Page 12 of Bad Blood Wolf

Flynn put his plate down. “I’m not in the mood to dance around with you today,” he said. “I know about the cage fights, because it’s my business to know about blood being shed between my crew and other shifters, whatever the reason. I haven’t said anything because they seemed to keep a tight control over it, and it didn’t look like there would be any blowback on the crew.”

Jasmin looked away. She hadn’t realized that Flynn knew, but it didn’t surprise her. He was sneaky and paranoid, and he was right—it was his job to know what was going on inside his territory, and around it.

“But messing around with this other shit—drugs, loan sharks, blackmail—I can’t have that in my crew.”

Jasmin nodded.

He eyed Jasmin’s cut-up face. “You’ve been fighting more since we became an official crew. The others have calmed down, but you’ve gotten worse.”

He left that open-ended.

Jasmin didn’t answer. She knew it was true. A few weeks ago they’d all pledged to Flynn as their alpha. That meant they were officially recognized as a crew by the Shifter Council, but it was more than that.

Their crew had bonded with a special kind of magic that was usually reserved for wolf packs. It gave Flynn the power to protect their territory and draw on the power of the land and the crew bond to defend them.

It also bound them together in a way that sat uncomfortably on Jasmin’s shoulders. She hated feeling so entwined with the rest of the crew. So… helpless inside a net of obligations and expectations and magic and love.

It reminded her way too much of the way her mother had been bound to her father. For better or for worse—and with every jaguar couple she’d ever known, it had just gotten worse.

She knew that network of obligation sat uncomfortably on Flynn as well.

The silence stretched out, with only the sound of Flynn’s fork scraping the plate.

Finally she said, “It’s not as satisfying beating up on the crew now that we’re bonded. Plus, watching Tank and Lissa do all that sappy love shit just makes my jag want to bleed things.”

Flynn snorted. “I hear that. Listening to them fuck all the time is driving me crazy, not to mention the cloud of pheromones that follows them around. It’s enough to make a person sign up with one of those online hookup apps.”

Jasmin tried to picture Flynn on Tinder—tangled dreads, bare feet, naked half the time.

“You have to wear pants to date, I’m pretty sure,” she said.

“Not if you’re hooking up,” Flynn said. “Isn’t the whole idea to end up not wearing pants?”

Good point. She suddenly wondered if Brody Jameson was on Tinder. Because that made not wearing pants suddenly seem like a good idea.

Dammit.

At that moment, a blast of Christmas music came through the wired-in speakers in Flynn’s room. A second later, both their phones buzzed with text alerts.

MANDATORY CREW DECORATING. EGGNOG. COOKIES. ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES. WAIT, THAT’S WHAT EGGNOG IS. COME DOWN AND BE HAPPY OR I’LL HAVE TANK DRAG YOU OUT AND THROW YOU OVER THE BALCONY. LOVE, LISSA

P.S. NO TURNING OFF THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC. I’VE BLED PEOPLE FOR LESS.

Jasmin sighed and got to her feet. Flynn reached out suddenly and grabbed her wrist.

“I know you’re brawling to keep your jag from going wild,” he said. “Do I have anything to worry about?”

Jasmin gazed into his eyes. She could feel his alpha energy enveloping her. Not the dominance that forced obedience, but the bond forged when she’d pledged her loyalty and he’d pledged his protection.

It felt warm. It felt good, and that scared her. Obligations made you vulnerable, and vulnerability made you weak.

She tried to shake her head, but couldn’t.

He said, “This thing tonight. No bodies, and nothing comes back on the crew, from Nashville or anybody else. And whatever this ‘friend’ is into, you stay out of it. If you can promise all that, you can borrow the truck and do whatever the fuck you want. Except crash it.”

She nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

He didn’t let go of her wrist. “If shit gets bad, talk to me,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

She nodded once more, and he released her.

He tapped a couple of buttons on his phone to pull up the wireless interface for the music system. The music changed abruptly.

Jasmin rolled her eyes.

“What?” Flynn said. “It’s still Christmas music.”

Jasmin just shook her head. Flynn found a pair of pants, and they walked downstairs to the cheerful, utterly inappropriate strains of South Park’s “Merry Fucking Christmas.”