Page 25 of Feral Werewolves
“Right, that’s a thing none of us have talked about, the fact he did that.”
“I know it can happen,” I said. I’d heard that it was frowned upon amongst the wolves because of how long it meant that a tithe was unfuckable by anyone else. That if a wolf did it during a gathering, there would be consequences from the other wolves. But it happened regularly enoughanyway that it was a known thing.
“You’re not pregnant, right?”
“I mean, I’m on birth control,” I said. But I knew sometimes that being a tithe messed with the hormones in the pill. I wasn’t actually on the pill. I had the patch. Same difference, though, apparently.
“But you don’t know. You haven’t, like, gotten your period.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
He shook his head, looking away.
“Look, I’m not some danger junkie, no matter what it is Kestrel thinks of me,” I muttered. “I’m a level-headed person who doesn’t want any of this, actually. I never asked to be a tithe or to be obsessed with the three of you at all waking moments. I sure as hell didn’t ask for the dreams I keep having.”
“Dreams?” He blinked at me, smiling a little. “You dream about us?”
“I don’t believe the mating stuff is even real,” I said. “I think women just have this weird Stockholm-syndrome thing brought on by how great the orgasms are. Maybe if they have nothing really going on for them in their regular lives, it seems like they want to escape or something.”
“Yeah, you sound like Kestrel,” he said.
“Well, I guess he and I agree, then,” I said. “I’m not your mate. You’re not mine.”
“Because you think there aren’t mates at all.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So, how do you explain that when the tithes come out here and stay with the wolves, theystaytithes? They don’t lose their full-moon urges and they retain their healing abilities and all of that?”
I drew back.
“I mean, that’s what Lazarus always says when Kestrel gets on a kick about it, anyway.” Paladin shrugged.
“Lazarus is the gray wolf,” I said. The guilty one.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well… it’s got to just be because of pheromones or something,” I said. “The change becomes permanent if you’re surrounded by wolves all the time. Maybe. Are we sure that if I come out here with you, I’ll always be able to heal from your claws?”
He heard the way I’d phrased it. “I mean, not sure, I guess. You don’t even want that.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I do have a life out there. I have a future. I’m in college.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
I felt like shit all of the sudden. He’d shifted when he was fifteen or something. He hadn’t even been able to graduate high school. He didn’t have the option, really, though I knew some wolves took online classes or correspondence school. It was dumb, though. What were you really going to do with a degree out here except say that you had one? “Hey, I didn’t mean to be like that about it. It must suck to be thrown out here.”
“Come see the farm,” he said. “It’s not so bad, not all of it.”
I hesitated.
He reached down and took my hand. “Sometimes, you wake up in the morning and open the window, and you can hear the sounds of the morning birds calling to each other and the sky is too pretty, you know, so pretty it makes your chest feel tight. And those times, I wouldn’t go back to the city for anything.”
I’d been feeling that thing, the feeling of my chest getting tight. It was that sharp feeling that pulled me away from my troubles and worries and anchored me right there in the moment, just staring at a tree or something.
“Take me to see the farm,” I said.
He grinned.
