Page 97 of Feral Werewolves
“You can’t promise that,” said the guy in the driver’s seat, as he pulled the car out and pointed us back in the direction of the compound.
“Are you that unwantable?” I said with a little laugh. “I’m fucking Paladin Gilman. You think if I can find a mate, someone who wants me, you think that doesn’t mean it’s not possible foranyone?”
We drove in silence, and none of them said anything for a while.
“What’s the plan?” said the guy who was driving.
“All in good time,” I said, because I did not exactly know what the plan was yet. I was still working on the plan. I probably shouldn’t have just jumped in this car like this, but I was going with it. It felt right even if I couldn’t quite make it make sense yet. My rational brain was going to catch up, though, I was positive. Leap, and then make it work, that was my current working plan. Fuck.
This had every chance of blowing up in my face.
“Griff says that the tithes are mate potentials,” said one of the guys. “He says that by sharing them amongst a ton of wolves, it diminishes the chance of bonding. But that means that every gathering, it’s first come, first serve on the tithes and some wolves get left out with nothing to fuck.”
“All those tithes who stop being tithes at the full moons are mates who never found their mate,” I said. “If each one of those mated a wolf, then that wolf wouldn’t even need to come to the gatherings anymore, because he’d be set.”
“So, after we mate, we’re punished by being confined to one pussy forever,” said one of the guys sarcastically.
“No, it’s not like that,” I said. “After you mate, yougetthat one pussy forever.”
“You’re just like Griff,” said another of the guys. “What isit, like, you get mated, and then it zaps your brain in some way and it makes you dumb?”
“Makes you soft,” countered another of the guys. “Even Red now, he’s soft.”
“We should have just let Griff out instead of coming for Paladin,” said the guy sitting next to me.
“Wait,” I said. “Griff’s alive?”
“You didn’t know that?” said the driver.
“Okay,” I said. “New plan. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
kestrel
HOLD THAT THOUGHT, he said.
Hold that thought.
And then he got in the back seat of some car and drove the fuck off without a goddamned word to anyone about what he was doing, including Liam, who he was in the middle of scheming with.
If Paladin did not get himself killed, I was going to kill him myself.
As night fell on Liam’s farm, Lazarus pushed for us to go back to our farmhouse, pack what we needed, and get ready to leave.
“But if we can’t get Paladin on board, then what?” I said.
Lazarus didn’t say it out loud, but we both thought about leaving without Paladin, and I rejected it immediately. No way, not without Paladin, never without Paladin.
It was hard to say what my feelings were for Paladin or which Paladin it was that I had fallen in love with—the hurt and scared Paladin, the guilty Paladin, the fierce and vicious Paladin, the whipsmart Paladin who had a plan to solve anything (except, of course, getting his ass into the chicken coop every morning). Whatever it was with Paladin, it was complicated.
But leaving him behind?
Not an option.
I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised when heshowed up two hours after he left with all of the mates piled into two different cars and four other cars filled with defectors from Red’s compound.
They were all chattering about what he’d done.
He’d let Griff out—who even knew Griff was still alive, right?—and sicced Griff on Red. While the two of them were in the middle of yelling at each other, he’d used that as a distraction and gotten all the mates out of the compound. While loading them into cars, he was making threats and promises, telling all of the men there to leave Red and follow him.
