“Yeah?”
“Now I get served first at meals, don’t I?” He grins. A few teeth haven’t grown back yet. “My drumstick and leg days are over. It’s only breasts and thighs from here on out.”
I see he’s gotten chattier since his elevation in rank. That’s gonna be annoying.
I stand, catching the shawl before it falls. “I’ve got shit to do. Watch the cabin.”
“Okay.” He goes to make himself comfortable on the porch. My wolf growls.
This is our territory now.
“From over there.” I point back to the woods he was skulking in.
“Seriously?”
My wolf rumbles. I don’t bother answering. Gael bends his neck and scrambles back to where he came from, holding up his jeans. I don’t see how pants can be so skinny in the leg and droopy at the waist. Kid needs a belt.
And I gotta take a piss. My wolf is fine with spraying all over the flowerbed, but I’m not an animal. I relieve myself in the bushes beside the cabin before I head home for a change of clothes.
After coffee, I rub one out in the shower. It feels wrong to think about Una, disrespectful somehow, but I can’t help it. She’s in my head. Her soft lips. Quiet whimpers. How hard she mashed her tits against my chest and how tight she wrapped her arms around my neck. She wanted it. She needed it from me.
I come hard, jizz splattering on the tile. I gotta splash a few times to rinse it all down the drain.
Fates, a few minutes necking with Una Hayes was the most intense sexual experience of my life. Given, I’ve never actually fucked a female, but I’ve gotten my dick sucked plenty, and I’ve been getting hand jobs from alpha groupies since junior high. And it’s fine. It takes the edge off. But it’s never been like this.
I’ve never wanted to be inside so bad before. And I wanted. Hell, I needed. And then I opened my dumb mouth.
But she’s not my mate.
Though I’m less certain of that each time I think it.
I’ve got good reasons for not getting my dick wet. It’d fuck with pack rank. Sucking cock is one thing—not much in the way of bragging rights there—but if I favor a female with my seed? She’s not gonna shut up about that. Cheryl would feel the need to put her back in her place. It’d be a whole thing.
And our relations with the other packs aren’t so chill that I can be rutting their females without certain expectations arising.
And also, I’ve never felt the need. Until now.
I want to take Una Hayes to my bedroom, watch her build a nest on my bed, fuss and straighten and toss sheets around. And then I want her to present. Call to me over her shoulder. Press her round tits with the saucer nipples to the mattress and hike that thick ass in the air.
I want my cock slick her with her cream. I want to dig my fingers into those hips, leave red half-moons in her pale skin as I drag her back to take me.
I want to feel how hot she is inside. How tight. How those muscles feel when they clench. When they spasm.
Oh, Fate. I gotta get out of here before I end up jerking off again.
I don’t bother with anything besides brushing my teeth. I throw on some shorts and a T-shirt and jog halfway to the crone’s cottage, working out the kinks in my muscles still lingering from a night on the ground. The morning sun has burned off the dew, but there’s a mugginess to the air.
When the woods thicken, I strip and shift, hanging my clothes from a branch. Immediately, my wolf scents Una. It’s stale. Days old. Disturbing.
It’s too faint for a human’s sense of smell, but to my wolf, it’s a neon arrow.
He follows his nose, up a mossy bank, through oaks with trunks wound in ivy, down into a gulch filled with a blackberry thicket.
What was she doing out here? It’s on the way to the crone’s cottage, but it’s not the direct route, and the stickers are impenetrable. Bushes are crushed where she tunneled through. There are tufts of bloody gray fur stuck to some thorns.
My fur ruffles, and I bare my fangs. Uneasiness roils my guts.
Something bad happened here. Fear still taints the air. And shame.
I don’t want to see, but I have to.
I crouch and wriggle down the path she made.
Did she come here to lick her wounds? It’s not a smart hidey-hole for an injured animal—no water, no cover from the elements, and all the damn thorns—but her wolf is not the brightest.
A picture flashes in my head of the little gray creature licking her hindquarters, ignoring me while I balanced on Gael’s carcass. Her indifference pissed me off and calmed me down at the same time. Despite my rage, I could still sense her fear. She was being daring. And her fear made me rein it in.
So maybe she’s not dumb, exactly. Maybe she’s the kind of brave that looks like stupidity from a certain angle. I’ve got more than a few fighters who are the same. They’re my best fighters.
The narrow passage she made opens to almost a burrow. The scents smack my nose. Heat. Slick. Blood.
Fuck.
My wolf licks the matted stems. He howls. He circles the nest, nosing everything, flustered. Upset.
It’s been strange lately, his feelings separate from mine, but in this, we’re of one mind.
This is wrong.
There’s a sense of loss. A memory that floats just out of reach. A word stuck on the tip of our tongue.
She was alone here, in pain and need, and where were we?
We want to fight someone, and there’s nothing but stickers and crushed berries collecting flies.
We want to go back to Una. Assure ourselves she’s safe now. No permanent harm done. But we need to know the truth.
She’s okay. She doesn’t want anything to do with me, and Gael is there. The patrols pass above the cabin on the ridge every quarter hour. Tye and Ivo are in camp. She’s as safe as she always is.
Not enough.
I agree with the wolf. We will fix it. Move her into the commons. And the other lone females, as well. But we need answers now. I need answers.
My wolf could give a shit. He wants Una. Fur or skin. Soft and warm. Quiet and watchful. Unbending. Shy. He wants her scrawny gray wolf with the nervous ears and quivering nose.
I need to talk to the crone.
Go back.
No.
The wolf snarls and howls, but when I don’t bend, he changes tack. He starts digging, furiously scrambling at the dirt, covering the stems soaked in Una’s scent.
Like we’re hiding a crime.
This isn’t right.
But he won’t leave until he’s obliterated the evidence of whatever happened here. And even then, I have to drag him away. He rages at me while I force his paws further from camp, step by step. It’s like dragging a semi.
Then, when we reach the crone’s, for some reason, he chills out. Una’s scent is all over. It’s like it’s coming from the garden somehow, and it isn’t laced with pain. It’s faint and mellow. Sweet.