Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)

And I’m impatient for the last part of this bond, my transformation, to be complete.

“Why is this taking so long?” I complain to Lydia on the morning of the sixth day after my turning ceremon

y. Every muscle in my body aches, but other than that, I look and feel exactly the same.

The cuts on my wrists have already started to heal. They’re still scabbed over, the skin reddened into the pattern of claw marks that sealed me as a member of Romulus’ pack … and more importantly, his family.

“I told you that it takes several days,” Lydia says. She keeps that calm and comforting smile on her face, but today it has the opposite effect on me.

I feel myself shudder in my seat.

“Yeah, I know you keep saying that, but I feel like I want to crawl out of my own skin right now,” I say, fighting the urge to twitch like an out-of-control animatronic.

This time, when she turns to me her eyes are narrowed slightly. “This isn’t about the turning, is it?”

I pause only for a second.

“No,” I say, finally. “Because I don’t like that they’re all still here.”

I nod my head towards the glass, and her gaze follows mine out onto the grounds beyond.

I am, of course, talking about Remus and his pack. I just don’t understand why they have to stay for the entire turning. I don’t have a problem with the actual turning ceremonies taking seven days, but I do have a problem with Remus and his pack staying here for the entire week.

Especially when I had a problem with them staying here even for a second.

As much as Romulus seems determined to trust them, I don’t. I still don’t believe their intentions, no matter how hard Remus has been working to convince us otherwise.

I saw the blood promise they made.

I know Remus wouldn’t give in so easily, not when my very existence here is an affront to all he believes in.

“Why can’t they go back to their own territory?” I ask, still shifting in my seat. “It’s not like it’s even that far away. Not for them, anyway.”

There’s a slight growl in my voice. Most shifters mark a very specific territory as their own, as Romulus has done, but Remus and his pack like to travel—and as they do, they mark parts of the Free Territory as their own. This last year, that area has been inching ever closer to us.

Too close.

Lydia shrugs. I know she’s not really in agreement with it either, but she also knows her place in the pack. She knows that this is the way things are done.

I’m not quite at that point yet, and to be honest, I’m not sure I ever will be.

“Sometimes the old rituals don’t make any sense, and sometimes they do. The important thing is that we keep the ones that do make sense close to our chest,” she says, after forcing her eyes away from the shifters mulling outside on the grass. There’s too many of them. Too many.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means,” she says, glancing over at me before looking just as quickly away. “That you should follow your instincts.”

I wait until she’s looked away to allow a small smile to spread across my face.

I like talking with Lydia. Even with the way she speaks in riddles, she still seems to make more sense to me than nearly everyone else most of the time.

Our moment of peace is interrupted moments later when the boys come barreling into the room, nearly knocking Lydia over as they each give her a kiss on the cheek in turn. As soon as she’s able to regain her balance, she looks at them with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh oh,” Kaleb says when he sees her expression. “What did we do?”

Lydia laughs. “Nothing. But it’s what you are going to do today that matters.”

The look on their faces is veiled. It’s Rory who swaggers forward, leaning over onto the counter with raised eyebrows of his own.