Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)
Once, that would have blinded me. I would have forgotten all else.
But now … now …
“Damn it,” I say as I see that the deer has disappeared from my sight, dashed off into the depths of the forest and out of reach. “I was close to getting that one.”
“Why are you so obsessed with tagging?” Kaleb asks, jogging to a halt at my side. He has to double over a moment to catch his own breath, and I think I see him trying to calm himself down, force his body back into submission at the sight of me. “It’s not like you’re going to rip into it with your teeth. That I could understand.”
I make a grunting noise at all of them as I push past Kaleb to try and hunt down where the deer disappeared to. Maybe there’s still a chance I can catch up.
Maybe it isn’t lost to me yet.
But Rory grabs me in his arms as I walk by and holds me tightly as he kisses the top of my head. Unlike Marlowe’s horny attempt to have me right here and now, Rory is trying to calm me down. I sometimes feel like he is the only one who actually gets why I’m so angry.
It’s not something I once expected. As the most levelheaded of the three, sometimes I wondered if he had emotions at all. But then, after that night when he nearly gave himself up as a sacrifice to his uncle, things just haven’t been quite the same.
Not for him.
Not for me.
“You’ve gotten a lot better at tracking over the past few months,” Rory says in admiration, his lips still pressed so close to my scalp that I can feel the heat of his breath on me. “I still wish you’d carry a real gun though, and not just a tracking gun.”
“Why?” I pout sarcastically. I’m still miffed over losing the deer.
Amongst other things.
“Because you might end up needing a real gun one day, in case one of us loses control or in case you run into a less-than-friendly wolf shifter out here in the forest.”
“Or in case you need to fight off Marlowe’s overly zealous cock,” Kaleb says, bursting out into a howl of laughter.
I roll my eyes so hard that it hurts.
“Once I am a shifter too, I won’t be carrying a real gun,” I say. “I won’t need to.”
“True,” Rory agrees. “But until then, I really wish you would.”
I stubbornly keep my gaze level with his as I put the tagging gun away at my side. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t back down … but neither do I.
Since the deer is gone and the boys’ time in wolf form is done for now, we all walk back toward the house together. At dinner, Lydia pulls out the laptop and shows everyone how many deer I’ve been tagging, and how we might finally be able to figure out what’s been going on with the local animals.
“As you all know, we’ve been running into migrating animals moving in unusual patterns over the last couple weeks,” Lydia says. “Rory was the first one to notice it, of course, and thanks to Sabrina here we might actually be able to make some sense of the change.”
Rory rocks back in his chair, arms stretching across the breadth of his chest.
“I don’t know why you bothered, Lydia,” he says. “It’s nothing. I never should’ve even mentioned it in the first place.”
I eye Rory out of the corner of my eyes.
“But it’s not for nothing,” Lydia says. “Because I think you were right to trust your instincts. I think something is going on.”
Despite the fact that they look like they’d rather be out doing literally anything else, all three boys lean forward a little to listen as Lydia continues.
I’ve tried explaining this to the boys before, but they’ve been too distracted to pay attention lately. At first, they were excited and enthusiastic about the newfound interest I took in their pack lives. But now that original enthusiasm has waned with time. Sometimes I think they’ve started to think I’m going overboard.
That I’m doing too much, spending too much time on my preparations.
And not enough time with them.
“Ever since the last full moon, an unusually high number of animals have been disappearing. But then last night, Romulus found one not too far from the cabin at the base of the hill, and this time, it wasn’t just out of place. It had been eviscerated. Attacked.”