Page 24 of Feral Werewolves
I shrugged.
“This is what I look like when I’m not a wolf,” he said.
I couldn’t help but giggle at that.
He shrugged back at me. “I should have thought about how awkward this would be.”
“Me too,” I said.
“I just… you’re all I think about, all the time, and I got kind of focused on this, and now, I realize I didn’t think it through…”
“No, me too,” I said. “I mean, I think about you all the time. But not just you. Who are those other wolves?”
“Oh, they’re my pack.”
“So, that’s a real thing, packs?”
“It is,” he said.
“Like youarewolves,” I said.
He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. If you look at all-male social groups, especially when the men are isolated from the rest of society for various reasons, I think humans tend to behave a lot like this typically, anyway. We’re more human than wolf. Or wolves and humans are actually pretty similar?”
“All-male social groups,” I echoed, trying to think of what he was even talking about.
“Yeah, like, I don’t know, prison.”
Not that prisons were the same anymore, because a lot of male offenders would shift after being in jail, it turned out, even if they hadn’t before. So, werewolf exile had replaced jail in a lot of ways. Which maybe didn’t entirely jive with his argument, because it could account for why there were so many similarities in behavior out here, maybe.
“Or maybe pirate ships or explorers or Vikings.” A pause. “Sorry, here I am, not knowing how to do small talk. What do you want to do? You can come with me and I’ll take you to the farm where I live if you want, or we could cross the wall and I’ll beg you to take me for some fast food.”
“Oh,” I said, gesturing behind me. “Is that what you want? Because if so, let’s go. Drive-thru on me. Now.”
He swallowed, gazing at me with a funny look on hisface. Then he looked away, shaking his head. “No, no, no, I can’t. If you got caught with me, you’d be in so much trouble.”
“I won’t get caught,” I said.
He shifted on his feet. “Shouldn’t have offered. Everything about this is so selfish on my part. I should never have contacted you at all.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
It was quiet for a while, then, maybe for too long. I tried to think of what to say, like maybe I should convince him to let me buy him some fries, but he started talking again.
“You come with me to the farm or you go back on your own, I think,” he said. “I should try to convince you not to come, to forget about us. It’s dangerous out here, and you shouldn’t let yourself get all tangled up in it. You should stay out there, in the city, in safety.”
“Should,” I said. “But I already decided to show up, so I guess I’m not really doing the safe thing.”
He eyed me. “Kestrel says that girls who come out here and live with the wolves are just like the kinds of women who would become penpals with serial killers.”
“Kestrel?”
“He’s kind of like the leader in a way—”
“The black and silver wolf.”
“Oh, you could tell he was the leader.” He furrowed his brow, eyeing me. “How could you tell?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to say I could sense it, but then I realized it was really just evidence that I’d analyzed. “He got his cock sucked first, before either of you, like it was his due. He pulled you off me before you got your knot in, but he put his in.”
