Page 64 of Unforgivable

Thjis

"Penny told me Lyri likes short hair on males," Inuit announces, shrugging off his backpack and carelessly toeing his good sneakers off his feet before carefully lining them up in his corner in the mudroom.

I pause as I help Sarj hang up his backpack. "Does she?" I ask.

"Yup. She thinks long hair is gross."

We share a commiserating smile. Both of us have long hair. I laugh, "well, shit. And what does Penny think?"

Inuit suddenly looks concerned. "Maybe she hates it too?"

"In..." I pause, "don't get too attached. She's probably not your mate," I say gently. I kneel next to Sarj to help him untie the knots in his laces. When I picked the pups up from school, I didn't mention the heads buried in our carcass pit. I just told the pups that Ezra, Rhet, and Lyri were on a run and wouldn't be back for a while.

Inuit looks surprised. "I know. I would never cheat on my mate, no matter how I feel about another female. It's... it's not something we do," he adds quietly.

I just pat him on the back. Inuit lost his pack, his family, in a war three years ago. We found the pups, starving and freezing, and brought them home. When we tried to find out if they had any family looking for them, Inuit told us that he saw them being slaughtered. One of the far northern packs, they live in isolation up there. If he says they're gone, then we won't argue. He rarely, if ever, speaks of his birth pack.

"Well, just keep it close to your chest."

"I will," he says. He pulls his laces tight, "I just want to make sure that Penny is OK because she means so much to Lyri, and Lyri means so much to all of you. To us. They're both good females."

I swallow back the sudden lump in my throat. This pup is so fucking insightful. We're just a bunch of broken fucks out here, and Lyri may also be shattered, but her pieces fit right in with ours.

"Ezra got her a gift, you know," Inuit says casually.

"That dumb apron?"

"She wears it," Sarj defends Ezra firmly. Both pups smirk at each other. Smooth little shits.

"So?" I huff, standing up and shrugging on my coat. "She's being nice by wearing it. Ezra has sensitive feelings."

"OK, we're just saying. You can get her something," Inuit says.

Shit. I have no idea what to get a female like Lyri. Some more severed heads, maybe? I have the feeling that flowers and chocolates mean nothing to her. All of that shit Ezra packed up from her parent's house didn't have any jewelry in it. Does that mean that she doesn't like jewelry, or was it all missed and still at her parent's?

"Maybe jewelry?" I ask them doubtfully.

"All females like jool-Lyri," Sarj says with all the confidence of a kindergarten pup who has never wooed a female in his extensive five years of life.

"Maybe," I say. I scowl to myself as I stomp outside to feed the horses. I know what kind of jewelry I would make for her if I were still some dumb, young fool who had the time to painstakingly carve shit for a female. Which I'm not. Not anymore.

Forty minutes later, I stop working to collect some fallen branches from the poplar trees. I figure I have some time to kill before Lyri comes back with my brothers.

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They return with our female cradled in my big brother's arms.

"She's fucking exhausted," Rhet says. "She needs to eat and sleep now."

"I don't want to go inside," she whispers. Her eyes are begging me to help her.

And I love it. I love how she trusts me, how she looks to me to help her when my dominant brother is becoming too overbearing.

I love her.

My breath catches in my throat. I don't want to love her. No, no, that's not true. I didn't want to love her. Now, now she's wormed her way past every defense I threw up as if the past decade of pain never happened.

When I chased my mate, I was compulsive and impatient to the point of embarrassment. I spared myself absolutely nothing. I just threw myself at her. It still stings, the humiliation of being rejected despite wearing my heart on my sleeve.

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