I laughed. I’d never been one for wearing a lot of makeup, honestly. As far as I went was to swipe on some lipstick, maybe a little smudgy eyeliner, but I didn’t see the point of foundation—though Ninnia said this was because she fucking hated me and I had even skin tone. I had dark eyelashes, so mascara only seemed to make it clump up in away that I didn’t like. Eyeshadow I could take or leave, and I definitely didn’t see the point in making my cheeks look red. Who wanted to look like they were blushing all the time?
“Tampons, probably,” said Paladin.
“Yeah,” said Lazarus. “As you have probably guessed, we have a decided lack of feminine products across the walls.”
“Well, luckily I like menstrual cups,” I said.
“Yeah, that’ll make things easier,” said Paladin.
“What’s a menstrual cup?” said Kestrel, making a face.
“Think about it,” said Paladin, rolling his eyes. He turned back to me. “Not that we won’t find a way, understand. We would move heaven and earth for your comfort.”
“Except you’ll have me pregnant soon,” I muttered, thinking of Madrigal, rubbing my forehead. I had a finite amount of birth control patches at home. They came in a box of nine, and those lasted about three months, and I had… six left. I’d need to go back to get the prescription filled, back across the wall. And then I’d eventually have to go back to a doctor to get a new prescription. And it might all be moot, anyway, because the tithe business, the wolves, whatever, it might just override all of the fake hormones.
“No, we should avoid that if possible,” said Kestrel. “This is exactly the wrong environment to bring a child into.” He lifted a finger. “And nothing from you two, because you’ve both knotted her, too, so this is not my fault.”
“All the knotting does is keep it in there, anyway,” said Lazarus. “It’s not a necessary component to pregnancy.”
“I mean,” said Kestrel to me, “you don’t, like, want to be pregnant?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, someday, but I am twenty years old. So, maybe in eight years or something?”
They all just surveyed me.
“Ideally?” I whispered, cringing. “It’s not going to go that way, is it?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Paladin, waving it away. “The way I see it we need to get several things underway before we think about that at all. First, she needs to be comfortable and settled. Second, weneed to make a plan for defense of the farmhouse. Third, we need to make inroads with the other wolves with mates so that we can use that as defense, if necessary. We could all retreat somewhere strategic together maybe. Someplace with only one way in, maybe?”
“Like a medieval fortress?” Lazarus snorted. “Come on, Paladin.”
“No, it’s smart,” said Kestrel. “What about the quarry?”
Lazarus sat back, rubbing his chin. “It has possibilities, I guess, but we couldn’t stay there. We’d be in the water.”
“Yeah, true, but we could defend an entrance, hiding off in the dark, inside those caverns, and anyone who comes in…” Kestrel mimed shooting a gun. “We could hold that for a while, long enough for Paladin to think of some genius way to negotiate.”
Paladin ducked down his head. “Yeah, don’t count on me for that shit. I don’t want to be our only hope here.”
“Maybe it’ll be fine,” I said. “It seemed like Griff understood what position he was in. He seemed smart enough to understand that he has to play it differently.”
“True,” said Lazarus.
“Yeah, and like we were saying,” said Kestrel, “if Red sides with Griff, it’s a totally different scenario.”
“Let’s get her comfortable,” said Paladin. “Let’s go across the wall and hold up a convenience store for Kotex or whatever—”
“What?” I said, eyes wide. “You’re not—”
“That was a joke,” said Paladin, reaching across the table to touch me. “I’m kind of excited, though. I was never in a thing with a woman where it was intimate like that, you know? Send me on a tampon run. I want it.”
I snorted.
He leaned back in his chair, grinning at the ceiling. “Sometime, if we’re all bored, ask me to talk about my theory about how menstruation caused humans to evolve so much differently than other primates. Did you know, like, no other primates do it? There’s only one other animal that does, and it seems like they must have evolved it separatelythan us.”
“What other animal has a period?” I said.
“Dogs,” said Lazarus.
