Page 118 of The Good Boys Club

“Mash’s girlfriend?” I said, staring at Sam’s stupidly perfect ass as it swayed from side to side.

What I wanted to do was shake Clem by the shoulders and ask her why she’d sent this total baddie towards my fake mate. Yet again, I was being irrationally envious, but I couldn’t help it. The whole encounter had awoken the wolf inside me, the one I’d spent so long repressing.

Clem slapped the back of her hand against my bicep. “Naw, you’ve got nothing to worry about. They weren’t really boyfriend and girlfriend. More like . . . friends with benefits . . . only they were never friends.” How was each sentence out of Clem’s mouth worse than the last?

“So, they just hooked up all the time?”

“Pretty much.” Clem scratched at the spot between her brows, clearly realising she’d said too much. “But you’ve scented each other. She’ll know by sniffing him he’s yours.”

Mash looked over at the food wagons, his face pulled into a frown, his eyes travelling across all three until they fell on the jacket-potato truck and me standing in the opening with his sister. A smile cracked his face, splitting it wide. He waved, then blew a kiss at us.

My heart soared . . . and came crashing down the very next second, as Mash spotted the woman in leather wiggling a path towards him.

“Sam!” he yelled, and she was instantly in his arms. Mash’s big hairy muscular body wrapped around her and lifted her from the ground. He spun her around the same way guys did to the tiny women in his rom coms, while she held her baked potato awkwardly to the side. Not that Sam was tiny. In her heels, she was no doubt taller than me. Fuck’s sake.

Mash put her down and they began chatting animatedly, like two old biddies reuniting to gossip about that one person they both intensely hated. They were too far away to hear what was being said, but there was altogether too much touching for my preference. I tried to ignore it. Tried to push the fire in my belly down. The wolf in me growled,“Mine.”

I served the next potato patron in an attempt to shove the thoughts from my mind. “Cheese?”

“Duh,” they said.

“You have to trust him,” Clem said after the customer had left.

I realised I didn’t even know who I’d served. I’d had one eye on Mash and the closest thing to an ex Mash had ever had for the entire encounter.

“I do,” I lied. Hard to trust someone who owed you no loyalty.

Mash and I were in an unofficial agreement not to sleep with other people whilst at Howling Pines because the other wolves would smell it on us. But technically, Mash was single. He was free to window shop.

Would make sense. If I was heading back to Remy and he’d eventually have to find a mate who would bear his children, why not get his ducks all in a row? Why not line up the one and only person who Clem had ever considered his “girlfriend.”

“Hey, Clem, can I ask you something?” I said, tearing my eyes away from Mash and Sam before they could start snogging.

Urgh, Mash and Sam even sounded better than Mash and Cian.

“Sure thing,” Clem said. She was making a point of not watching them either. Plausible deniability, I understood.

“How does an alpha get chosen?”

What I’d wanted to ask was why Mash? Why not you, or any of the other three siblings who were born between you and your baby brother.

Clem seemed to understand my unspoken questions anyway. “Oh, honey.” She cupped my shoulders. “There’s not a pattern to it. Some people think it’s the cub who shows potential for being the strongest physically. Some think it’s the strongest mentally. Alpha is a tough role. Overnight you become mother and father to your siblings, cousins, even your parents. All decisions go through you. You must guide the pack, keep it safe from danger, but also create an environment for it to thrive. Mash is definitely physically stronger than the rest of us. I’m not sure about mentally, though, so I don’t think that theory holds.”

She seemed to realise she’d said something potentially offensive. “Not that he’s not mentally strong, it’s just . . . emotionally . . . ah, fuck.”

“I agree,” I said. “Mash has held himself back for so long. Stopped himself from growing up. In the fifteen years I’ve known him, he’s never told me about the alpha thing. To be fair, that’s a pretty impressive feat. Mash can’t keep his mouth shut about anything, so keeping this secret must have taken a lot out of him. I think he just wanted things to stay exactly as they were.”

Clem rolled her thumb over my deltoid, reminding me how much the Cassidy pack, and werewolves in general, enjoyed physical touch. “He was protecting you and himself. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to discover your mate is not only living four hundred miles away from your pack—a packwhich you are destined to lead—but is also non-were. He wanted to stay with you at whatever cost.”

Her words echoed around in my mind.“He wanted to stay with you at whatever cost.”

At whatever cost.

The price was his pack and his responsibilities. And the prize was . . . me?

Was she right? Was he really doing it all to stay with me, or was he simply being Mash and avoiding growing up?

I had to find out. “But we only got together at Winter Fest. Before that, we were just friends or roommates.”

---