He stares at me like a man staring at a widow after a funeral. Like a doctor delivering news to a family about to be swallowed by grief. He looks at me like a man who knows hope is a caged bird and he’s about to set it free.
“You’ll get moon sick,” he answers, his dismal tone like a kick to the chest from a mule. “You have until the next full moon to forge a bond with a den, or you’ll go insane.”
23
NOAH
I pace in the living room like a caged wolf. Under other circumstances, I might find that comparison amusing, but right now I’m trying not to completely lose my shit. Anxiety is snarling underneath my skin, and I can’t tell if I want to scream or cry—probably some combination of both.
But I need answers first, and I need them now.
Moonlight streaks across the two-story river stone fireplace, falling down to splash over the wide wooden planks of the floor. I trace the glow with my eyes as I pace across the cream-colored rug in front of the hearth. I’ve never had the urge to break something before, but a surge of violence rises up like acid in my stomach, and I have to swallow it down. The fury rides me hard, and I try to regain the reins by breathing slowly, in and out.
Footsteps make my head snap up to the staircase, and a light switch clicks, making the round iron chandelier with faux candles flicker to life.
Ruger, Ellery, and Perth trudge down the stairs, Gannon close on their heels. He’s put on a pair of sweats, thank fuck, but unfortunately I now have the other three and their perfection to contend with as I try not to ogle.
Maybe I should have given them a second to get dressed when I stormed into the house and barged into each of their rooms, demanding that we need to talk right fucking now, but hindsight and all that.
It’s a testament to how pissed I am that their shirtless presence isn’t completely frying my brain. At least Ellery and Perth sleep in pants—Ruger’s sporting gray boxer briefs, and it’s a sight I’m not prepared for.
Too bad I want to rip each of these assholes limb from limb right now.
I turn and face the hearth so that I don’t have to subject myself to the torture of watching each of them walk down the stairs. Logs of wood are stacked carefully in front of me, ready for a fire at any moment, and I bend and flex my fingers, imagining I could light one instantly with my fury.
“Noah, what’s going on—” Ellery’s the first to speak, his tone gentle and soothing, but I’m onto him. None of that bullshit is going to work now that I know every word and action is laced with ulterior motives.
“When were you going to tell me?” I demand.
“Tell you what?” Ellery questions, his brow furrowing with confusion, as if I’d fall for that innocent boy-next-door shit again.
“Oh, shove it, Sheriff, you know exactly what.” I don’t even care that I’m rude, that my tone of voice carries up to the giant beams crisscrossing overhead and bounces back to me. I’m livid. “All the mate shit,” I fling at him with an incendiary scowl when he still looks bewildered.
“I’m confused. We talked about that,” Ellery defends.
“We’ve all talked about the Hunt and what it meant,” Ruger defends, and I turn my glower on him.
“Oh no, I remember all of that,” I counter with a growl. “I recall perfectly how you made it seem like a choice. Like it was no big deal. But when exactly were you going to tell me about the losing my mind part? About the moon sickness that kicks in if I don’t shack up by the next full moon?”
“Oh…that,” Ellery murmurs flatly, and I start to see red.
My pacing resumes because I just can’t contain this agitation inside of me. I don’t look over at them as they slide slowly down onto the giant sectional, each of them taking up positions on the edge of the seat, sitting up straight, like students who know they’re about to be scolded.
They deserve so much more than scolding, but the images of violence flashing through my mind are all of biting, wrestling, seeking blood, and not in the fuck you up kind of way, but rather the yes! Please fuck me like that kind of way.
That is really annoying because I’m pissed, and I know my eerie nature wants to take this to an extreme that will just land my ass in trouble.
I’ll have to be careful about how I go about this. I’ll have to stay calm. Collected.
“WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK!” I snarl each and every word, my throat raw by the end of the sentence from the power and rage vibrating through my vocal chords.
Ruger cringes a little, Perth drops his gaze to his feet, but Ellery and Gannon keep their eyes trained on me, one of them looking concerned, the other indignant. I address the sheriff and ignore the asshole.
“You bit me knowing I’d have to accept this claim?”
“Technically, only I bit you,” Gannon interjects, because of course that fucker wants to rub salt in the wound. “But we are denmates, so the claiming bite applies to all of us.”
I thread my fingers through my hair, tugging at the roots as though it will keep me from leaping at Gannon and strangling him.
“Noah—” Perth tries to chime in, but I’m so over this right now. He doesn’t get a say. He stood in that shop and danced with me. He had all the opportunity in the world to come clean, to tell me everything I was up against.
“Don’t even start!” My hand leaves my scalp, and my arm chops through the air until an accusing finger points right at him.
He sucks his lower lip between his teeth, and his angel-kissed face looks up at me with a beseeching expression, one I’m not going to fall for.
These men have played me.
“What were you thinking? You just bit a complete fucking stranger! You all knew this bite came with a countdown. You knew this contract had an insanity clause. And yet, you decided to rope in some woman you’d never met because of what? My tits?”
Ruger clears his throat, the sound entirely too amused, but I swing an ice-cold gaze in his direction.
“Fuck the hell off!” I tell all of them. “Not one of you told me about this moon sickness shit. You left it to fucking Roy Kent over there”—I point at Gannon—“to tell me the truth.”
“Roy Kent?” Gannon asks, perplexed.
“Ted Lasso,” I snap at him, rolling my eyes when he still doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “The guy’s a gruff asshole, that’s all you need to know.”
“Listen, kitten, I think you’re being a little unfair,” Gannon argues and, I swear, he must have a death wish, because I’m about one more arrogant brow flick away from doing my best to make his insides his outsides.
“We really want to talk about fair, Gannon? Because I don’t know if it gets more unfair than being jumped as I was trying to leave town, thrown into your Hunt, and then bitten against my will.”
“Valid. But we didn’t know about half of that equation when we bit you. We’re trying to do the best we can with what we’ve been dealt too,” Perth offers, but that argument doesn’t hold as much weight with me anymore. “We thought you chose the Hunt and knew the rules. Since then, we’ve been trying to handle all the other—”
I raise a hand to stop him. “I get that. I do. But it’s so fucked-up that you weren’t honest about the stakes for me. Why is the prick of the den the one that’s more than happy to feel me up and spew all the bullshit I should have been told?”