He does that on purpose too.
I need to talk to him about that poor skunk, but I can tell by the way he’s lounging there—his dark, brooding gaze on me like he already knows how this night is going to go and is already deciding how he’ll punish me for it—that it’s not particularly wise to try his patience now.
When he inclines his head just enough that I can call it an acknowledgment, I move into the crowd instead.
Males with mates are hunkered down with them, always touching, their gazes loaded with the run they have ahead of them. Full moons are the only times female wolves are fertile. And we can only be fertile in wolf form.
That’s why I’ve been avoiding full moons with Ty for years now. Because if I run with him, he will complete the ritual that was my fate before I was born. He will claim me beneath the full moon, no doubt knock me up, and that will be that. The only wolf to ever have gone to college, learning the human world from the inside out, will be relegated to litters, nursing, demure smiles from my place behind him, and den politics ad nauseum.
That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it will always be, unless someone changes it. And since no one else around here seems to even imagine there could possibly be a better way, I guess that in addition to requiring myfated mateto likeme, personally, instead of what I represent to him—I might also have to mount a small revolution.
But that’s getting ahead of myself.
Right now I have to survive the night, which is easier said than done when I can feel the moon all over me like Ty was earlier, making me want to give him whatever he wants. Making me ask myself why on earth I wouldn’t when I canfeelhim still, his handprints on my ass, his bite marks on my neck, and I know that he would make all those demure smiles and tiny-stakes domestic battles feel good. Making me wonder if everyone is right and there’s something wrong with me, after all—because I can’t stop fighting the fate that I’ve always known will claim me, in the end.
The gorgeous werewolf king who’s obsessed with me who I couldn’t stay away from if I tried.
And it’s only a matter of time before fate stops waiting and takes what it wants.
Ty too.
2.
Since contemplating my doom is such a thrill, I decide to amp the whole thing up with some overdue family time.
My three older brothers and a handful of my cousins are kicked back on one of the rocks near Ty, one of the perks of being in the group of Ty’s lieutenants. His vice president, Connor, is not directly related to me, which I assume is why he’s not glaring at me like all the ones who are. At the moment, anyway.
They still operate like a motorcycle club, a shift in previously long-standing pack policy that came about when Ty won his position a hundred years ago and, shortly after, recognized exactly how he could use the growing biker subculture to promote the pack’s best interests. He got a lot of pushback, because there’s always pushback from the other pack kings, and werewolvesreallydon’t like change, but he prevailed.
He always prevails.
I feel that same prickle on the back of my neck as I think that, more confirmation that I’m doing nothing but delaying the inevitable. He’ll win. I know he will. That isn’t the point.
I tell myself that isn’t the fucking point, but I find it hard to remember when I’m here, neck-deep in pack and pack politics and all the parts of these things that I love against my will. I love them—or what they could be—so much I want to make them better, for all of us, though no one sees it that way.
Not even my own family. Maybe especially not them.
Everything in the pack is based on hierarchy. And even though I’m Ty’s fated mate and everyone has always known this, I haven’t actually, officially mated with him yet.
Fucking him constantly in skin and fur but without the power and seal of the full moon doesn’t count.
What this means for me is that I retain my only bargaining chip with Ty. What this means to my family is that they can’t claim the power and status they feel entitled to. My brothers and cousins fought their way into Ty’s circle, because that’s the only way to become the trusted seconds of the king. It’s always about blood spilled and blood avenged. Creatures of tooth and claw require proof in red to trust anything.
My brothers and cousins view my refusal to seal the deal with Ty as disrespect.
My uncles, too old or otherwise compromised to serve Ty bodily, are waiting for my ascension so they can reclaim the bragging rights they lost when their glory days passed. My mother and aunts, on the other hand, have to wait for me to do my moon-given duty before they can assume their rightful positions in the pack. Females fight dirtier than males, and not always with their paws.
Johanna feels she has been slighted every day, by every female in the pack, because she cannot assume her rightful position as celebrated mother of theactualqueen until I become that queen. And therefore she cannot take revenge on all the females who she feels were unkind to her when she was brought into this pack in the first place.
My mother’s greatest weapons are her infallible and extremely detailed memory. And enough spite to flood this whole valley. Maybe the world.
Family time has been fraught with peril since I was young, since most of my relatives have been pissed at me since the day I bled the first time, catapulting me into womanhood according to all the old ways, and yet failed to immediately secure my place at Ty’s side.
I was only thirteen.
It’s really not such a big surprise that five years after that, I took the escape hatch markedcollegeand bolted for the East Coast.
I thought I’d never come back.
