Page 76 of The Good Boys Club

I couldn’t tell him the truth when we’d woken up naked in the forest this morning. Couldn’t bring myself to admit his mid-shift confession.

Mash was the next Cassidy pack alpha.

He would have known this following his initial shift at what, age eleven? Twenty-three years ago. He’d known for twenty-three years and he hadn’t said anything to me.

Not when we first met. Not at Zach and Kai’s mating ceremony when I’d asked him how the alphas and betas worked. Not in the car on the way over here. Not any time.

I tried to be mad at him. He was my closest friend, the person who knew me the best. The person who I knew better than anyone. I tried to be annoyed that he’d kept this from me, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t muster the anger.

Mash would not have held this secret for as long as he had without good reason. I knew that much. It would have been eating away at him like a sickness. He told me everything.

Everything.

No matter how mundane or repugnant.

He’d tell me about his sexual escapades. In unsolicited detail. He’d tell me about his grocery lists, and how he could eke another four washes out of his shower gel before he had to replace the bottle. He told me about his fear of latex balloons. How the squeaking made all the hairs on his body stand up, and his balls shoot up inside his groin. He’d tell me about his bowel movements—the frequency of them, the volume, the viscosity. One time, he called me in the middle of shitting to brag about the size of it.

“It’s gonna touch the water, and it’s still coming out of me,”he’d boasted.

“Mash, do you remember that conversation we had about selecting which information was suitable for sharing?”I’d replied.

There was no way he wouldn’t tell me about the alpha thing unless it was really, truly hurting him.

He’d spent so much of his youth avoiding Howling Pines, returning only during summer and the Winter Fest holidays, and studying far enough away from his hometown that going back and forth for full-moon shifts wasn’t feasible. It was all making so much sense now. He hadn’t been running from the small-town life like I’d assumed.

He’d been running from responsibility. From being tied to a certain life in a specific place with no wiggle room for choosing another path. It was his destiny. And he’d been avoiding it now for almost a decade. How much longer could he keep doing that?

I remembered thinking about how selfish Clem was for refusing her destiny. But it was different now that I knew it was Mash.

Now I knew that at some point I’d lose him.

Not permanently, but we’d be a seven-hour drive apart.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I’d wished I was cutting up onions instead of nuts. I’d needed the cover for my tears.

Across the marquee, Mash spotted me. His face instantly lit up with a grin. He waved, and his tail swished wildly behind him. I smiled back, since my arms were still full of baklava. My own tail began swaying.

We put our dishes down where Clem instructed. She picked up an empty plate. The other kitchen wolves followed her lead. I copied them.

“In the grand tradition of things, because werewolves love traditions,” Clem said to me, her voice kept low so the others didn’t suspect I was an impostor who knew nothing about were culture. “The chefs get the first serving. We’ll fix ourselves a plate each and then take it over to the top table up there. Then folk will come up to the buffet in groups according to rank.”

Clem piled chicken thighs and veggies onto her plate. “The alphas will start. After them, the alpha successors. Then the betas, and then after them, everyone else including the unshifted wolves and the cubs. Don’t ask me why, that’s just the way it’s always happened. When I was eleven, I started helping in the kitchens so I could eat first, because back then sometimes what was left over was . . . meh.”

“Work smarter, not harder,” I said.

“You got it.”

We took our plates up to the top table and sat down, Clem to my right.

“So now the alphas will help themselves.” Clem picked up her fork and began tucking in.

Without any kind of announcement or fanfare, seventeen wolves rose from their seats, including Rita. They made their way over to the food.

Clem swallowed her mouthful and continued to narrate the event. “These post-shift banquets date all the way back. They used to be so that folk could smooth out the waters after a night of shifting and often fighting. They fought a lot back in the day. Not so much any more. You still get fights, obviously. People can’t help themselves sometimes, and when you get a hundred wolves all shifting at once and inhibitions being lowered, it’s to be expected. There aren’t nearly as many fights these days, but we still hold these buffets. Mostly because the elders love tradition. And they especially love anything that’s particular to were culture.”

I nodded. I enjoyed listening to Clem’s little history lessons. Mash had always shrugged and said,“It’s just what we do.”

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