“What the hell?” Perth turns on Gannon, peering at him across Ellery’s torso. “You felt her up?”
Ellery ignores the daggers currently flying back and forth between the other two men’s gazes as he leans forward and says, “Noah, we weren’t trying to keep anything from you.”
“Like fuck you weren’t.” God, if only he was wearing a shirt, I could grab him by the collar and shake him, then I’d see if I could throw him like he threw that rock earlier.
A soft, deep honeyed voice speaks up from the side as Ruger does his best to calm me down. “You have more time. It didn’t make sense to stress you out over something outside of your control, not when you were dealing with so much already. We all knew we didn’t want to influence your decision or add unnecessary pressure.”
“We weren’t hiding it from you, but we didn’t want it looming over your head until you were in a place where you could deal with it,” Ellery adds.
I fucking hate how reasonable they both sound right now. How every word just seems to pop one of my little pissed-off bubbles. I deflate slightly, only to puff back up like a dangerous puffer fish when Gannon relaxes into the sofa like he’s won this round.
“No, seriously, did you cross a line?” Perth demands, his angry stare still fixed on Gannon.
“You know me better than that,” Gannon defends, a flash of hurt sparking in his gray eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business, but she kissed me. How was I supposed to know she wasn’t in the loop?”
“Forget the kiss. It doesn’t mean anything.” I stare down at Gannon, and it’s oddly satisfying to see him drop his eyes, chagrin etched in his features.
I turn back to Ellery, the leader of their den. His bright blue gaze is fixed unwaveringly on me, accepting my glare. “So explain it to me then. Tell me everything I need to know,” I press, folding my arms in front of my chest as though the protective stance will fend off the blows I can feel are coming.
It’s always like this. New place. New people. And boom. Some unknown rule. I had a foster mother slap me once for getting second helpings at the dinner table, a rule she only told me about after the fact. Another who made me sleep on the bathroom floor for two nights because I touched towels that were for guests only. But nothing, nothing I’ve experienced, compares to the fact that I’m apparently on a one-way track to lunacy.
“As pack animals, our bonds are integral, not just to our mental health, but to our magic,” Ellery says. Then he sighs and runs his hands through his hair like he’s struggling with how to explain everything so it will make sense to someone who barely knows anything about their world.
“So we explained about how a mate claim bite creates an instant link, right?” the sheriff asks, and I nod. “It links us mentally, but it also bonds our magic. If that bond isn’t made permanent by the next full moon, it breaks. It’s like a mate failsafe in a way—but if the bond is severed and there’s not a new one to replace it, it can damage your magic and your mind. It more or less leaves you untethered, and then your magic goes a little feral. That’s where stories of werewolves come from. They were moon sick shifters.”
Monsters that are half wolf, half beast, howling to the moon as they slaughter villages and lose themselves to chaos and violence, flash in my mind. I shudder and try to banish that terrifying image.
Fuck.
“As a naif, as a lone wolf outside a den, you’re more susceptible because you don’t have any other connection to help stave off damage if our link is severed,” Perth adds.
“That’s why it’s especially important for you to make sure that your magic has what it needs before the next full moon,” Ellery finishes, and his words have me feeling like my stomach is suddenly made of rocks.
Everything he’s saying feels strangely like the rock slide from earlier, all of it just careening through me, smashing and obliterating everything in its path. Silence slips into the room like thick fog, hiding my reeling thoughts from the way that they’re studying me, worrying about how I’m going to take this.
“So if our bond breaks, does it hurt you too?” I ask, looking at each of them.
“Not in the same way, no,” Perth answers. “Mostly because our bond as a den helps, and then of course our connection to the pack protects us too. The severing of a mate claim can be dangerous for a den, but it’s usually a claim that’s older and has been established for a long time. Then the loss can be catastrophic.”
“Okay, so how do I join a den then?” I counter, trying to find some loophole, some workaround that gives me more time to figure this all out. “Not as a mate, but how you guys are with each other,” I tell them, gesturing to each of them on the couch. “Wouldn’t that solve the problem?”
“You could Blood In to a den, but only before you’ve been given a mate claim bite,” Ruger answers.
My brow furrows and I stare at him, confused.
“When you find your denmates and you’re ready to bond, there’s a blood ceremony. We cut one another and exchange blood, and that forms the link between our magic and our minds,” Ruger explains. “A mate claim bite is different. It’s more powerful and the bond it forms is far more potent. It’s a bond that can only be created between a den and a lone wolf. Because we bit you in the Hunt, you can’t Blood In as a den member anywhere.”
“So if I had a den before…”
“We couldn’t have initiated a mate claim,” Perth answers.
Ellery’s eyes are full of apology as he takes me in. “This is why what happened to you is so egregious. The Hunt is sacred, and lone wolves don’t take running in it lightly. They know it can be dangerous. They know what’s at stake and what they’re risking. We don’t fuck around with that.”
A burst of emotion floods me, like a dam that’s cracked. I quickly try to shove it all back between the fissures, unwilling to look at what’s seeping through despite my efforts. I have to take a moment to control my breathing because my lungs are compressing and contracting like a bellows right now.
“So you just risk everything on some stranger and hope for the best? What if you’re wrong? What if you bite the wrong person or make a mistake?”
“We told you earlier that instinct drives us. We didn’t pick you the second we saw you, Noah. We picked you before. The second we scented you, we all knew. You’re the one.”
My knees threaten to buckle, so I take a seat on the hearth, gripping the stone edge. “That seems like a very flawed system.”
“It’s actually not. A wolf’s scent communicates a lot about them—it’s almost like an aura, but one you know with your nose instead of seeing it with your eyes. You can tell if a person’s grounded and calm, if they’re happy and free-spirited, if they’re a fit for you and everything you want.”
“And what am I?”
Each of the men on the couch answers simultaneously, but each of their answers is different and the words overlap. It takes me a second to sort out what they’ve said.
Wise came from Ellery. Fierce from Gannon. Perth said magnetic while Ruger claimed compassionate.