Page 59 of Scapegoat

Jayden winked as he did just that, hauling the animal closer by its legs, then grabbing the cruel looking shears.

“What you’ll be doing is sorting through what he shears off,” she said. “If we had enough people, we would be doing it as he shears, sorting the wool that’s stained with piss and shit into that pile.” She pointed to a dark clump of dirty fibres next to each man. “That can’t contaminate any of the fibres we want to sell. The shank wool has to go as well.”

She bent over and spread a fleece that had already been shorn, out on the wooden floor. “These bits here.” Her hand hovered over the long trailing ends that would’ve run down the sheep’s legs. “Those fibres can’t contaminate the good wool.” She yanked off each offending part of the fleece and then held it up to me. “See those white bits there. They don’t take dye, and will wreck any batch that has them in it…”

She walked me through how to separate the undesirable elements from the good wool and where to deposit them, then how to pick up a fleece (something I would’ve thought was more straightforward than it was) and how to toss it onto the table so it could be sorted. I don’t think she expected me to do it right the first time, but I did.

Vicki couldn’t have known, though.

That I’d learned to do things right the first time or cop a stinging slap, so that ‘training’ was what made me pay greater attention, catch the way her fingers moved as she gathered the fleece, as well as process her instructions, so that when I gave it a go, she stood back with a slight frown.

“Well… you’re a natural at this.”

She sounded pleased and slightly confused as to how I could pick the process up so quickly, but Vicki didn’t get to dwell on that. I could see why she and her husband thought all their Christmases had come at once when the three brothers rocked up. They moved like lightning, shearing one sheep, then another, without a single nick on the sheep’s skin, before the animals were shoved outside, naked and gangly looking, before they dragged another sheep in. Vicki and I were forced to move quickly to try to keep up, to discard and sort and then throw the fleece out onto the table to skirt it, over and over.

“Oh, to be young again…” Vicki sighed.

She’d been forced to take a break, but there was something in me that forced me to continue. If I could do a job, I would do it to the best of my ability, and there was a strange kind of pleasure that came from the relentless tasks. I couldn’t think when I was sorting, gathering and throwing. For every fleece I picked up, there was another and another waiting for me. So I moved faster, feeling the wolf stretch inside me, lending me her strength. But as I threw the last fleece, my arms wobbling slightly, hands reached out to grab me, to hold me still long enough to realise the afternoon was over and the cool of night had fallen.

“You OK, Kai?” Jayden asked, staring into my eyes.

Beyond him I could see the others watching us, noting the way all of the brothers clustered closer. The floor was empty but for a few stray tufts of wool. My heartbeat pulsed in my ears, a heavy exhaustion hitting me. I would have been wavering on my feet if it wasn’t for Jayden’s grip on my arm.

“You’ve all worked hard,” Vicki said with an approving nod. “Dinner will be on the table in about twenty minutes—”

“We appreciate that, really,” Xavier said, and Vicki stiffened, already hearing the ‘but’. “But we’ll make sure Kai gets home in one piece and grab something to eat after that.”

She wanted to ask. They all did, as I could tell from the mutters from the others still clustered in the shed, and the look in her eyes. They all wanted to know what the deal was with the four of us. But they weren’t going to say anything. I was willing to bet the boys had torn through more sheep than most human shearers would be able to manage and they could’ve worked even faster if they’d thought they could get away with it. The boys would have to have been the best team of shearers Vicki and George would have hired and they weren’t going to mess with that.

“As you like,” she said with a nod. “But perhaps the four of you could join us for breakfast, then?”

“Of course,” I agreed, without thinking, just wanting her searching gaze to be directed elsewhere.

The guys helped that happen by directing me out of her eyesight toward their truck, the shakiness in my legs meaning I got picked up and sat in the front seat. As they climbed in as well, they didn’t notice the rest of the shearing team watching us as the truck pulled away from the shed and rumbled down to my place.

“You got a bath?” Jayden asked, the minute I unlocked the front door.

“I don’t need a bath,” I said. “I’ll have a quick shower once I start—”

“The end of that sentence better not be ‘dinner’,” Xavier growled. “Jay, the bathroom is down there.”

“How did you know?” Jayden asked him.

“I can smell the froufrou girly scents down the hall,” Xavier replied. “So could you, if you were paying attention.”

“I know where my attention is right now,” Jay said, leading me down the hall and into my own bathroom. It was nice, considering the age and state of the cottage, and even had an old cast iron bathtub with claw feet. “Now, Epsom salts…” He scanned his finger along the stuff I kept lined up on a shelf in the bathroom, pulling a bottle out and then leaning over to turn the hot water on.

“Jay, I can run my own bath,” I said.

“Who says it’s your bath?”

I winced as he poured a ton of the bubble bath into the water, watching it foam up furiously. But as I was distracted by this, he moved in closer. I felt his fingers slide up my back, his touch dulled by the flannelette shirt I was wearing, then he went to undo the buttons.

“Jay…”

“Maybe I want to make up for lost time?” His voice was low and husky. “Maybe I just want to pretend.” He eased my shirt down off my shoulders and when his fingers trailed up my back now, I felt every bit of his touch. “That we were never apart. That we’ve been together for the last couple of years.” I knew when he moved closer to me because I felt his breath on the back of my neck. “That this was just the end of any other day. That you were my mate and wore my mark on your neck.” His lips ghosted across my skin, making me shiver. “And that we were going to have a bath together.”

He spun me around when he undid the clasp of my bra, and I felt as though he didn’t know where to look. Jay’s eyebrows creased as he stared into my eyes, at my mouth and then my body.

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