Chapter 3
Nicky
Later comes and we do catch up. Laura and I have not been idle in the interim, either. Once we were sure we weren’t being followed, we got to the loft and set up the place for everyone.
There’s no doubt that this is a tight fit, even for a sleepover. There’s more than thirty of us all packed into an open plan space designed for a fraction of the number.
The pack doesn’t care. We came together as strays, all of us.
There are more guys than girls, by about four to one.
Guys get kicked out of packs all the time for competing for mates.
Female shifters have to be a real pain in the ass to be made to leave.
I’m proud of every single girl we have. None of us can shift yet, and though obviously I’m not going to stand in the way of anybody finding their fated mate, I do love that for us too.
There’s a game of DnD taking place in the far corner. Someone is yelling about wanting to roll a perception check. The most popular activity is drinking, and of course the boys are wrestling in another corner, using throw pillows and couches as an impromptu ring.
I sit at the wet bar, watching everyone, sipping a drink and trying to look relaxed. I am not pulling it off.
“Chill, boss,” Laura says. “He’s not going to be back.”
I cut my eyes toward her. “What makes you say that?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought it would make you feel better. He’s definitely going to be back.”
“Yeah,” I say. “He is.”
“We still going ahead with the plans?”
“The plans?”
“Uh. Yeah. The part where we no longer sit in the corner like we have no power and start actively encroaching on Regent territory?” She cocks her head at me as if to ask what happened to my brain.
But we both know what happened to my brain.
I met a wolf I am going to belong to and now nothing is the same.
Laura’s words jog a memory that shouldn’t be a memory.
I’d almost forgotten what we had planned.
This rivalry with Regent has been going on for some time now.
We’ve been disrupting a lot of their operations by competing with them in some arenas, and disrupting and protesting in others.
We’ve been a real pain in the ass. Now Rex has been a pain in mine.
“A lot of those things are already in motion,” Laura says. “Dylan’s in court tomorrow to make the argument against that development in the greenbelt, and…”
I am barely listening as she talks. She’s not been bothered by what happened today because it didn’t happen to her. She doesn’t get it. On a chemical level, she can’t understand. I wish I had her innocence. I wish I was the same person I was before Rex walked into my office. But I’m not.
I am feeling something I haven’t felt before. I always thought it was silly when people fell in love and got all sappy about it. I’ve listened to friends talk about their partners nonstop, turning over every little interaction in their minds until small things became big things.
I yearn for the man. I want him so badly I can barely stand it.
I feel as though something is being pulled out through my chest every moment I spend away from him.
It’s absolutely diabolical work to miss someone you don’t even know, to crave their touch though you’ve barely felt it, to be ready to give up your body to him.
“Fuck,” I curse out loud.
“Huh?” Laura gives me a confused look.
“Sorry, rogue thought,” I say. I know she was mid-sentence about something important.
She gives me a sympathetic look. “Are you okay? What he did was fucked up. Even by our standards. I don’t know what the fuck he was thinking.”
“Yeah. I’m okay. Could have been worse. He doesn’t hit that hard.”
That last part is a lie, sort of. He didn’t really hit that hard. I am sure he could have gone a lot harder on me if he had wanted to. What he gave me, now that I think about it, was probably half his strength. When he picked me up to put me on the desk it was like I weighed nothing at all.
I feel a quiver at the memory, a brief flash of knowing what it is to be held by someone so strong I don’t slow them down at all. Everything in my body is reacting again, rushes of arousal that I can’t do anything about in this crowded space.
Does he feel like this too? Am I drawing him as hard as he is drawing me? I look toward the door, half expecting it to open, but of course it doesn’t. I made sure he couldn’t find me. I never suspected I’d end up betraying myself by going into full heat.
“You know what we need?” Laura nudges me.
“What?”
“A pajama party. I still have those footsie pajamas we ordered for that video. There’s dozens of them in the boxes in the back of this place. Everyone can have a pair!”
The idea catches on faster than I thought it would, and before long, all of us are wearing onesie pajamas in a variety of rainbow colors. The original videos never went anywhere when we posted them, but Laura is right.
Someone starts making rainbow cocktails too. Midori for green, Berry Liquor for red, and something else for the other colors, I don’t really know. I start with green and just one puts me on my ass. It’s not often I drink.
“No shifting!” I call out to the others. “We need our wits about us tonight. We just crossed Regent… ah, who am I kidding.”
They’re not listening.
They’re too busy playing beer pong and videoing each other doing stunts and they don’t need to be reminded not to shift when there are cameras around.
Fortunately these days, even if they did, nobody would believe that it was real.
We’re in a post reality digital space. If it’s on a screen, it’s probably a lie.
I freaked out the first time one of our more reckless shifters filmed himself turning from man to animal. Everyone in the comments was arguing over whether it was CGI or straight up AI. Nobody considered for a second that they’d just seen one of the dark wonders of the world.
“Maybe we should rein this in,” I say. “If he comes and we’re all messy drunk…”
“Nobody else is worried, and you shouldn’t be worried either,” Laura says. “He came over, he… did what he did to you, and he left. I don’t think anybody is scared of anything from him.”
Her sentence barely makes sense, and her logic doesn’t track. But that’s what the particular cocktail of recreational substances she’s taken will do to you.
“We should be worried,” I insist. “Maybe it was a mistake to get everyone gathered here. Maybe I should have told them all to spread out…”
“Too late now,” she says cheerfully. “We’re here and we’re having a good time. So you might as well have a good one anyway.”
She’s right. That last bit of logic is impeccable. I can’t change what’s going to happen. We’ve done what we’ve done. Someone is putting an orange drink in my hand that has chocolate powder on the rim. It’s delicious. I have two. After that, I just stop worrying.