She smiles, indulgent. She’s not scared—at all—anymore.
“Look at these paddles.” Una lifts my foreleg and measures herself against my paw. It eclipses her hand. Her palm is exquisitely soft against our rough pads.
Annie burrows into Una’s side and gawks. Between Liam and her, the whole pack is gonna hear about this by dinnertime.
Una’s gone back to smoothing my sides and scratching behind my ears. She’s humming under her breath, her expression dreamy. She’s pretty like this, unwary, unhurried. She seems younger. And when she leans to reach my far ear, her tits brush my flank.
Why did I never let her show me a good time?
For one, I guess she never came on to me like most of the other females. I’m not so lazy that I won’t make a move if I’m interested, but I never sniffed after her.
I’d say it was because I never noticed her, but we’re a small pack. Everyone’s on my radar, especially wolves like her who stick out.
She’s the lone female who sat at the front of the bus. The female who never shifted. The one with the tidy braid down her back. And obviously, the one with the busted leg.
If I’m gonna be honest, over the years, I’ve thought about her a lot. And little Mari and Old Noreen and the other lone females. And Conor and Jimmy and Kennedy. All the ones who would have been exiled, tormented, or exploited under my father.
Fixing that shit took years. Almost a decade, and I’m not half as far as I thought I’d be when my father passed and I beat Eamon Byrne to become alpha. Spared his life to set a new precedence—pack over ego. Pack over everything.
What my father never understood—and the elders refuse to grasp—is that subjugating and abusing your own packmates leads to a weak pack.
We’ve got Moon Lake to the east, growing fat off human money, snapping up land as quick as they can buy it. How long before they get the idea that Quarry Pack territory should rightfully be theirs? Might makes right.
If your pack has a bunch of broken females and cowering young, you look weak. I want plump, happy females swollen with young, and well-fed pups with thick coats yipping and wrestling in the commons.
In my father’s time, I’d only ever see it from the window of our old yellow bus as it rolled up to the Moon Lake school, but I knew it was good. It was strength.
So, yeah, I’ve considered Una a lot, but never in a sexual way. She’s damaged. It’d have been wrong.
My wolf doesn’t see her as off limits. He’s getting playful, and he’s not watching his strength like he should. He’s wriggling up on her lap, propping his paws against her chest to lick her face. She’d be knocked flat on her back if she wasn’t bracing herself on her arms.
He slurps right across her lips, and she shrieks, reaches up, and whacks him upside the head. I freeze.
He doesn’t even snarl. He plops back and rests his head on his paws, makin’ eyes at her, a contrite whine in the back of his throat. And then when she reaches out to pet him, he lunges up and slobbers on her face again.
He loves her shrieks.
He thinks this is the best shit ever.
And she’s smiling.
Maybe I’d be, too. If I were in my human skin. It would be a sight to see. A giant wolf teasing this small female as if he’s a pup.
This whole interaction is blowing my mind.
Generally, when I’m the wolf, my mind is blank, my consciousness deep in the animal. I’m along for the ride, brain disconnected, enjoying the experience.
Not now.
I’m hyperaware, and I’m baffled. I don’t get his motives.
He wants something from her, but he’s not pushing. He’s just messing with her.
He wants to get his rocks off, but he’s deferring the urge. He never defers the urge. We never have to.
Annie’s getting bored. She trots away to sniff Liam. He’s already shifted back to skin and working on the truck.
Eventually, my wolf has had enough of making Una squeal, and he rests his head in her lap. After a few seconds, she starts stroking the top of his head.
“You’re not scary at all, are you?” she says.
She’s a hundred percent wrong. My wolf and I have more kills than any alpha in North America. We’ve taken on a pack of ferals alone and left their drained carcasses in a heap. The sun-bleached pile of their bones still sits on the border of the southwest quadrant as a warning. The male pups dare each other to go there and steal a bone. It’s become a rite of passage.
I am a once-in-a-hundred-years flip-shifter, alpha at eighteen, bigger and stronger than any competitor I’ve faced on the circuit. My wolf and I show no mercy to those who threaten the pack. We rule with an iron fist.
And my wolf is drooling through this female’s jean skirt, luxuriating in the scent of her ripe pussy.
“I like you.” She runs a finger down my muzzle and fuckin’ boops my nose. My wolf flops and wriggles until his upper half is plastered to her lower abdomen—her womb, where she’ll grow our young.
Is that the wolf’s thought?
Mine?
She’s still propping herself up with her arms, and they’re wobbling, but she lets him lounge on her. He doesn’t have any concept of his weight. I’m gonna need to force him out of the skin if he doesn’t back off soon.
There’s nothing but birdsong and the distant ratcheting of a wrench, so when she speaks, I startle.
“You have to make Killian leave me alone,” she says low, almost under her breath.
What?
My wolf growls. He doesn’t like that either. We don’t take commands.
“We’re not mates anymore,” she goes on. “Abertha fixed it. Tell him to ignore me. Okay?”
Abertha fixed it? What the hell is she talking about?
She’s not moon mad. The wolf can smell that rot a mile away. She’s not making sense either. No one can “fix” a fated mating.
“Tell him he doesn’t have a mate now. He can do whatever he wants. He should leave me alone. I won’t cause any more scenes in the middle of dinner.”
She laughs, and it’s self-deprecating. Sad.
The wolf does not like how she’s talking. Impulsively, he bites her shirt and yanks.
She smacks him—hard—and says, “No.”
Immediately, she freezes, sucking in a breath. Now she shows her neck.
I’m summoning my skin, ready to wrestle control back, when my wolf very deliberately licks all the way up her exposed neck and then bites the shirt again, tugging back and forth, gently so as not to rip it, sly as hell. Teasing away her rush of instinctual fear.
It’s hard to think. Her taste explodes in our mouth. Our heartbeat kicks up, groin tightening, balls swelling.
He wants her. He nudges her. Growls a command. Roll over. Present.
She’s breathless. Nervous. Unsure. She scrambles away from us.
I don’t want that.
He lets her go, dropping his muzzle to his paws and pricking an ear. Holy shit, he’s trying to be cute.
She’s doing the complicated maneuver that she did after the fight to get herself back to her feet. Roll from her hip to all fours. Push up on her bad knee. Rise to her good leg. Take the pressure off the bad one and balance.