Page 77 of Scapegoat

“No, you decided that, not me,” I said with a frown.

“Hey, kid…” My head whipped around to find Jamie was standing there, watching everything that had taken place. “We all good here?”

“We’re good,” I replied, smiling now. “The guys are just being stupidly overprotective.”

“Overprotective, huh?” I watched her eye each one of my mates, before nodding. “I approve. I’m Jamie.”

She thrust her hand out for Xavier to take and when he did, he wore a smug grin.

“So you know exactly what kind of trouble our girl likes to get into?” he said. “I’m Xavier. These are my brothers, Jayden and Atlas.” Each one of them shook her hand. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“And I haven’t heard anywhere near enough about you three,” she said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and giving me a squeeze. “Wanna catch me up?”

We talked for some time, sitting on the grass and watching the opening band fight for people’s attention. They weren’t the one people were here to see, so people chatted, drank, smoked and waited instead of engaging with the performance. But not Atlas. I’d made him give up smoking a few weeks ago, and after a while of him stomping around like a bear with a sore head, he’d kicked the habit. I used the time to talk through the last month or so, bringing Jamie up to speed.

“So… fated mates, huh?” she said, sipping on her drink and then raking her eyes across each one of the guys. “Is that like a human marriage?”

“Humans can get divorced,” Atlas said, dragging me up onto his lap. “We can’t.” He brushed his lips across my mating mark, forcing me to shiver. “There’ll be no one else for us but Kai.”

“Wolves mate for life.” She nodded slowly and I found my body growing more and more tense as I waited for her judgement. “Yeah, I like that, if you look after my girl.”

“We try,” Jayden said. “We try really fucking hard, but she doesn’t make it easy. Like tonight, she keeps—”

The roar of the crowd jerked my attention away from my family and I was up and out of Atlas’ grip before he could respond. I didn’t know who the band was or if I liked their music but… It was the experience of it all. No Mum, no Anna, no worries about running into the guys. I’d lost so many restrictions I felt light as a feather as I drifted closer to the stage.

“You’re gonna have those boys tearing their hair out before night’s end,” Jamie said, appearing at my side. Her words might have had a note of warning, but her grin? It gave me all the permission I needed. “But it’s good to keep the fuckers on their toes. Dance?”

I didn’t even know how to, but I took her hand and let her pull me deeper into the crowd.

The speakers pumped out music so loud I could barely hear my own laughter as we danced, or at least I think that’s what it was. Jamie grabbed my hand, spinning me around and we moved, everyone moved. Some people seemed to do so with a neat kind of precision, following the beat of the music with well-choreographed movements, each one flowing into the next. But we just flailed around.

Arms moved or legs, but not both and barely to the beat of the music. I felt like a bloody idiot but Jamie just laughed. She slung her arm around my shoulder and then showed me some simple moves, the two of us performing them in synchronisation, once I understood how that worked. In the end it didn’t matter though. This was a little concert in a small town and, mostly, people just wanted to drink and have fun and despite our bad moves, others wanted to join us.

That’s when my mates arrived.

They appeared in the crowd, towering over almost everyone else, moving until they formed a ring around us, keeping us safe. Guys backed right off, seeming to sense that a claim was being made and while some women sidled up to the guys, their death stares put the ladies right back into their place.

“You’ve done good!” Jamie shouted over the noise, as one song bled into another. She grabbed my hands, swinging both of us around. “These boys will do anything for you, won’t they?”

“Think so!” I shouted back before daring a sidelong look at them. Jayden smiled, his eyes narrowing, while Xavier scanned the crowd, and Atlas? He swooped in, plucking me from Jamie’s grip.

“This what you want?” he asked me, putting me back on his boots, just as he had two years ago at that party in Granville. He held me close and danced us around the small space his brothers made. “This what makes you happy?”

“Right now I need to pee,” I shouted back, laughing because the song ended suddenly and my statement came out a whole lot louder than I’d intended. “I’ll be right back.”

He’d want to come, stand in front of my stall and make sure no one messed with me, I just knew it, or he’d force Jamie to come with me. He’d tell his brothers to follow us, secure the perimeter. But I didn’t need that heavy-handed bullshit, so I launched myself forward, able to weave my way through the crowds much easier than he could, due to my smaller size and because I was a girl. Men backed off with a hopeful look, thinking that’s what it took to get my attention, but I just shot them a grateful smile before moving on, right up until I reached the edge of the crowd.

I sighed when I saw the line outside the toilets. It didn’t seem that brutal in front of the men’s but the women’s? A line snaked all the way back to the drinks tent. I regretted drinking those rums and everything else that had passed my lips, the pressure in my bladder growing by the second.

But as the wind picked up, heralding an incoming storm, I realised I had something no human woman did. I could take fur, trot off into the nearby trees and cop a squat without creating a public indecency. I smiled to myself, heading off to the other side of the toilet block, intending to switch into my wolf’s form once I was behind the building and past the trees. Before I could get clear of the block, a voice had me stopping on the spot.

“What’re you doing here?”

Chapter 44

I went to turn around, to face him, but a hand grabbed my arm and spun me before I could.

And there he was.

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