The Good Boys Club (Mythical Mishaps #2)

18. Dog Eat Dog World

Dog Eat Dog World

Present Day

Mash

Earlier, I would’ve sworn there was too much food for everyone. Granted, there were in excess of a hundred attendees, but over the evening we’d somehow munched our way through an entire ocean of fish. It was delicious. Chargrilled bass and trout with tomato and caper sauce, and creamy potato salad, followed by cakes, and cookies, and special brownies only offered to the grownups.

Overhead, the lights we’d strung up with Zach and Kai twinkled, and the waxing gibbous moon shone brightly through a cloudless sky. A local band, Echo and the Howlers, played acoustic folksy tunes and people danced and drank moonshine. It was the type of music Cian would cream his jeans over.

A few hours ago he’d kissed me, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. It had been all for show—because I’d asked him to—but it’d felt so real. Something sparked in my chest when we kissed, and resparked every time I remembered it. I wanted to kiss him again.

I wanted to kiss my best friend, and not in front of an audience. Wanted it to be like the time at the ravine, before the owl spoiled it. But if we were to kiss again, I guessed I would settle for doing it as part of a bigger scheme.

I danced with Mam, and Nana, and Clem. Then I danced with Juno, and my other sisters, and lots of girls, including Riley. And it was nice, for a change, not to be hit on by every single woman.

They knew I was spoken for, Cian’s scent on my neck a constant reminder I was no longer an option.

He hung around the edge of the makeshift dance floor, chatting to the more introverted wolves like Sean and Kai. Occasionally, I saw his eye follow Dee-Dee’s path, but every time I mouthed, “Go to speak to her,” he closed his eyes and shook his head, resolute.

When the young cubs had disappeared off to bed, and the edibles in the brownies had lowered my already ground-level inhibitions, I grabbed Cian by the arm and dragged him onto the dance floor with me.

“Let’s find Dee.” The music was so loud, I had to get right up to his ear and shout.

“There’s two months of the Harvest Fest. She’s in the room next to ours. We have ages yet,” he yelled back.

“Okay, you win.” Not that I minded. It meant we could just enjoy the rest of the night. I wrapped a hand around Cian’s waist and tugged him towards me, crotch to crotch. He made a surprised little squeak. “So dance with me then.”

He tried to push away from me. “I don’t dance.”

I gave him that look. The one that said, stop fucking lying to me, Cian. I know your parents sent you to theatre school, and paid for modern dance, tap, and ballet lessons until you were sixteen .

“We’re in love, remember?” I shouted into his ear.

He laughed. “Yes, we are.”

And we spent the rest of the night hip to hip, laughing until our faces felt numb, spinning each other until we were giddy, sweating through our dress shirts, shout-gossiping about other wolves, eating the leftover hash brownies, pissing into the trees.

Nobody dared interrupt the happy couple. Nobody barged into our dance or stopped us to chat. Gradually, people left the party and headed back to their camps. Tomorrow, they would lie in as long as they could in an attempt to preserve energy for the full moon. It would be a late one, especially for the youngsters who’d be waiting on the fringes to see if it would be their first ever shift.

Cian grabbed my face. Sloppily, drunkenly. “Mash, I need to go to bed. I think I’m gonna throw up.”

So I bid everyone who still hung around the party goodnight. The band had packed up and the music now blasted through a set of speakers connected to someone’s phone playlist. The only people remaining were the teenagers and twenty-somethings, and one or two older, hardier wolves. All the Cassidys had retired a while ago.

“I’m gonna hurl,” Cian said as he fell face first onto my bed. He still had a tail and ears, and I wondered how long he’d spent practicing his partially shifted wolf form.

I fetched him a bucket, just in case. It was actually an old popcorn bucket from a Harvest Fest party about twenty years ago.

“Let’s get your clothes off,” I told him. I began unbuttoning his shirt. His unfocused eyes brushed over my face. “You can shift back to your human form now.” I whispered so Dee-Dee and Riley wouldn’t hear me through the walls.

Cian said nothing. He morphed into his beautiful, original self, crying out like it caused him pain. “What if I get stuck with werewolf ears for the rest of my life?”

I sshed him.

“But what if I spend so long with these fucking ears and this tail I can never go back to human ones?”

“Well, I guess it would solve some of future Mash’s problems,” I whispered.

“Huh?” he said.

I pulled his dress shirt off him and threw it onto the chair in the corner. Cian usually slept in a T-shirt, but it was too much hassle to even think about finding a clean one, so I tugged his shoes off his feet and started unbuttoning his belt.

He grabbed my hands, stopped me. “Did you prep? I’m so sorry, I’m too wasted to fuck.”

“I know, darling,” I said, play knocking my fist against his jaw. “It’s me, Mash. I don’t want to fuck you. I just want to get you to sleep.”

“ Maasssh,” he said, drawing out my name on a long outward breath. A sickly, drunken smile slipped over his face. Then a second later, it vanished. “Wait—Mash? You mean my Mash?”

Ouch, my stupid fucking heart. “Yes, your Mash.” Always your Mash. “Know any other Mashes?”

“Oh my gods, did I barf in front of Dylan?”

“No, you didn’t. You haven’t barfed yet, but there’s a bucket here in case you do.” I tugged the hems of his suit trousers until they fell off him and he lay spreadeagled on my bed in only his pants and socks.

I forcefully manoeuvred him onto his side. “Bucket’s down here. I’m just gonna get you some water. I’ll be back in a second. Do not lie on your back. I don’t need my mate choking on his own vomit and dying to death in my childhood bedroom.”

When I got into the kitchen, Dee-Dee was there, leaning against the counter, squinting down at her phone, her thumb flying over the screen.

“Hey,” I said, thankful I had only undressed Ci and not myself as well.

Dee jolted and looked up. “Oh, hey, sorry. Seems to be the only place in the house I can get any signal.”

“Yeah, service is pretty shitty around these parts.” I took two glasses from the cupboard. “You want a drink?”

“Nah, I’m good.” She nodded to the table where a sweating, half-drunk glass of water sat. “I’ll be surprised if there aren’t a few sore heads tomorrow. Well, today now. How’s your mate? He seemed to be enjoying himself.”

I laughed. “He’s okay. In bed now. He’s got a bucket.”

“Riley too,” she said, and shook her head. “Kids these days.”

I scooped some ice into the glasses and filled them up the rest of the way from the tap.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. I got the feeling Dee-Dee could be trusted, but I wanted to find out how trusted.

“Shoot,” she said.

“You and Riley. Are you . . . a thing?”

Dee smiled. “How did you know?”

“Well, not sure how many co-workers who aren’t packmates bunk together at Harvest Fests, but also, I dunno, there’s something else . . .” I shrugged my shoulders. I had no evidence other than a gut-deep instinct. And usually my instincts were way off. “I won’t say anything.”

“She turns twenty-five in December. Her alpha’s not going to be happy about the age gap between us, but she’ll be considered old enough to make her own choices then.”

“What about your alpha?” I asked.

“Oh, Jan won’t mind. She just wants to see her pack all mated. No lone wolves, that’s her motto. You’ve done extremely well with Cian.”

“Thank you,” I said. The smile that followed was genuine, and then suddenly, I felt a hollowness. None of it was real. Not that I ever wanted to mate.

I couldn’t make a relationship last longer than three dates; I wasn’t about to trash a fifteen-year friendship.

Especially not because I was curious.

I threw caution to the wind. Cian could chastise me later. “He works in tech development.”

Dee’s ears twitched. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he’s like, senior architect for Howl Ya Doing.”

“Wow, that’s impressive.” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. “Does he enjoy it?”

I see-sawed my hand. “I guess, but he’s reached the top, basically as high as he can go without buying out the company, and now he’s plateauing. He might”—I put extra emphasis on the word might—“be looking for a new challenge.”

Dee-Dee took a sip of her water, and nodded very slowly. “I have something at Byte Tech. Maybe.” She paused, tapped her fingertips against the tabletop. “Don’t say anything to him yet. Not until I’m certain.”

“Oh, I won’t.” I tried to smother my smile.

“Look at how sickeningly in love you are.” She smiled back. “Let me have a chat with him over the next few weeks—see what his skill set is—and we’ll try to sort something out.”

“That’s honestly amazing, thank you.” I turned to pick up the drinks and leave. Dee-Dee very gently, but in a super authoritative way that I desperately tried not to find hot, cleared her throat, letting me know I wasn’t dismissed yet.

“How’s your job? You work at Remy uni, right? Dendrologist?”

I made a non-confirmational sound. Fine, we were being honest with each other. She told me about her and Riley. “It’s not, no.” I looked around just to make sure Mam or Nana weren’t loitering. “I don’t work there any more. They decided not to renew my contract.”

Dee narrowed her eyes at me, the silent “why” evident in her expression.

“Difference of opinion. Let’s leave it at that.” She couldn’t know the specifics, or I’d inadvertently admit Cian and I weren’t a thing.

“So, you have no ties to Remy besides Cian’s job? What I’m trying to get at is your duty to the pack, Mash. For years now, your alpha has been attempting to arrange some kind of mating between us.”

I nodded. This was nothing new to me.

“I’m under the impression that Rita believes the moment you’re mated you’ll return to Lykos. But if you’re asking about a job for your mate at my Remy branch . . . Mash, my employees need to be in the office. Sure, we have remote working, but we have a three days in two days out policy. He can’t commute to Remy every single week, and a wolf cannot be without their mate, so what’s going on here?”

Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. I’d been rumbled.

“You’re not planning on returning, are you?”

“I am!” I said. Realised I’d shouted and lowered my voice. “I am. I will. I know I have to at some point. But . . .” I blew out a breath and raked a hand through my hair.

She watched me for a while, waited for me to finish my sentence, but I could see the cogs turning behind her eyes. “You haven’t told him yet?”

I bit my lip.

“Mashew! What the hell are you playing at here?”

My thumbnail was in my mouth, between my teeth. Maybe if I yanked it off through force, the pain would drive any real thoughts from my mind.

“Mash?!”

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you love him?”

I didn’t answer, just continued chewing my nail.

“Do you love him?” She repeated the question slower, each word with its own separate emphasis.

Besides my pack, Cian was the most important person to me. I loved him just as much as I loved them.

But maybe . . . just maybe, I loved him a little more.

He’d been there for me in ways nobody else ever had. He was the first person I went to with news—good or bad or anything in between. He’d seen me naked more times than I could count. He bought me the best gifts. We watched rom coms. He finger-combed my hair. We cuddled.

These weren’t things men—or boys—usually did. I only found this out during my second year at uni when one of Cian’s regular hook-ups had, in no uncertain terms, demanded I stayed the fuck away from his boyfriend. When I asked Cian about it he told me not to worry. It was obviously a were-culture thing, and that he liked our Sunday movie nights just the way they were. I never saw that guy again. I guessed Ci had made his decision.

I couldn’t imagine a life without him. Which was why I should definitely not balance our friendship on the tightrope I currently was.

“Yes. I do. More than anyone.”

Dee-Dee placed her hand on the top of mine. “You need to tell him. You can’t leave him, and you have to come back here. You have a duty. Your whole pack relies on you being here, Mash. You can’t keep resisting the call. And you cannot live four hundred miles away and still become the next Howling Pines alpha.”