“Stay gone,” I tell the crone’s back as she turns on the faucet to rinse our dishes.
“I do what I want,” she tosses over her shoulder.
I know when to tap out, so I toss my shorts on a bench, head out the door, and let my wolf take our skin.
I’m done with this vague, hippie shit. I am going to get my mate. My body warms. A faint, strange pulse tick tocks in my sternum.
My wolf raises his snout as we race back to camp, and I swear words ring in his howls.
Took you long enough.
I’m almost back to camp when another scent stops me in my tracks. It’s rich. Delicious. I bound off through the underbrush, and it doesn’t take long to discover the source.
Darragh Ryan is hauling a fresh kill on his shoulders. A buck. Eight points.
Before I shift, my wolf leaps up and snaps a chunk off the haunch. So fresh.
When I rise to two feet, I wipe blood from my mouth. “What are you doing down here?”
Darragh’s twisting his neck to check out the damage. “Did you really have to? Couldn’t wait for me to dress it for you?”
“You don’t do it for me. You do it for Mari.”
Mari’s the mate he avoids claiming by living feral in the foothills. He says it’s ‘cause of the age difference—he wants her to have the chance to grow up before taking on his old ass—but it’s something else. Don’t know what, and since he keeps shit secure in our western territory, I don’t care.
“She doing well?” Darragh schools his weathered face like he ain’t transparent as hell.
“She is.” I don’t mention her squeal when she caught sight of my cock last night. That wouldn’t go over too well. “What are you doing so close to camp?”
“Cutting through. I was following my nose. Took me out by the old dens.”
“You smelled that buck all that way?” It’s big, but it’s not that big.
Darragh shakes his head, and his salt-and-pepper beard brushes his equally hairy chest. “Something else. Something unfamiliar.”
My adrenaline kicks up. “Like what?”
“Dirt. Leaves. Pine needles. Not ours. From another territory. Baking soda.”
“Like hunters covering their tracks?” It’s rare, but occasionally humans are stupid enough to track an animal onto our territory.
“Yes, but I didn’t scent human.”
“Wolf?”
He shakes his head. “Once I got out there, all I smelled was this fella here.” He resettles the buck’s weight.
“Should I send a patrol out?”
Darragh snorts. “I don’t know. You willing to waste good training time based on the overactive imagination of a wolf almost gone feral?”
“Hey, patrols are cardio.”
“True enough.” He sighs, his gaze turning toward the direction of the old dens. “I think it was a fluke—some strong scent carried on a strong wind. I tracked this big fella a few hours, covered a lot of ground, didn’t scent anything out of place.” Darragh pats the deer’s haunch. “I’ll bring this down later. Let Old Noreen know to expect it.”
“I will.” I clasp Darragh’s hand and fake like I’m going in for another bite.
“Fuck off, man.”
I chuckle. I made him flinch. I miss Darragh around camp. He taught me a lot of what I know. “You know we keep a seat open for you in the lodge.”
“So you tell me.” He jerks his chin and strides away, blazing his own trail through the thicket on a path toward the ridge. Anyone who saw him would mistake him for a member of the Last Pack. Long, snarled hair and beard, claws that never quite recede, ears that come to a point.
If he doesn’t come out of the hills soon, he might not ever be able to. That’s his choice, though. Every male is entitled to his own. I don’t know how Mari handles her heat with him gone, but she does. It’s a messed up situation, but they can do as they see fit—and if they don’t want the rest of the pack to know, I’m not a gossip.
I shift back to wolf and lope back to camp. First, I swing by the lodge and tell Ivo to take a group up and comb the northeast quadrant, and then I head straight for Una’s place.
Gael isn’t where I left him. Jaime’s there. He’s wandered up on the ridge behind the cabin, squatting on a rock, playing on his phone. I leap and knock it from his hands while I shift back to my skin.
“Where’s Una?”
Jaime scrambles to his feet. “Down there.”