest—fine leather and cedar, something wild underneath the expensive cologne. Wolf. Alpha. Power that made her dormant strength wake up and bare its teeth. "Ms...?" He raised an eyebrow, waiting. His voice in person was worse—it rolled over her skin like thunder before rain. She didn't give him her name. "You bought my strawberries. Three punnets. Then declared them disappointing from the safety of your climate-controlled throne." His lips twitched. Almost a smile. Dangerous. "I said acceptable." "You said disappointing for the price point." She reached through the window and plucked the half-eaten strawberry from his fingers, her skin brushing his for just a heartbeat. Electric. "Which is fascinating, considering you didn't even ask the price." "I assumed anyone charging twelve dollars for farm market strawberries would deliver excellence." He leaned back against leather seats that probably cost more than her monthly mortgage, completely at ease with her hand in his space. "These are merely adequate." "Adequate." She turned the strawberry, examining it with exaggerated interest. Perfect red flesh, seeds like tiny gems, the juice on his fingers evidence of its sweetness. "This adequate strawberry that you couldn't stop eating?" "I was confirming my assessment required multiple samples." "How thorough of you." She pulled the hundred-dollar note from her pocket and tossed it onto his lap with deliberate carelessness. "Consider yourself refunded. I don't serve customers who can't appreciate quality." She turned on her heel, strawberry still in hand, and made it three steps before his voice stopped her. Not raised, not demanding. Just... certain she'd stop. "Beckett Stone." She kept walking, making sure her body language screamed that she wasn't listening and didn't care what his name was. But her wolf ears caught everything—the shift of leather as he moved, the slight intake of breath. "That's generally when you provide your name in return," he called after her, and now there was something else in his voice. Interest. Amusement. Hunt. "Generally, people introduce themselves before insulting someone's life's work." She heard the car door open behind her but didn't look back. Didn't run either, though every instinct screamed to. Running triggered chase. And alphas always chased. Riot was practically vibrating under the table when she returned, his eyes huge as dinner plates. "That was—you just—did you see his face?" The raccoon's voice pitched high enough to shatter glass. "Nobody talks to alphas like that! Especially not alphas who smell like money and murder!" "He smelled like entitlement and cologne." "Same thing!" Riot scrambled up her arm to perch on her shoulder, tiny claws digging through the jacket like grappling hooks. "We need to leave. Now. Before Bucket—" "Beckett, Riot. Not Bucket." "—whatever his name is decides we're interesting. We don't do interesting, Hazel, remember? We do boring. Invisible. Definitely not telling off random alphas who could buy this entire market with pocket change." But it was too late. She could feel eyes on her—not just Beckett's, but others throughout the market. The supernatural community was small, even diluted among humans. Word would spread like wildfire through dry grass. The red-haired woman who'd dismissed Beckett Stone like he was nobody special. Twenty-three days until the full moon. Twenty-three days to stay hidden, gather her strength, and return to reclaim what was taken from her. She'd just painted a target on her back in neon colors. "Riot?" She started packing up her stall, ignoring the confused looks from neighboring vendors. It was barely ten AM. "Next time you have a bad feeling about market day?" "Yeah?" Riot's whiskers perked with hope. "I'm listening to you, Riot." "Finally! And no more calling me trash panda, okay? I'm more than that! I'm your supernatural consultant. Your mystical advisor. Your—" "My pain in the tail who was absolutely right this time." Behind them, she heard the Range Rover's engine purr to life. But it didn't leave. She could feel Beckett watching as she loaded her truck, as she helped Mrs. Chen from the flower stall carry her buckets, as she pretended her hands weren't shaking slightly from the adrenaline of what she'd just done. The last time she'd stood up to an alpha, she'd lost everything. Her pack. Her position. Her trust in anyone who called themselves family. But that was before. When she was weak. When she trusted the wrong people. In twenty-three days, under the crimson moon, she'd be different. Stronger. Ready. She just had to survive until then. "He's still watching," Riot whispered, peeking over her shoulder. "I know." "This is bad, Hazel." "I know." "Like, monumentally bad. Catastrophically bad. Bad with a capital B-A-D bad." She climbed into the truck, settling Riot on the passenger seat. "You know what?" "What?" Riot blinked, bracing for impact. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Beckett Stone stood beside his Range Rover now, still holding the half-eaten strawberry like evidence in a crime, watching her with an expression she couldn't read. Wouldn't read. Refused to read. "His strawberries were definitely adequate." Riot groaned and covered his eyes with his paws. "We're going to die. We're absolutely going to die. Death by handsome, rich, probably psychotic alpha who you just humiliated in public." But as Hazel drove away, she caught herself almost smiling for the first time in five years. Her wolf, dormant for so long, stretched under her skin like it was waking from hibernation. Maybe hiding was overrated anyway. The strawberry in her hand was perfect. Sweet. Ripe. Worth more than adequate. And Beckett Stone had noticed. That was definitely going to be a problem. 📚 Free in Kindle Unlimited Also in ebook, audiobook & print 🦄 Sweet, clean & humorous ✨ Fated mate shifter romance • Guaranteed HEA Fairy Tales With Fangs — Soulmate Registry Collection Happy Novels by D.N. Leo

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🍓 I threw out a billionaire alpha. He came back calling me his mate.

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