“I’m betting I would.”
“No,” he tells me, leaning closer. “You wouldn’t. You would be disappointed. Crushed, even.”
He wants me to ask why. I refuse to ask why. But he has no intention of telling me unless I do—I can see it in the arrogant tilt of his head—so I cave. I want to know more than I want to hold out, a typical failing on my part.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll bite. Why do you think I wouldn’t enjoy this rite of passage available to every other female of age? A time-honored tradition beloved by all and sundry?”
There’s a new fight below us and it sounds a lot more serious, but Ty’s gaze is on me. I have to repress the urge to shiver.
“No one would dare oppose me, babe.” He laughs. “And if someone did? I’d kill him. It would take one strike.” His dark eyes gleam. “Like I said, you wouldn’t like it.”
What I do like, though, is how warm and downrightgiddythat makes me. So much so that I almost miss my brothers’ turns. Micah goes first. He lets the other male get a few swipes in, but I’ve seen him fight before, more cat than wolf. He waits until his opponent feels confident, then dominates. It’s over fast.
Asher’s fight follows a similar trajectory, though he is less strategic. He lets his opponent get too close—or so it seems—and thenexplodes. When he does, he wins easily.
Liam has to fight two opponents, and he does so with the same ease, dispatching one and then the next as if it’s all swatting flies to him. It doesn’t even look as if he’s winded. When he bows to Connor, then the stage full of females, he’s grinning.
“Not a bad showing,” I murmur to Ty, completely failing at my attempt tonotsound like I’m gloating at my family’s prowess. When I am.
“Not bad at all,” he agrees.
I can’t help noticing that each of my brothers chose a mate from the three packs with old kings who are no fans of Ty’s. It looks like three new sisters for me, which is lovely, but itfeelslike strategy.
The new mated pairs run off together into the remains of Saturday night. The males who failed to secure a mate start drinking away their wounds and grievances. The rest of the men settle in for a night ofbittenwomen and other adventures, and I decide it’s time to go down into the den when all I can see is creative, athletic fucking in all directions.
I spend the rest of my evening down in the cavern, letting the older women tell me how best to welcome newly mated females into my pack.
“Don’t you worry about testing their loyalty,” the oldest grandmother there tells me as if that was my first order of business. “You leave that to their men. Because we all know that unless a woman can depend on her man, she’s never going to trust his pack.”
All the other women around me hum their approval. “I wasn’t planning to start any hazing rituals,” I assure them with a laugh.
Another one of the old women looks at me, and though her eyes are clouded over with age, I think she sees me just fine. “That’s because you’re more secure than most,” she says, with a nod. “Not worried about your position. That’s not true for many. You just remember that.”
When my old ladies get tired, they curl up on the couches set all over the grand cavern, because the dens in this cave system are for families or fucking or both, and I head back to Ty’s bed.
Yet I’m still awake when he finally comes down to me, smelling of firewood without a single trace of anybittenwomen on him, not that I thought there would be. Still, a man’s future queen likes to be sure.
I tell him my theory about my brothers’ mates.
“That’s not the theory, babe,” Ty says gruffly. “That’s the whole point.”
“I had no idea my brothers were so biddable.” I smirk. “I’ve always considered them to be giant assholes who never do anything anyone asks them to do.”
“Maybe not,” Ty agrees. “But they do whatItell them to do.”
“Like everyone else, my liege.”
He laughs at that. “Damn right.”
He crawls onto the bed with me, still clothed, and stretches out there beside me. I reach over and play with that hair of his that some might call a little too long, but I love it. I thread it through my fingers for a while. Then I let my fingers move over his whole head. Pressing into his skull to release any tension he’s carrying.
And he’s always carrying tension, along with ... literally everything else.
“I thought we’d spend the day talking about how to modernize the packs,” he tells me, tilting his head back to press into my touch. “Instead I spent all my time appeasing old men and putting out fires because everyone seems to think the packs are stealing from each other, except no one can prove it. Complete bullshit. And a waste of time. Wolves are going to die because of this shit.”
“I think that’s the point,” I say. His eyes snap open and fix on mine, but I don’t take it back. “Ty. Maybe I’m crazy. But I think there’s a traitor in the pack.”
I expect him to immediately shout at me and tell me that can’t be true, but he doesn’t. His gaze sharpens. “Explain.”
