Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)

Especially because with each moment it ticks closer, I become more and more aware of how fully unprepared I am for this.

As the dusk turns a deeper shade of night, we step outside onto the hillside.

We’re so close to the house I can still smell the lingering smells of dinner. That, or I just like to imagine I can.

It makes me feel safe.

As if those walls could truly protect me tonight.

Vivian is already there with some of the other pack members and they are watching as Remus and his pack start to arrive. They don’t wait for all of us to gather. By the looks of it, they may have even already gotten here first.

I do take it as a slightly good sign, however, the way they trickle in. All the other times I’ve seen them, they move like a single hive mind connected to Remus.

Maybe this means they’ve grown restless. Maybe this means they’ve grown sloppy.

We walk up to stand beside Vivian, welcoming her familiar face.

“You’ll be stronger than many of the others,” she says to me, taking my hand for a second when the boys look away. “You’re the newest shifter here, so you will have more strength than most of them. Not that it will matter when we are outnumbered by this much … but at least it’s something. I just thought I should tell you in case you didn’t know.”

“Thank you,” I say as I give her a small smile. “For what it’s worth, if we survive this—”

“We won’t,” Vivian interrupts. She may be blunt, but at least she’s honest.

I just hope she’s also wrong.

I have to.

“Well, on the rare chance that we do,” I continue, “I’m not jealous of you anymore. In fact, I think I’d really like it if we could be friends.”

Vivian laughs and throws her arm around my shoulder.

“Is that supposed to motivate me to stay alive?” she teases. “Because if we’re being honest, I’ve heard better motivational speeches.”

I laugh too. Why not? Better to laugh in the face of death than cry I suppose.

But when she takes her arm down from my shoulder, she looks at me a bit more seriously.

“I’d actually like that too,” she says. “I could use another girlfriend; one that I don’t want to kiss.”

“Wait, so you don’t want to kiss me?” I say, mocking offense.

She just rolls her eyes, and for a moment, I forget what’s looming right in front of us. Right in front of us, here, at the base of this hill.

“Alright, enough trying to make nice and get along,” Marlowe teases as he puts an arm around us both. “What’s it look like, Viv?”

“It looks like we’re screwed,” she says, her eyes shifting forward to the shadowy figures growing in number at the edge of the forest.

But as I follow her gaze, I see that they’re not at the edge of the forest anymore. They’ve started to move.

Kaleb and Rory and Romulus all stand beside us and look at Remus and his pack, who are now ascending from the base of the hill. There are so many of them. So many that it makes my stomach hurt as I watch them climb the hill and know that there’s nothing that we can do to stop this from happening.

In this moment, I feel my resolve waver.

“You’re all here because of me,” I say in a quiet voice. “This is all my doing; none of this would be hap

pening if it weren’t for me.”

“No,” Romulus says, surprising me. “It would have happened anyway, eventually. Remus was becoming more and more unhinged about his pursuit of pure-blooded packs only. You’re not the only human that has or will be turned. There are plenty of other packs with turned shifters … and eventually Remus would start to come for them all. This isn’t because of you being with my boys, and it’s not because of my feud with Remus. This is happening because he is a wolf shifter that’s out of control and needs to be put down.”