Mave cracks up, and I flip her the bird before I join her. I give one final chuckle and step back a couple of paces. I put my fist out, and Mave bumps her knuckles against mine. I take a running leap off the cliff.Holy shit.
The weightless feel of falling is completely liberating. The wind aggressively caresses up my body, taking my excited shouts with it, before I’m enveloped by the cold water of the lake. It’s easy to see why Macon loves this so much. My head breaks the surface of the water and Mave hoots and hollers her approval of my first jump. I have a huge smile on my face.Oh, hell yeah, I’m doing that again.
We spend the next few hours climbing up to various heights in the cliff face and then hurling ourselves over. The highest I managed was a little over forty feet, but it stung going into the water, and I decided that was as high as I wanted to go. Mave stayed with me, but Kaika, Tru and Macon were all jumping from insane heights.
“Your friends are mental,” I tell Mave, as we watch a cannonball contest commencing from what has to be seventy-feet up from the water.
“Shifters have strong bones and a seriously high pain tolerance,” she offers in explanation of their crazy-ass shenanigans. “Come on let’s go eat; I’m starving.”
My mind jumps back to the arena and the sound of Torrez’s jaw breaking. I shake it off and follow Mave back down to the blanket. She hands me a sandwich from a stack inside the small cooler they brought, and I pull out the bag of drinks I stole from the kitchen. I hand over a water and a soda, and we dig in.
I savagely devour the sandwich in no time, and Mave tosses me another one. I inhale it and then lie back and soak up the sunshine.
“What’s your family like? Is Macon your only sibling?”
Mave snorts into her soda. “No, there are eleven kids in my family. Macon’s second to last.”
“Holy shit, that’s a lot of brothers and sisters,” I declare as if Mave wasn’t aware of this fact until I dumbly pointed it out.
“Mostly brothers. Only one little sister," she corrects.
“Where do you fall in the lineup?”
“Right smack dab in the middle," Mave chuckles. “I like it though. Maybe it’s the wolf in me or my own twisted nature, but I like the chaos and comradery that comes with growing up in a big wild family.”
“I could see that," I admit. “So, tell me about shifters.”
“Hmmm, where to begin...there’s a ton of different kinds of shifters. Solace pretty much only has wolves and cougars, but shifters live all over. We tend to be predatory animals: foxes, bears, wolves, big cats, eagles, etc. We can heal pretty much anything except for a missing head. What else do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. What’s it like? Do you like being a shifter?” I ask.
“Yeah I like it, I also don’t know any different. I’ve always been a wolf. The pack can sometimes be hard. You have to listen to wolves above you in the hierarchy, but that’s life anywhere you go. I like the wildness and power that I have as a wolf. I like being part of a pack, they belong to me, and I belong to them.”
I nod my head in understanding and try to picture Mave in her wolf form. I want to ask her what she looks like as a wolf, or what it feels like to shift but I don’t know if that’s considered rude. I don’t want her to feel like a spectacle. I give her a big smile and get up and wade into the lake and Mave follows me in.
“How do you like working at the bookstore?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Oh, I don’t really work there. Some members of the pack own it, and we all help each other out when needed. My day job is at the local tattoo shop.”
“You’re a tattoo artist?” I ask, obviously surprised and noting the complete lack of any tattoos anywhere on her body.
“No, a piercer," Mave grins and flicks her septum ring. “You should come by sometime. I’ll give you the friends and family discount," she tells me, with an enticing singsong voice.“You could definitely pull off a nose ring with that cute little nose you’ve been blessed with.”
I chuckle at her enthusiasm.
“No face piercings for me. They can be used against you too easily.”
Thoughts of a nose ring or belly button ring getting pulled out in a fight, makes me shudder. I don’t even have my ears pierced for this reason. Mave looks at me curiously.
“Hmm something more discreet then,” she smirks. “A couple nipple rings, maybe?”
I laugh. “I don’t think I’m wild enough to pull that off.”
“Oh, I doubt that," Mave chuckles. “You were raised as a non, with monogamy and all that, but how many days were you here before yourcoven lustkicked in?" She winks at me, and I laugh even harder. “There’s no way you’d abandon the non-mentality you grew up with for the polyandrous ways of the casters unless you had some kink inside of you." Mave’s smart-ass grin grows wider and then she bursts into laughter and splashes me.
“Come on, Vin, your secret’s safe with me.”
She squeals when I pelt her with water.
