Now she blinked, and her lips parted. “That’s what I thought you meant. I’ve never heard anyone usewolfbefore, justlupine.”
“Then you don’t know any other wolves.”
“No. I don’t.”
Without her scent, he’d be entirely clueless right now. Based on her body language, her withdrawn expression, she might be about to bolt screaming or to break up with him calmly. But nothing in her scent hinted at either. She was…intrigued. Incredible, but she was.
“Lupines are extra hot,” she said as if it were the most scientific fact in the world.
A smirk pulled his mouth. “Yeah?”
“No, no.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean your body temperature. You always feel like you have a fever, and I thought it was weird but I never thought to ask you about it.”
“Oh. Right.”
She reached across the table, and her thumb traced his knuckles as she said, “I don’t know about lupines in general, but my boyfriend isalso…extra hot.”
He seized her hand before she could pull away and laced their fingers together. Ridiculous to have this conversation in public. Ridiculous to sit across a table from her at a time like this. A low rumble filled his chest, muted for her ears only. She jolted up in the booth and stared at him, mouth open.
She whispered, “Did you just growl?”
He nodded.
“And when you were scared of the blood, you made a sound like a hurt little dog.”
Well, crap on that. “No, I didn’t.”
“You did. I should’ve figured it out for myself. I know lupines make—um, noises?—like dogs or wolves. I read it somewhere, probably in sociology.”
Every time, that word stung like a pellet from a gun. He couldn’t help flinching at it. Lucy didn’t seem to notice. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything. Maybe his reaction was stupid, but since he was thirteen, a newly changed pup newly arrived among the community who had accepted him as pack, Jeremy had been raised to call himself what he truly was. No politically correct euphemism for his very identity.
The server brought their check, waited while Jeremy fished out his debit card, and disappeared with it. Jeremy kept the conversation paused until she returned his card with a polite but harried, “Thanks for coming in; have a great night.”
When she was gone, he picked the thread of discussion back up. Any of his pack would be impressed that he remembered precisely where they had paused this topic, but really, the topic was too important to forget his place.
“If you don’t mind,” he said to Lucy, trusting her to remember too since forgetfulness in conversation wasn’t a thing with her, “we call ourselves wolves.”
“Oh, is—is the other a dirty word or something? It’s in textbooks. Should it not be?”
“It’s not dirty. It’s made up, and it’s a confinement. Or that’s what the older wolves say.”
Again her voice fell to a whisper, and she leaned closer over the table. “But the W-word is dirty. Right?”
He shrugged. He knew the word was technically derogatory, but if Patrick had ever given him a language lesson as to why, he’d zoned out of it. He and his buddies tasted the slur on their tongues sometimes, a rebellion of sorts.
Aaron tossed it around as a joke, said no human could call him a werewolf but he’d call himself what he wanted.
Ezra and Trevor did the same, but less often and never in their mom’s presence. To this day, Ezra twenty-one years old and Trevor nineteen, both those wolves respected their mom’s hatred for the word.
Malachi didn’t use the word. Ever. No doubt he had his reasons. Malachi had reasons for everything he said and did, but Jeremy had never felt right asking him about this one.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to use it,” Jeremy said. “Because you’re not a wolf. I think it’s dirty if you use it.”
Lucy crinkled her nose. “Weird. Okay. So you’re not a lupine. You’re a wolf.”
“Right.”
“You said ‘the older wolves.’ So you live in a pack, but…not with your folks? Because you said y’all are just ‘amicable.’”
