Chapter 10 #2
This opening ceremony of the gathering lays it all out, every five years, in case anyone’s confused.
Once again, I have to wonder if the bitten females have the better deal. They usually come to the life because they like fucking hot, rough, dirty biker types, and when those biker types turn out to actually be wolves, they’re here for it. They usually like the wolves even more.
I think it must be fun, the life of the bitten females.
Once a month, the full moon turns them into wolves and they get to go on their rampages and get carried away by their bloodlust—which usually involves domestic animals.
Bloodlust is something the blooded are taught to control, or face the consequences.
The bitten can’t turn their prey into werecreatures, though. Only the blooded can do that.
So the rest of the time, they fuck. There are far fewer bitten men, and a lot of the female wolves find them fun, too. But it’s not quite the same.
Mostly because the blooded wolves have extremely dirty minds.
And most of them have had a hundred years or more to experiment.
Down below, I see a bitten woman between two wolves, one in her mouth and one in her ass. She’s shaking and quivering, coming again and again as they thrust.
There’s no denying that it looks hot.
This is another thing the unmated wolf girls get to do on the night they declare themselves.
Tonight is their chance to get a taste of what’s on offer, and very few of them turn down the opportunity.
Sometimes, I think I’d love nothing more than to run wild at one of these parties myself and indulge every dirty little fantasy I’ve ever had.
But every time I tell Ty that, he smiles in that way that makes my toes curl and asks me which wolves I want all over me. And every time, I decide I’m good. My mind might like a fantasy, but my body has only ever wanted him.
“I’m not entirely sure you should be sitting here with us, Maddox,” Deirdre says with a titter, breaking into the dark, erotic display going on before me.
I jerk my attention back to the gathering of queens.
To Deirdre, who looks apologetic. She’s full of shit, but then again, that’s kind of her thing.
Especially tonight. “You could be a queen, but you keep denying the call. I know I would never do such thing.”
“I’m worried about you, Deirdre,” I reply in the same sweet tone. Sweet, with blades. “Don’t you have young you should be caring for? Surely a queen as deeply concerned with propriety as you are should excuse herself from questionable parties like this and tend to her babies.”
Mariella snickers. When Deirdre glares at her, she shrugs. “I don’t care what you do, Deirdre,” she says, evenly enough that I’m reminded that she’s been queen of her pack a good long while. “I only wish you would do it more quietly. And with less passive-aggressive nonsense, if at all possible.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mariella,” Deirdre replies. Through her teeth. “My only concern, as ever, is making certain that we all uphold pack traditions, as we are called to do before the moon.”
The queens’ circle goes quiet at that, because who’s going to argue with the moon?
Deirdre is probably as aware of the furtive WTF glances between some of the queens as I am, though I’m sure she ascribes a different meaning to it.
The truth about Deirdre, I suspect, is not that she doesn’t grasp that her role requires her to take a back seat to all the actual decision-making.
I’m pretty sure what she really feels is that if she has to suffer, then everyone should.
“Too right, Deirdre,” I say in my most diplomatic tone. “I apologize. I always get overexcited on the first night of the gathering.” I smile at the young, fated mates sitting next to me. “Is this your first?”
But I don’t listen too closely to their stories, because I know them already.
I know that the younger of the two is fated to old white-haired Janus, who is even now fucking three bitten women with abandon below.
I know that this girl will be his fifth mate so far, and I can only wonder now if he’s been relieving himself of the moon’s choices as he grows bored.
I’d always thought that they found whatever way they could escape and had taken it.
Everyone says that he’s very good at holding on to his territory and keeping the other creatures in that territory in line. I’m sure that’s true. I also can’t think of a single female who would willingly go to him.
The other fated one is a bit older and promised to Rafael, who is young for an alpha leader and, if I had to guess, strategic enough to know that the longer he waits to mate, the more his queen will be an asset.
I’ve always liked Rafael.
It’s the older kings who refuse to accept that queens can be more than baby factories.
Once Deirdre and I stop going for each other’s throats, the conversation flows the way it should. No politics, just a group of women with a very specific role, talking about the things that only we know.
“It’s different for you,” says Rhiannon, a shy, soft little thing, as she comes and sits down beside me a while later. “You’re the one everyone talks about. Maddox went to college. Maddox does what she wants. Maddox tells her king what to do.”
I laugh at that. “I sound like an asshole. And I definitely do not tell Ty what to do.”
“I can’t imagine.” She shakes her head. “Gareth is a good king, and a loving man, but he’s very traditional. Still, college does sound like fun.”
It’s these little wins that matter, I tell myself. It’s the wolfling girls that Rhiannon will encourage to do the things she couldn’t. These things will add up.
The party is still going on when our group finally breaks up, mostly because many of them really do have babies who need them down below.
As I walk down into the den, I feel a kind of longing in both directions.
Some part of me wishes that I could hold Ty’s babies in my arms tonight, nuzzle them and love on them and raise them to make him proud.
The other part of me is fiercely glad that I’m the one who’s different from the others.
That I’m the one who’s carved out my own space, however inadequate it feels to me sometimes.
I’m not in Ty’s bed for very long before he appears, and I can tell by the way his eyes gleam that it’s going to be a long night.
“What if I’m too tired?” I say, teasing him.
“Then I’d have to figure out how to wake you up,” he replies, coming over to me and pinning me to the bed. “I have a few ideas.”
There’s no chance of us sleeping on the first night of wolf week. Not for a very long time.
Gathering weeks always feel haphazard, but they’re not. I think about that over the next couple of days as the men congregate in their important groups and the women remain in the grand cavern, preparing the night’s feasts and talking among ourselves.
Also doing the important work of exchanging information we treat like silly gossip but then repeat back to our men later.
I don’t even dislike these gathering days surrounded by women, but I know that some of the things Ty will be talking about in roomfuls of males are business related. I also know that nobody knows our business better than me.
Nobody. Not even Ty himself, because I know all the figures.
I don’t need anyone to tell me that marching into business meetings is not my place. I swallow my thoughts down and honor my mother by performing my duties flawlessly, because that is.
On the third full day of the gathering, Liam comes and finds me while I’m sitting with the old men, listening to them tell tales of our people from long ago.
“You’re wanted,” he says, expressionless.
“Is it my execution already?” I ask, and laugh.
“Maddox.” He doesn’t sound angry. His eyes are grave, but not mad. Wary, maybe. “I beg of you. Go easy.”
I don’t know what that means, but I get it when he leads me back into what’s known as church.
No gods are required here. It’s the place where Ty and his lieutenants gather when they wish to be separate from the rest of the pack.
During the gathering, the place is packed full of every pack leader and his highest seconds.
It’s standing room only—but as a woman, they wouldn’t give me a seat even if there was one.
This is the inner sanctum, and it’s usually strictly males-only.
I find myself wondering if the traitor is here, watching me. Waiting for his chance. Seething at the fact that I’m once again somewhere I shouldn’t be.
Since this place is basically holy ground, I hope he is.
“Unbelievable,” McCaffrey sneers, diverting my attention from my own dark thoughts. “Bitches in church? It’s blasphemy.”
“If you refer to my fated and future queen as a bitch again,” Ty says, conversationally, “I’ll take out your throat.”
It’s his tone, I think. It’s so light and easy that it doesn’t cause the war it could. That I would without even trying.
Instead, there’s a little bit of grumbling—hard to say if it’s for or against me, or maybe about the potential taking out of throats—and McCaffrey subsides.
“Why don’t you fill our brothers in on our shipping lines, the situation with our disruptions lately, and the plan you devised to get around it,” Ty says, and I have to admire the way he does that, too.
It’s not like he’s showing me off. It sounds exactly the way it would if he had called any other one of his people in here.
I don’t pretend I don’t understand this is the opportunity it is.
I nod his way, and then I tell them what I know.
Information about the persistent troll issues that are going to be a problem wherever trolls decide to set up camp, and I should know, because they killed my father.
What I’ve come to think are the deliberate sabotage attempts up on Sexton Summit—though whether to cause chaos or toward a specific end, I can’t say.