10. Smell Ya Later
Smell Ya Later
Present Day
Mash
We agreed to take Cian’s car because he drove a sensible five-seater saloon. The gateway vehicle between family-man MPV and my coupe because . . .
“That thing is not practical, Mash. I have three suitcases and four suit bags. It’s a two-month-long trip. Where’s all your stuff gonna go?”
“Shorts don’t take up that much room. You can sit with it on your lap.”
“No. I’m driving and that is that.”
He waited for me in his building’s car park, leaning against the back of his car, next to the recently vacated space designated for apartment twenty-three. Each flat came with one free parking spot. In a security protected building, it made Cian’s place a million times more sought after—and overpriced—than most in Remy.
Cian’s boot lifted electronically. I threw my few bags on top of his.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Almost. There’s just one thing we need to do before we go.”
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“We can go upstairs to your flat, or we can stop at the services and do it in the bathroom?” I said.
His gaze became so shadowed, I wondered if he could still see me. He didn’t answer my question.
“Your place then. Come on.” I swiped my key card—the spare one Cian had given me years ago—on the panel next to the lift. The doors opened. I pressed the number five button, and held my foot over the sensor so Ci could catch up.
He got in, shaking his head. “What is it? What do we need to do? If it’s what I think it is, I’m not coming.”
I pretended not to hear him. Stuck a finger in my ear, wiggled it around. “Hmm?”
“Mash?” he said, like a stern parent.
The doors pinged open, and I used my extra inches to race to his front door. I let myself in, disarmed his alarm with the code, and placed a small object on the breakfast counter. I leaned against the marble, and waited for him to join me.
“Mash, I swear to the gods, if this is—” He rounded the corner. His eyes landed on the object and he stopped in his tracks. “No.”
“You have to. We both have to. There’s no other way,” I said.
“I’m not—no. Not doing that, it’s disgusting.”
“Aw, come on baby, it’s not disgusting, it’s natural.”
He eyed it, turned his side to it, his hands held instinctively in front of his throat as though he expected it to attack him at any second. “When you said there were other ways to fake a mate—”
“We could fuck?” I suggested.
Cian started choking on his spit. I slapped a hand on his back.
“That’s piss, isn’t it?” he said after gaining his composure. A last-ditch effort to deny what he knew was the absolute truth.
“Eau de Mash.” I pushed the three-inch-tall plastic bottle towards the end of the counter. The pale straw-coloured liquid sloshed against the inside.
Cian flared his nostrils, but the pot was stoppered. He couldn’t smell it yet. “No.”
“I thought about putting it in an atomiser for you, but I couldn’t find one anywhere in the city. Fine, I only went to The Cave on Bordalis Road, but if they don’t sell them there, you ain’t finding them anywhere.”
“No.”
“Ci, you have to, otherwise we’re gonna get to the reserve and they’ll know instantly. If they don’t smell us all over each other, they’ll try to set me up. They might even try to set you up! If you don’t stink of me, and I don’t stink of you, jig’s up.” I picked up the sample pot and moved towards him. “You don’t need a lot. Just take a cotton swab and dip it in and rub it on your pulse points.”
“My pulse points?” he backed away from me and the offending bottle.
“Here and here,” I said, pointing to the places on my neck where my arteries were closest to the surface. “Wrists, inside elbow . . . where humans apply perfume. You know, I reckon perfume stems from this werewolf tradition.”
“Werewolves are disgusting,” he said. “Humans rub flowers and fruits on their necks, not fucking piss. So, you all just go around pissing all over each other?”
I thought about it for a second. “Yeah, I guess so. Hey, that’s probably why I’ve never been into watersports. It’s always seen as something mates do, and I definitely don’t want to get mated.”
Cian rolled his eyes.
“It’s not a long-term solution, though. Most people do the piss thing for a few months until the mating bite. It’s not gross in werewolf circles,” I added. “I’m sure it’s the same in shifter—”
“No, it’s not.”
“Okay.” I held a palm up in surrender between us. Now was not the time for pointing out Cian had never grown up in a pack—werewolf, shifter, or otherwise—so how would he know?
He looked at the sample pot in my hand. Huffed. “The drive is about seven hours. Why do I need to do it now? Can’t I put it on when we’re near Howling Pines?”
“It needs to set into our skin. You need to smell like you’ve smelled of me for a while. Make sense? Like we’ve been doing this for months already.”
He puffed out another sigh. “So, we have to keep doing this whilst we’re away. I have to stink like your piss for two fucking months?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck my life. How often—urgh, I can’t even believe I’m asking this—how often do we need to reapply?”
“I’m not actually sure. I’ve never done it before, but once a week-ish should work. Or when the smell fades.”
“But what about showers?” he asked. “Won’t I wash it off if I shower?”
“No, that’s the beauty of it. The smell won’t come off even if you scrub. It’s so that every other werewolf knows you’re already spoken for. If a werewolf scents a mating bond or mating promise, they won’t even try anything with you. It’s like some secret code that we all instinctively protect. So if you want, douse yourself in my piss now, let it seep in, and then you can shower as soon as we get to Howling Pines.”
His face was . . . aghast. That was the only word I could think of to describe it. “Please never use the words douse and piss in the same sentence again. So, I have to sit in a car with you for seven hours stinking of urine?”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I promise you, one hundred percent, once it’s on your skin it won’t smell like piss. All the mate promises I’ve smelled before have been more like . . . I dunno, kinda nice. Not like cologne or perfume, but not disgusting. You’ll see. Each couple has their own scent.”
Cian rubbed a hand over his face, pushing his glasses up into his hair. After a few minutes of steadily releasing all the air from his lungs, he swiped the sample pot from my hand. “Fine, let’s get this over and done with.”
“Oh, whilst you’re in the loo, fill this up for me.” I plucked an empty plastic bottle from my pocket and winked at him. He grabbed that one too and marched into his bathroom, slamming the door behind himself.
I stood outside and listened.
There was a lot of banging around, and unnecessarily loud retrieval of items from his bathroom cabinet, and cabinet door slamming.
“Careful you don’t smash your mirror,” I added, like the helpful good boy I was.
Cian didn’t answer me. Instead, it appeared he was talking to himself. “Fucking hell . . . Urgh . . . Fucking werewolves . . . Fucking Mash . . . Fuck’s sake . . . So disgusting, so disgusting, so . . . Oh.”
“What’s the oh?”
“Are you pressing a glass against the door and listening to me?” he asked.
“No, not a glass, just my great big werewolf ears. What was the ‘oh’ for?”
“It’s . . . Okay, so in the bottle it smells like piss, but on me it . . . smells . . . kinda nice, actually.”
“Yeah?” I said. My tail started wagging. “What do we smell like?” Because that smell was the smell of us.
“It’s hard to describe. It’s—ah, fuck! Shit!” There was a crashing noise, and the sound of a now presumably empty pot bouncing on Cian’s bathroom tiles.
“Spilled it?”
“Fucking hell, yes. It’s everywhere now.”
“Want me to help you clean it up?”
“No, it’s my fucking fault,” he said. It was shortly followed by a cleaning product being sprayed. “Let me piss in this ridiculously tiny pot for you and I’ll come out.”
“Use the clean one.” The thought of splashing my own piss on myself was . . . ew, just no.
After a few moments, the toilet flushed and the water from the taps ran. Then Cian emerged with his little bottle of arranged-mating deterrent.
“How the fuck are you supposed to piss in these little pots without it splashing all over the sides? I can’t just stop mid-flow.” He pushed the bottle into my hand.
“Ew, it’s still warm,” I said, pulling a face and laughing. I looked at it. “Gods, Bangers, you need to drink more water—”
I cut myself off. My brain short-circuiting because I’d caught a whiff of him.
Of us.
“Oh my gods,” I said, crowding into his space, and lowering my head to his neck. “Fuck, I smell so good on you.”
So fucking good.
I breathed him in again. Deeply.
Oh. My. Gods.
“See?” he said, the word breathy and quiet.
He . . . we smelled . . . well, it was impossible to say what we smelled of. There weren’t any notes like flowers or oranges or whatever humans used in their perfumes. It was more like a feeling. Like it transcended smell.
Even though my heart was beating a million miles a minute, the smell was calmness, and rightness, and belonging.
It was breathing crisp air and snapping twigs underfoot on brisk autumn woodland walks. It was spiced biscuits and warm cocoa at Winter Fest. It was running headfirst into the frigid waters of my pack’s lake. It was ditching lessons to make out behind the Wingball auditorium.
It was clean sheets, and the fluffy inside coating of a brand new hoodie, and bread baking in the oven. It was the first sip of coffee in the morning. The moment when the weed hit your bloodstream.
It was the adrenaline of the hunt. And the endorphins of a great gym workout. And the serotonin of dropping into a steaming bath. And the oxytocin of being held to someone’s chest . . . heartbeat to heartbeat.
And the dopamine of being called a “good boy.”
And fuck, my tail was wagging again.
We were in a moment. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen again. I needed to ruin it.
I pulled away from him. “If you were a woman, I’d already have your skirt around your waist.”
“Urgh, fuck off, Mash,” Cian said, pushing me farther away from him.
It had worked.
“I’ll just wait in the lounge for you,” he added.
I took myself into his bathroom and stripped off my T-shirt. The air smelled of Fur-Breeze and a little of urine. Paper towels and cotton swabs sat at the bottom of his otherwise empty bin.
My reflection stared back at me from the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, the skin on my chest around my tattoo was blotchy. Fuck, that scenting had affected me way more than I’d ever imagined it would.
It doesn’t mean anything , it doesn’t mean anything , I told myself repeatedly as I unscrewed the lid on Cian’s sample pot. That’s why you never experimented with watersports. It was always going to smell this good.
I put the lid on the counter and gave the liquid a sniff. Yup, piss. Very . . . pissy. Not in an unhealthy way. It didn’t smell bad, it just smelled of fresh piss.
Since I wasn’t as easily grossed out as Ci, I didn’t bother with a cotton swab. I went straight in with my fingers, swiping it across my neck. I double-dipped and coated the other side, across my Adam’s apple, over the hollow at the base of my throat, the insides of my elbows, my wrists, and—I didn’t bother to tell Ci this because he would have kicked off—my groin. Those were the areas real mates applied scent.
Annoyingly, I was hard. My knots popping too.
It doesn’t mean anything.
I waited a few moments for the swellings to go down. Breathed through my mouth because Cian’s scent on me was the same—only not as strong, not as potent. It smelled the same, but it wasn’t sending my head to funny places the way the scent of me on him had.
After a minute or two, I tipped what was left of his piss into the toilet, flushed, and washed my hands. Then I joined him in the lounge.
He froze when he saw me. His nostrils flared, his face impassive, chest heaving, eyes wide and fixed on me.
Shit, he felt it too.
Well, this had the makings of being one of the most excruciatingly awkward two months of my life.
“I made a playlist,” Cian said, hitting the little triangle on his phone, sending the music via Bluetooth to the car’s speakers.
My taste in music had always been more eclectic than Ci’s. I liked everything, depending on my mood, but Cian listened almost exclusively to what I could only describe as sad-boy hipster songs. No exceptions. I usually let him take control of the radio because the wailing was much less tragic than his incessant whining if anything else was played.
It was why we never had house parties in our halls. As soon as I got my own place, I installed a wall of speakers and listened to everything I wasn’t allowed to with Ci as my roommate—techno, cheese pop, reggae, EDM, grime, metal.
His taste in music hadn’t changed in fifteen years, and I’d forgotten that living with him again for ten weeks would also mean ten weeks of melancholy and angst and drifting listlessly through life, floating on the beats of plinky plonky piano keys, lamenting vocals, and badly tuned acoustic guitars. Also, sometimes banjos.
We were twenty minutes outside of Remy, and I was already sick of the ennui. Ironic.
It was going to be a long seven to eight hours—depending on traffic and service-station stops—to Howling Pines.
The air con blasted, but the scent of us was . . . not exactly cloying . . . but it was difficult to think about anything else other than how incredible I smelled on him.
It doesn’t mean anything.
Still, I ignored the urge to bring it up in conversation.
“I know the air con’s on full belt, but is it okay if I crack the window?” I asked.
“Yes! Oh my gods,” he said, with obvious relief. “Good plan.”
We both rolled our windows down to the rubber trims. Cian turned off the air con, since there was no point in cooling air that was getting sucked out of the car. It helped a lot. Relieved the burning urge for me to bury my snout in his hair and . . . hump him.
“We should come up with a backstory for our romance,” Cian said a few minutes later, eyes firmly on the road. “In case we get interrogated separately, so at least our stories will match.”
“Yeah, that’s a good shout. So, we obviously met at uni, they already know that much. And we’ve always had a crush on each other, but it wasn’t until last year that we started dating properly. How does that sound?”
“Excellent. Sounds excellent,” Cian said, his body stiff, his arms rigid on the steering wheel.
“When exactly did we decide to start dating?” I asked.
“At the Howl Winter Fest do.”
I sucked in a breath. My heart began beating in triple time. “Do you remember what you said to me on the rooftop?” Holy fuck, I was going to pass out.
Cian waited an eternity before answering. “Not really. I think . . . I cried. Did I cry?”
“A little.” Relief flooded my system. I’d always assumed Cian was too stoned to remember what I’d said and what he’d said in return, but I’d been too afraid to ask. I wished I could forget it. The desperate way I had—
No, Mash, don’t go there.
It had been one moment. A blip. Things were fine now. Why would I risk that again?
“So, do we live together in my apartment, or yours, or do we live separately?” I said to stop myself ruminating on that night.
“Do werewolves usually move in together, or do they wait a little while like humans often do?”
“Yeah, they can wait. Okay, so we still have our separate apartments. They’re going to ask us about our mating ceremony, and if—no, when we’re going to have one.”
Cian tapped his fingers against the wheel. “Let’s say that we’re thinking of a ceremony during the Wolf Moon in January. That way it’s too far ahead to start planning for and also gives us time to think up a reason to get out of it.”
“Sure, sure, that works,” I said. “Hey, there’s actually a decent amount of leg room in this car. Better than your last one, anyway.” I’d rolled the seat as far back and down as it would go, and for the first time as a passenger in someone else’s car, it felt roomy.
“This model had the best leg room of any in the showroom,” he said. I pretended like I didn’t know what that meant. That he’d bought a car specifically with my comfort in mind. I was such an ass. I’d bought my car because it looked sleek as fuck.
We passed the rest of the journey by discussing the merits of a saloon over a coupe: fit more crap in and generally better for the planet. And the pitfalls: nowhere near as sexy, and didn’t make cool revving sounds that made people shit themselves at pedestrian crossings. And by talking about movies: movies we’d seen recently and movies that were due to be released next year.
Approximately ten hours later, because even though traffic all the way was light and customs didn’t take very long at all, we kept discovering these tiny street-food carts parked along the highways and had to stop at each one to fuel up. We’d had noodles, and shawarma, and churros, and mac ’n’ cheese, and every time we got in and out of the car, I held my breath so I didn’t suck in another lungful of us.
Cian was breathing through his mouth too, so I knew it wasn’t just me.
He pulled up just outside Howling Pines.
“You ready?” I asked, my heartbeat skittering about like a trapped bird.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. A moment later, his ears shifted higher onto his head, became fluffy, and his canines grew longer. “Ah, fuck, my tail.”
I rummaged in his glove compartment for the pocketknife I knew he kept there. “Lean forward.” He did. “I’ll buy you new trousers.”
“These were two hundred silvers,” he said.
“Two hundred fucking silvers for some fucking cords?! Gods, Ci.” Fucking hipsters. I slipped one hand down just inside the waistband and stabbed at the heavy cotton fabric with the knife until it pierced it. Then I sawed the blade along the seam, cutting an opening wide enough to fit his new tail through, and wiggled it through the hole with my fingers. “That’ll have to do.”
Ordinarily, werewolves bought their clothes from specialist werewolf shops. We were generally much larger than humans and many other species, and all our trousers, underpants, skirts, and dresses usually had fastenings at the back to let our tails poke through comfortably. There were a couple of these stores in Remy, and if I’d thought about it properly, I would have taken Cian shopping before coming here.
Maybe I could order him some clothes and have them shipped overnight. He was gonna find the human boxer briefs he wore particularly uncomfortable, what with the elastic waistband pulled down under his tail, rubbing on his asshole all day.
“You have such a lovely fluffy tail,” I told him.
“Fuck off,” he said. “My glasses don’t fit on my head any more. I don’t have human ears to hold them up.” He removed them and examined the frame.
“Were they expensive?” I asked, already knowing his answer.
“Considerably more than the trousers.”
I let out a breath. “Fine, I’ll buy you new glasses too.” And then I bent the wires of the arms upwards so they fit roughly over his werewolf ears. It took a few wiggles and try-ons to get the fit right before they were no longer sitting wonky on his nose.
Cian maintained eye contact the entire time, his face the picture of impatience. When I finished, he started the engine again and drove down the long winding lane to Howling Pines Nature Reserve.
The place where I grew up.
Everything about my family home was as I remembered. From the sun-bleached, hand-carved wooden HOWLING PINES sign at the entrance, to the grassy ha-ha surrounding the house and gardens, to the festive wreath on the door. It was plastic and came out every year in the middle of August without fail, despite the superabundance of real leaves and flowers and pine cones and whatever else the eight hundred and fifty acres of land my pack owned yielded. Eight hundred and fifty acres on a nature reserve, to be precise.
The farmhouse ahead of us was long and narrow with the kitchen in the centre—the literal heart of the home. My room was on the right side of the building at the front, but riiight down at the end of the wing. I could barely make out the open window. I hoped there was more breeze inside the room than out here on the dusty drive because my shirt was already gluing itself to my torso with sweat.
Forests extending into the foothills of the not-too-distant mountains cupped the rear of the house, sheltering it. Disappearing into the tree lines were smaller outbuildings, where some of my siblings had moved to, and on the right was sloping grasslands, which morphed into yet more never-ending forests.
I got out of the car and filled my lungs with every scent from my childhood. Dust clouds kicked up around my trainers—it obviously hadn’t rained in a while. Beside me, Cian climbed out also.
I ran over to the woman standing at the door, and lifted her into a hug that would have crushed her had she not been werewolf. “Hi Nana, Alpha,” I said.
“Mash, I’m so grateful you came. You’ve made an old woman very happy.”
I chose not to mention how badly she’d twisted my arm to be here. “It’s great to be home.” I pulled out of the hug. “Nana, I’d like to introduce you to my mate, Cian.”
Nana glanced over at my shifter best friend, who I had to admit looked pretty cute with his grey wolf ears poking up and his fluffy tail slick to the back of his leg.
She sucked at her teeth. “You said your mate was a she.”