Page 13 of The Good Boys Club

“You’re seeing someone?” Nana sounded surprised.Reeeeallllydidn’t blame her. “Is it serious? Is she were? Because I know your predilections for human women—”

“Yes, she’s were. Of course she’s were. What do you take me for?” Cool, cool, so on top of lying to my nana, I also had to pay dues to her speciesism. “And yes, it’s pretty serious. We’re . . .” Ah, fuck, might as well go all in. “We’re mated—pre-mated.”

The werewolf equivalent of a human engagement.

“You are?!” Nana was silent for a good minute. If it wasn’t for the radio still playing softly in the background, I’d have assumed she’d hung up in outrage. “Why haven’t you told us before? Clem said you spoke to her last week. You never mentioned anything. How long have you been seeing her?”

Lying to my nana and my alpha was a terrible decision, probably up there in the hall-of-terrible-decisions fame. “We’ve been dating for aboutehhhhhyears now.”

“How many?”

“Sorry, Nana, the line’s really bad.”

Fuck, why had I done this? I knew what was coming next, and yet there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“It’s settled then. You’ll bring your mate to Howling Pines to meet everyone, and we’ll begin the initiation. She needs to understand what her future entails.”

I felt like puking. “And what if I can’t get the time off work?”

“If that’s the case, I will personally visit Remy University and hand your resignation in for you.”

I scrubbed a hand down my face. Urgh, what the hell was I going to do?

“Okay,” I found myself whispering, the word no louder than a breath.

“Good boy, Mash. We’ll see you in three weeks.” She paused, waited for me to fill the silence, but I had nothing. “You still there?”

“Still here. Line’s bad.”

“What’s your mate’s name, by the way?”

“My mate, yeah, um, it’s—”

I cut off the phone.

Damn, damn, damn, damn. What was I gonna do? Let Alpha, and no doubt half the pack, march into Remy to confront the dean and drag me kicking and screaming back to Howling Pines? Or suck it up? Go to the Harvest Fest celebrations? Invent a mate and pretend they couldn’t come?

But that would never fly. The betas would insist on video calling them to make sure they passed their secret werewolf tests. Maybe I could pretend my mate worked in the mountains of East Winterlands or somewhere so remote they didn’t have access to phones. I could say they were an arctic explorer or some shit.

Or maybe I could say we broke up. Except . . .

They’d try to fix me up with Dee-Dee again, and I doubted they’d take no for an answer this time. Shit, shit, shit.

Maybe I could convince the dean to call Nana and say there was no way the uni would grant me the time off work.

Damn, I was living in a dreamland. Something would materialise in my mind later, a way around this fucking mess, but it would have to wait. I was at the front doors of the university.

I took a deep breath and marched straight up to Dean Agnes Snow’s office.

“Dr Cassidy, glad you made it. My apologies for the short notice. Do come in,” Agnes said, answering her door after I knocked.

Lone Wolf

Present Day

Mash

Dean Agnes Snow was not a particularly formidable woman—at least, not on the outside. In many ways, she reminded me of my nana, in that she was the exact opposite. Agnes was fae, with short silver-grey hair, and the most mismatched, brightlypatterned clothes a person could imagine. She was visually loud, but a calmer, more collected person had never existed.

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