Page 85 of Settle Down, Princess

My jaw locked tight as I dismissed this mental image and then brought my focus back to the table.

“Thank you for this knowledge, revered elders. I will think long and hard on this and make the right decision when the time comes.”

“That’s all we can ask of any of our young women,” Wren said.

“So, if it’s not too forward to ask, how do the mating games start?” I looked around the table. “Do I have a role? Am I supposed to compete?”

The women chuckled, but it was a gentle thing.

“Only a human woman would ask such a question,” one said.

“That is not a criticism of you,” Wren observed. “Simply of the way human men treat their sisters, mothers, and mates. Nothing happens to a wolf shifter female. It must happen with her, and the games are no different.”

“So…” I didn’t want to know the answer, and I did all at the same time. “What will my role be? What do I need to do first?”

Wren smiled down at me with a kind of grandmotherly calm.

“First, we start with an introductory activity, away from the prying eyes of the collected packs.”

“Those boys of yours look like they have fine figures,” one woman said with a cheeky grin. “You’ll help them show that off in front of the entire crowd.”

“What…?” Every muscle tensed as I forced myself to stay where I was and wait for their answer.

“Some of the females, they’ve never met these males before,” someone explained. “They need an opportunity to get to know them first, and then they can make a decision to accept or reject the bond.”

“Nothing like a little hands-on introduction.”

Their cackles sent shivers up my spine.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said.

“They’ll strip down to the waist.” Wren’s voice rang in my ears, getting louder and louder with each echo. “And their fated mates will oil them up to perfection. It helps establish if there’s any kind of physical chemistry…”

Oil. Them. Up.

The directions buzzed inside my head like angry bees long after I’d left the elders hall. My feet moved of their own accord, bringing me back to the single women’s longhouse. Fern looked up as I walked in the door, her smile turning to concern when she saw my expression.

“What the hell did those idiots do now?” she asked. “Surely they cannot have messed things up in the time it took for you to walk from the elder’s hall to here?”

“I have to oil them up?”

“Oh.” Her face fell and she looked around her as the other women in the common area drew closer. “Yes, about that. I know where there’s a particularly vicious patch of stinging nettles growing. Want me to show it to you?”

I found myself laughing despite my dark mood, my expression easing her concern.

“Yes, please.”

Chapter 49

“How will we make an oil that stings like nettles?” I asked Fern at the dinner table. All the single women were required to attend a meal in the elder’s hall, and at the head of the grand table, the female elders presided. The mothers and grandmothers of each woman were also present, chatting over the delicious food, but that wasn’t my focus. “I thought the sting came from the little hairs, not the leaves or the stem.”

“Maybe we could shave some of the hairs off and add it to the oil,” Fern said with a wicked grin.

“You’re going to put nettles in the massage oil!” We watched a matching wicked smile spread across the face of the girl sitting across from us as her eyebrows jerked upwards.

“Serves those bastards right,” said another. “You should put some cassia oil in it. My gran uses it in her liniment. That stuff burns like a bastard.”

“Or chilli oil.” Another girl waved her fork through the air. “My mum got some of that stuff from a travelling merchant. The first time she rubbed that into the shoulders of one of my dads, he nearly screamed the house down.”

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