Page 55 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

It’s so peaceful. Like a lazy dance.

When I started watching, there was a single, older male at the long table by the fire, peeling carrots, naked except for his long, swishing tail. After a while, another, younger male joins him. He grabs a carrot and pops it in his mouth.

The older male cuffs him upside the head. The youngster, not chastened in the least, leaves with the carrot dangling from his lips like a cigarette. I figure he’s been chased off, but he returns a minute later with a milk crate full of potatoes. He sits down and joins the older male to do the prep work.

A little later, a pup wanders over on two legs with paws for feet. The older male tosses him a raw potato chunk, and he snaps it out of mid-air, like a dog with a treat. The older male then asks him something, pointing to the far side of the clearing. The pup waits until the older male tosses another potato chunk before he heads off on his errand.

I track him as he meanders off. His route is not straight.

First, a gang of wolf pups race across his path, and he detours to chase them. When they shift to human and haul themselves into the sycamore like monkeys, the helper pup loses interest and continues on his way.

He passes the deer skin canopy, and a female calls him over and hands him a wide-brimmed straw hat. He carries it awhile, spinning it on a finger like a frisbee. When he passes a group of elders, he places it carefully on the bald head of a snoozing, gray-bearded male. The others raise their trembling, gnarled hands, and he brushes their fingers with his own, a brief show of casual affection, like bumping noses.

We don’t really touch like that in Quarry Pack, not unless the person is blood. I’ve worked with Old Noreen in the kitchens for years, but I don’t think we’ve ever touched except by accident. The gesture is still familiar somehow, though. It reminds me ofhow the pack’s wolves act after they return from a run when they’re resting in the commons before shifting back.

We don’t nuzzle packmates in our human skins. Our males spar. That’s about it.

It’s strange to watch as the helper pup passes his people. It’s like a daisy chain of touch—his back is clapped, his hair riffled, his shoulder bumped in greeting, his leg clung to by a little guy with chubby arms and an octopus’s grip. Except for the octopus hitching a ride, the helper pup hardly seems to notice. He reciprocates automatically.

Like it’s perfectly natural to touch and be touched.

Like it never hurt.

Eventually, after dropping the octopus off with his sire, the helper pup arrives at his destination, the only solid structure I’ve seen so far, a tall and narrow wooden shack resting on a platform of stacked slabs of stone. Smoke puffs from a tin pipe on the roof.

Unlike the entrance to the pack land, the shed is well-guarded by a trio of grizzled males with full complements of claws and fangs, but not a patch of fur between them. There is a lot of conversation and gesticulation between the helper pup and the males before a haunch of meat is taken down from a hook and handed over on a platter that, from this distance, looks very much like an upside-down metal trash can lid.

The helper pup carries the meat back to the fire, knees bent and arms straining. He takes the direct route this time.

When he returns to the fire, others have gathered and formed something of an assembly line. It looks like they’re making a stew. Besides the potatoes and carrots, they’re chopping onions, mushrooms, parsnips, and some kind of green herb, maybe parsley. They fill one huge cast iron cauldron after another and hang them on tripods set about the fire.

The wind is too brisk this high, and it’s blowing the wrong way, so I can’t smell the cooking, but my wolf’s stomach grumbles anyway.

“Once you’re settled, I’ll go fetch us a bowl,” Justus says.

My wolf startles. We both forgot ourselves. How long have we been standing here, letting him hold us? A good while.

My wolf yips to be let down, but Justus lifts her a little closer and bends his head to talk into her ear. “The pup is Griff. He’s Elspeth’s oldest. He does take his good ol’ time, but he can be relied upon not to nibble the beef on his way back with it.”

Justus points my wolf at the older male who started chopping carrots. “That’s Tarquin. If no one else makes a move to get dinner together, he’ll do it once he gets hungry, but he only ever makes stew.”

So the males cook in this pack? None of the females are helping. As far as I can tell, they’re all still lounging under their canopy.

“The male with the black and white ears is Pierce. The skinny one thieving meat is Colm.”

I watch Colm, who is tall and lanky as a beanpole, carve a haunch into bite-size pieces, pausing every so often when no one’s watching to toss a hunk into the air, snap it up with his teeth, and scarf it down.

Why is Justus telling me their names?

It feels like the first day of school at Moon Lake Academy when the human instructors would make everyone introduce themselves and do something silly like tell two truths and one lie about themselves. The humans sailed through the assignment, but we shifters were various degrees of terrible.

I might have been the worst. One year, I said that my name was Mari, and I love knitting and gardening. The instructor said I needed to say one more thing, so I said I was looking forwardto the class, which I figured she could take as the truth if she wanted, but it was a massive lie. She called me Mari all year long.

Anyway, we did introductions because we were going to be there together for a while. I am not going to be here long. This is a kidnapping.

I think.

Even Justus said I’m not going to be here long. When the wolf called Khalil asked how long a false trail would fool Killian, Justus said, “Long enough.” That means he’s going to take me back soon.

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