“Do you play, too?” I hold up a controller.
She glares at me. “All of it was my idea.”
“Now, that I believe.”
“What are you going to do to us?” There’s a tremor in her voice, and it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
“You said it. I’m not going to do anything. And you’re gonna convince me I don’t have to ‘cause you’ve all learned your lesson, and I don’t need to ground your girls.”
“How?” Her eyes narrow. What will they look like when she comes on my cock? I bet they’ll blow wide open.
“You’re gonna be a good mate,” I say, guiding her toward the door. My phone buzzed several times already. It’s Tye. I should’ve been at his place a half hour ago.
“I’m not your mate.”
“You can make my lunch all the same.” I don’t wait for her to navigate the stairs. I gently lift her down, ignoring her prune face. She’s gonna need to get used to it. Until I get those ramps built, I’m her elevator. “Wash my laundry,” I go on. “Clean my cabin.”
She’s scowling. “That’s what you think a mate is for?”
I stop her at the crest of the hill leading down to the commons, and I tug her close. She stumbles, but I’ve got her. I hold her flush so she can feel how hard I am for her. How my body knows her. Needs her.
For a moment, I let myself have what I crave. Her in my arms. Her chest rising and falling against mine. She shivers like a fawn, and she smells like heaven.
“No.” I bend to whisper in her ear. “What I really want to do is take you back to my den and eat your pussy until you come, squeezing my head with those sweet thighs. And then I want to hear you wail my name while I tap that delicious, plump ass.”
Yeah. Her eyes blow wide when she’s astonished.
I keep going. “You’re gonna come on my cock so hard, you’re gonna forget everything but that you belong to me, and I was put on this earth to pleasure you and put pups in that little round belly.” I rest my palm over her womb. “That’s what I think a mate is for.”
I bump noses with her and then I step back. “But I didn’t figure you’d be down for that quite yet.”
Her arousal teases my nose. It’s faint, but it’s there. I step back.
She tries to shove her hands in her pockets, but her skirt doesn’t have any. She forgets the hoodie does and starts wiping her palms on the corduroy.
I know that was a lot. Frankly, I didn’t know I had it in me. Usually, with females, I don’t have to lay it out like that. They come on to me.
I’m willing to drop it—for now—but she exhales a long sigh, and her eyebrows gather, creasing her forehead.
“That’s the whole thing, though. That’s why I sell things at the market. I don’t want to be just a female. Or a mate, or whatever.” She says it slowly, as if she’s working it out in her head as she speaks. “I want my own thing.”
There are responses on the tip of my tongue. Of course she feels this way. She thought she was mateless. She had to make peace with her lot. She doesn’t need mushrooms anymore. She’s my mate.
Or I could remind her that mated females are happy. Satisfied. Complete. And she’ll be happy, too, once she settles in. I believe that’s true. I’m gonna work to make it so.
I know my pack thinks I’m a tyrant. When it comes to training for the circuit, I am. But I’m also a smart alpha. Coming up, I had the perfect example of what a ‘dumb as shit’ alpha does. I molded myself as alpha by thinking about what Declan Kelly would do or say, and then I did the opposite.
A smart alpha doesn’t take something shared from the heart and say, “You don’t feel what you feel. You don’t think what you think.”
That’s how you teach folks to lie to your face.
So I say, “Okay.”
And I offer Una my hand as we walk down the hill.
Of course, she doesn’t take it, but I grab hers. And she leaves it be all the way to Tye’s cabin.
I will take my victories where I find them.
And it is shaping up to be a glorious day. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and in their wisdom, Fate has given me a headstrong mate.
It’s gonna be a sweet victory when I change her mind.
10
UNA
I don’t understand Killian Kelly.
I thought I did, but now I don’t know. We’re heading back to the commons. Killian’s slowed his pace to match mine, and he has a hold of my hand and won’t let go.
Everyone is staring. Some folks are running to get other people so they can stare, too.
I guess I’ve never seen Killian Kelly hold a female’s hand before. Not many males in our pack do. You’re more likely to see a male striding somewhere oblivious to his mate hustling to keep up.
Holding hands is a human thing.
Killian’s palm is rough. Calloused. It completely envelops mine.
When we pass the commissary, there’s a rock in our path, and his foot darts out, kicking it aside before I have the chance to step over it.
He seems really worried about me falling over. I know I took a header at dinner the other night, but I was tripped. My balance is great. It’s my leg that gives out on me sometimes.
It just doesn’t compute. Killian Kelly is hard. He starts training the males at six years old, and they do it seven days a week. The number of times the girls and I have been woken up in the middle of the night by the chanting of males sentenced to run the patrol routes because they didn’t work hard enough or lost to an unworthy opponent—or, on one memorable occasion because a male farted in the weight room and no one would confess.
One, two, three, four. Crack a window or a door. Five, six, seven, eight. Take a dump then lift the weights.
I had it stuck in my head for weeks afterwards. Kennedy still hums it under her breath when she’s painting.
And Killian’s not only hard on the males. Pretty much every female under fifty has had a thing for him, and he doesn’t care. He’ll duck off into the woods with them if the mood strikes him, and if they get clingy or aggressive, he’ll tell them to their face in front of everyone that he’s not interested.
He makes zero effort. He just sits in his metal folding chair up on the dais, and the females go to him. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch, right? Incapable of feeling like a normal person?
But he played video games with Kennedy. It was definitely his idea. The girls were terrified. And even though she doesn’t show it, Kennedy freaks out about getting busted more than any of us. She has so much more to lose.