I rub my biceps. The nicks are already healed.
My wolf yips and waggles and rolls. She likes remembering. She wants me to rush down to the lodge. Find him. Lick his face. Tickle underneath his chin with our fur.
Down girl.
I purposefully picture the other night. Haisley’s wolf leaping for my wolf’s throat. Killian watching. Not moving a muscle.
She whimpers and slows her roll. It’s tough love, but she’s going to have to learn. He’s a dead-end street.
I take my time picking out my outfit, settling on a periwinkle blue maxi dress with long sleeves and sandals. It’s a synthetic fiber, but I like how it flows when I walk. Silky and soft. I don’t have a lot of sensation around some of my worst scars, so I like soft fabrics that whisper over the skin I can feel.
I wash a cereal bowl Kennedy left full of milk in the sink, and I fold a quilt Mari dropped on the floor, laying it on the back of our secondhand sofa. I shut the windows. There’s a hint of an approaching thunderstorm in the air. Then, finally, when I can’t think of anything else to do, I stop putzing around and head for dinner.
The evening is cooler than it has been. There’s that undernote of rain, but the sky overhead is cloudless and almost purple as the sun sets.
I can’t imagine living anywhere else. The ridge, the ravine, the river, the caves, and the foothills. The seesawing mountain breezes and valley breezes. It’s my territory. It runs through me like veins, connecting all my parts to the earth.
But I also wish I was a million miles away.
With each step, my dread grows. The pack is going to stare. Talk shit. Laugh. I lost a challenge, and that’s how a pack works. It teaches you your place.
And the Byrnes will be there, smug that they’ve put me in my place.
I’d happily skip dinner, but Annie, Mari, and Kennedy expect me. They went ahead, always anxious about being late. God forbid a male wants a beer and has to get it himself.
I shouldn’t be so critical. I was just like them when I was their age. Being a lone female messes with your mind. You’re consigned to the kitchen, the furthest cabin from the commons, the jobs where you don’t have unsupervised interactions with unmated males—in other words, the sucky ones. You’re pack, but not. You’re a satellite.
Easy to pick off.
Humans like to talk about “alone time” as if it’s a good thing. That’s how far they are from their herd origins. “Alone time” means you’ve been left behind. It means you’re on your own, and no one has your back. And there are predators out there. Still.
An old memory of gnashing fangs and screams surges from my subconscious. I slam it back down and walk a little quicker the rest of the way to the lodge. The evening has shadows now, and strange sounds. A shiver zips up my spine.
When I slip through the screen door, Old Noreen is piling serving dishes on trays. Annie and Mari are shoveling food into their mouths while standing at a counter, and Kennedy’s squatting on an overturned bucket in a back corner, absorbed by her phone.
“Took your time, eh?” Old Noreen swipes her forehead with a dish towel. “Come on then. This isn’t that movie with the hot beast in highwater pants. The dishes aren’t gonna dance themselves out.”
Kennedy snorts from her corner. Mari wrinkles her button nose and says, “I don’t get it.”
I grab a tray. There’s a knot in my stomach.
This is it. The last time the pack saw me, I was naked and covered in my own blood. This is step one in painting over that picture. It needs to be done, so therefore, I can do it. That’s my mantra.
My face burns. It feels like forever ago, but it was only three nights. Pack memory goes much, much longer. They’ll be reminiscing about the time my wolf went suicidal for years to come.
I can’t hide from it. All I need to do is push open the door and walk through. Piece of cake. Done it a hundred times. The sooner I get to it, the sooner I can trade places with Kennedy and go back to researching mushroom cultivation. The pack can be awful, but if I fall back in line and tuck my tail, they’ll go back to ignoring me.
“Do you want a kick in the ass to get you moving?” Kennedy pipes up from her corner.
“Kicking it myself,” I mutter.
I square my shoulders as much as I can carrying a huge round tray, and then I knock the swinging door open with my hip and hold it for Mari and Annie.
A hundred heads swivel. Voices hush except for a nasty laugh here and there.
Against my will, my gaze flies to Killian. He’s in his place on the dais, his bulk overwhelming the metal folding chair, legs cockily sprawled as he lounges on his throne.
He has two modes when he’s up there—the pissy lord of all he surveys or the arrogant emperor willing to be entertained. Based on his posture, I’d say tonight we’re in for the latter. That’s good. Usually that means less blood to mop off the floor at the end of the night.
Ivo is crouched beside him, bending his ear. I venture out into the great room, and Killian glances at me for a split second. Then he casually—and very deliberately—looks away, replying to Ivo, dismissing me from his notice.
My heart drops.
Cool. That’s cool.
The pack takes it as a cue. Conversations resume. I’m no big deal again. There’s some pointed snickering, but the mood in the room mellows, the focus returning to food. I lower my eyes to the floor and keep moving.
Killian’s giant silver wolf is only a vague presence in the background tonight. Killian the man is in full control, and he obviously has no interest in me.
Good.
That’s what I wanted.
I swallow past the lump in my throat and make my way to the front of the room. Serving the lieutenants and the other fighters is my job. Mari takes the elders and pups. Annie and Kennedy trade off on the others.
Serving the lieutenants isn’t an honor or anything. The unmated males hit on everyone but me and Old Noreen, and it makes Annie and Mari anxious—and skeeves Kennedy out to no end—so I take one for the team.
The unmated fighters sit at two tables by the dais—A-roster and B-roster. A-roster is closest. The lieutenants and a few other favored fighters are always seated there. They make room for Jaime if he’s on a winning streak and Alfie if he hasn’t pissed off anyone lately. And then there are the high-ranking females. Ivo’s sister Rowan. Killian’s cousin Ashlynn. Haisley.
Haisley’s mother Cheryl is the alpha female. She eats with her mate at the high-ranking elder table and then floats around the great room, ostensibly “supervising.” Mostly she makes us fetch things until she gets drunk and forgets about us.