“I, um, well, where did you read about it?”
“First tell me if it’s a myth.”
He shoved one hand through his curls. “It’s not a myth.”
Now she was the frozen one. Not until this moment did she realize…she’d been counting on Kate’s paper to be nonsense from front to back. If the part Kate had acknowledged as most dubious were actuallyreal…
“What about violence and aggression and—and—obedience to a dictator alpha wolf? Is all that true too?”
“What?” Jeremy yelped. “Where did you get all this?”
“From a sociology paper for Ms. Worth’s class. Jodi Naylor was proofreading it. I was at her house making pizza and brownies and catching up, and I saw the paper and read it and…”
For some reason this seemed to calm him. He drew a long breath, let it out, and nodded. Then he deepened his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s part two of Ask Me Anything, Wolf Edition.” He pointed at her as if he were the game show host and she the contestant. “Ms. Campbell, you’re up.”
She allowed herself to smile, to give him his game if this made it easier to tell her. But she wouldn’t be letting him off the hook with her questions. “Well, Mr. Freeman, I just asked you several questions. Could we start with those?”
“Sure,” he said, sobering for a moment. “Well, first—I promise none of the wolves in my pack are violent. People throw memes out into the world all day long, but that doesn’t make a stereotype true.”
“This was an actual news source, supposedly an actual psych study.”
He flinched. “Well. That doesn’t make it true either.”
He couldn’t prove it to her while they sat here eating tacos. He couldn’t prove it to her at all really, not for every wolf or even for the majority of wolves. But he could prove himself a good, safe guy who told the truth. So far he had. Lucy nodded.
“I believe you,” she said.
He sighed, then smiled. “Next? Um, if you don’t mind repeating them.”
“What’s with the dictator alpha thing?”
“Well, every pack is led by an alpha, but it’s not a dictatorship. He only makes decisions that affect the entire pack. Otherwise we live our lives how we want.”
Tacos finished, she wiped her hands again, then used one to prop her chin. “So…he’s like a township supervisor or mayor or something?”
“Uh, no?” Jeremy’s lips pressed together for a moment in thought. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s like. Our alpha’s name is William, and he’s held the position for…I think fourteen years. He’s still in his fifties, so we’ll have him for a while yet.”
“It’s a lifetime appointment?”
“Yeah.”
“So like the Supreme Court.”
“What? No.” He gave a chuckle that held the barest hint of good-natured growl. “And not like a monarch either. And he can’t legislate us. But, like, if there were an emergency, we wouldn’t take a vote. William would weigh all the factors and decide.”
“What sort of things has he decided in the past?”
“Well, here’s an example for you. When I was a pup and started changing under the moon, my parents found out about the alpha directory and called William because this pack was the closest to our home. He vetted my folks to make sure they weren’t scamming or anything. Then he considered the size of our pack, the resources and living space we have, stuff like that. And he determined it would be okay for me to join as long as someone was willing to take me in. He didn’t force Patrick and Nicole; he asked them, and they said they’d love to. So they had legal guardianship of me for five years until I turned eighteen.”
“So he’s kind of…the pack’s executive officer.”
Jeremy threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Sure. If you really need an analogy, sure.”
“Okay, last question.”
For a long moment, their gazes held. Then Jeremy looked down at his hands in his lap.
“So…about wolves recognizing their mates…that one is true.” He looked up. “And I know what your next question’s going to be, and yeah, I recognized you when I met you.”
