Page 62 of The Good Boys Club

Dee-Dee placed her hand on the top of mine. “You need to tell him. You can’t leave him, and youhaveto come back here. You have a duty. Your whole pack relies on you being here, Mash. You can’t keep resisting the call. And you cannot live four hundred miles away and still become the next Howling Pines alpha.”

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Twenty-Four Years Earlier

Mash

Ifolded my clothes. In fact, I folded, unfolded, and refolded them several times. I never folded my clothes. They usually stayed in a heap on my bedroom floor until Mam yelled at me to throw them all in the laundry basket, but I was so nervous I needed the momentary distraction it brought.

It was Harvest Fest, which meant a hundred or so wolves from neighbouring packs had gathered in the Howling Pines marquee. Our Harvest Fests had become somewhat of a local institution, with people clambering over each other for an invite.

It was my “official” first time in the marquee on full-moon night. A little cubby with a prettily written name tag,Mash Cassidy, waited for me at the end of the cubs’ section. My clothes rested neatly inside. Well, my shorts and tank. I sat in my underpants with the rest of the youngsters while we waited to see if tonight we would shift. We watched, and tried not to look at the older folks undressing.

Once I’d shifted, my cubby would get moved to sit beside Nana’s, Mam’s, Clem’s, and Mika’s. But until that moment, I had to wait here with my brother Zach, his best friend Kai, my other sister Alba, and about thirteen other kids varying in age from eleven to fourteen.

It was different when it wasn’t Harvest Fest, or another big family celebration like the Wolf Moon in January. Those times, my pack would simply get undressed in their bedrooms or in the living room, and they’d go out together in a small group of four. Sometimes we’d have visitors, like the Black Fang pack from across the lake, but more often than not, it was just the Cassidys. Mika shifted about three years ago, so before that it was only ever Nana, Mam, and Clem.

A couple of weeks ago I’d had my eleventh birthday. Zach was thirteen, and he’d been undressing in preparation for his first shift for two years.

I drummed my fingers against the wood of the bench.

“It won’t happen tonight, chill out,” Zach said to me, then he resumed playing some kind of card game with Kai.

Ahead of us, the male alpha of another pack got undressed. Kai elbowed Zach, who looked up. The pair shared a smirk, thenwent back to their game. I wished Aaron was here with me, but his birthday wasn’t until June.

“Nah, it will happen tonight,” said Poppy. She was in the year above me at school. All the cubs here went to Lykos Academy, but I was the only one from grade six. Nobody else in my grade had had their eleventh birthday yet.

“How do you know?” Zach said, regarding Poppy as though she were a bug in need of squishing.

Poppy wore underpants and a cotton vest top. I couldn’t stop staring at the embroidered daisies in the centre of her chest.

Some of the cubs wore swimwear, some wore underwear. It didn’t matter too much if a pair of pants got destroyed in a shift, but it could be dangerous to shift in clothes. Especially in things like belts and jewellery. Paper robes were always available, almost like hospital gowns, but no one ever wore them. Zach told me if I wore a paper robe, I’d get laughed out of the school and we’d have to move towns.

It wasn’t Poppy who answered Zach’s question, it was Rob from Zach’s class. “Look at the size of him. He’s taller than you, Z.”

“No he isn’t,” Zach sniped, which was a dumbass thing to say. I was over six feet and already half a foot taller than him.

“I just know,” Poppy said. “I feel it, like in my . . .” She patted the centre of her chest, drawing my eye again to the flowers.

A few mornings ago, I’d woken up with some new things happening . . . down there. It confused the heck out of me. I’d thrown a Wingball down from the top bunk. It hit my brother on the back.

“Zach, Zach, wake up. Something’s wrong with me, Zach. My willy’s big and . . . hard.”

“Congratulations on your first boner,”he’d said without turning over to face me.“You’ll get them all the time now,especially when you look at—or think about—really hot men or women.”

I tore my eyes away from Poppy’s underwear. The last thing I needed was to get a boner in my tighty-whities in front of the entire school.

She continued like she hadn’t seen me staring . . . or maybe she hadn’t. “He has an alpha’s aura.”

“Oh, fuck off, he does not!” Zach spat.

“Language, Zachary,” said one of the older, entirely naked wolves.

“You’re just jealous,” Poppy said. “Because Mash will be the next alpha and not you.”

Zach was on his feet, his card game abandoned. “I will be the next Cassidy alpha, not Mash. I’m the eldest boy.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” That was Rose. At fourteen, she was the oldest of the unshifted wolves. She had actual boobs. I didn’t even let myself glance at them, but gods, I wanted to. “My sister is younger than my brother and they both shifted together for the first time, but she’s our next alpha, not him.”

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