“Seriously,” Rico groaned. “Is that what we’re going to have to put up with now? I mean, we already get enough of that with Ox and Joe. You were supposed to be the asshole forever. How am I supposed to act now that you’re the asshole with the heart of gold? It’s fucking up my worldview, man. Not cool.”
“Don’t you do the same thing with Bambi?” Chris asked.
“I like her boobs. And the way she makes me think. It’s not some mystical moon magic bullshit. It’s carnal passion of the body and the mind.”
“She does have a great rack,” Jessie said, reaching up to wipe the condensation from the window.
We all turned slowly to look at her.
Jessie rolled her eyes. “What? She does. And at least I don’t sound like a creep when I say it.”
“That doesn’t make it any better,” Chris said, eying her warily.
Goddamn Team Human.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rico said with a sigh. “She’s probably going to break up with me anyway. I mean, getting everyone we can into her bar with as little explanation as possible? That’s not going to go well.”
It’d been Carter’s idea. The Lighthouse was as far away from Main Street as someone could be and still be in Green Creek. The town itself was small, with only a few hundred people counted as residents. Many of those lived in homes spread out miles around Green Creek. Fewer than a hundred lived in Green Creek proper, and quite a few of them had already left ahead of the storm. The more hard-core had stayed to batten down the hatches. We didn’t know the extent of what the hunters were here to do, and we didn’t want to take any chances.
The wolves were moving quickly through the town, gathering as many people as they could and taking them to the bar. Mark hadn’t been pleased at the idea of the humans being in charge of locating the hunters and making sure they stayed where they were, but as soon as Carter had pointed out he needed to stop thinking with this dick, he had backed down.
Well, mostly. He had backed down after he tackled Carter and held his face in the snow until his nephew literally cried uncle.
He wouldn’t look at me after.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
The Bennetts were known, and I didn’t think they’d have a hard time convincing people to go, especially in light of what Elijah had said upon her arrival. The story being spun was one of meth-head hillbillies bent on causing trouble. Robbie seemed sure it was believable and would convince people to stay away. “Either that or it’ll make them come running with their guns,” he’d said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “People get weird when it comes to meth-head hillbillies.”
The wolves could move quicker than we could.
And there were the feral Omegas to worry about. The ones Elijah had called her pets.
I knew that if another wolf had approached the garage, they’d be scented almost immediately. But we were human, and the storm was thick. Even if the Omegas had parts of their minds intact, we would be less noticeable than the rest of the pack.
Which is why we had been hunkered down in the diner for going on an hour.
It was fine.
Everything was fine.
“I feel like we should talk about the elephant in the room,” Tanner said.
“You mean Dale?” Chris asked.
“Exactly. I mean, do we give Mark shit for ignoring the mystical moon magic and sleeping with the enemy? Or do we put this on Gordo for ignoring the connection with the wolf who wants to take him carnally underneath a full moon?”
Everything was not fine.
“Guys,” Rico said, pulling his coat around him tighter as he shivered, “this isn’t the right time to be talking about this.”
That surprised me. “Thank you, Rico—”
“Because before we can talk about whether to blame Mark or Gordo, we need to figure out if Dale put some kind of brujo mind-control whammy on Mark that made him bone Dale.”
Fuck them. Fuck every single one of them.
“Huh,” Chris said, rubbing his jaw. “I never thought about it that way. Hey, Gordo.”