24. Tate
Tate
Our monthly full moon parties were one of the few occasions when I could let off steam without fear of repercussions.
Not that my father cared all that much if I beat the shit out of someone or fucked around.
He did care, however, if I beat up the sons of his cronies. And since those fuckers deserved to have the shit kicked out of them, I usually saved my aggression for the full moon party where plausible deniability got me off the hook.
As an alpha, I was more aggressive than most. So if I accidentally got carried away while hunting and fighting, it wasn’t my fault. And if the target of my moon-fever-induced aggression just happened to be someone I hated, cry me a fucking river.
“Bro, you good?” Tobias thrust a bottle of elkwine into my hand, clearly assuming I was not, in fact, good.
“A bottle? Really? You trying to get me wasted?”
He shrugged and then smirked. “Drunk you is more fun.”
Maybe he had a point. My life lately had been a complete shit show. Honestly, the demon realm was up there on my must-visit places. Anything to escape my father and his bullshit.
I scoffed at Tobias’s suggestion. It would take more than a bottle of elkwine to get me wasted. Fae wine would do the job, but elkwine wasn’t strong enough to get me more than buzzed. My shifter metabolism burned through all but the strongest liquor in less than an hour.
“Did you bring any fae wine?” The idea of getting wasted sounded attractive. It might give me some peace from my wolf, who’d been a complete asshole lately.
“I may have a few bottles, yes,” he said with a sly wink before a trio of female wolf shifters sidled over, all coy smiles and flirtatious giggles. His attention shifted from me to them. As much as I loved my friend, his obsession with getting laid drove me nuts most of the time.
The prettiest of the three slid closer and pressed her tits into my arm. I tried recalling whether we’d fucked before but came up blank. Was she one of Camilla’s friends? They might be pack members, but I couldn’t be certain; our pack was huge these days, and I didn’t know them all by sight.
Speaking of Camilla, I hadn’t seen her yet, which was odd because Camilla loved to party, and more importantly, she wouldn’t want me talking to other females.
Although, after our last unsatisfactory liaison, where my dick failed to rise to the occasion, she might have given up on me.
I prayed she had, having endured enough of her jealous histrionics to last a lifetime. She wasn’t my mate, no matter how much she wanted to be.
“Hi, Tate. I’m Wanda,” the pretty female purred while pouting and fluttering her lashes. “Wanna dance?” My wolf yawned, completely uninterested. As he had been ever since I met that hybrid wolf shifter.
“Not right now,” I grunted before draining half the bottle of elkwine. It burned my throat on the way down, but after a few seconds, my shoulders relaxed. “Maybe later.” Not.
Tobias cast me a curious look, unused to me turning down attractive females.
“Have fun,” I told him before heading back to the bar we’d set up, where Tank was in charge until everyone got naked and shifted.
“Pass me the fae wine, yeah,” I grunted once he’d served a bunch of rowdy mountain lion shifters. Those pricks would do well to tone it down, or they’d be targets for my wolf’s aggression later.
Tank pulled a dusty bottle from a crate at his feet and handed it over.
I swapped it for my now empty elkwine bottle, taking a long gulp.
The potent liquor slid down my gullet like lava and set fire to my stomach.
Stars, it was strong. I didn’t much rate the fae—the few I’d met were arrogant assholes—but they made excellent liquor.
“You okay?” Tank asked. That both my best friends had asked me the same question within thirty minutes said I needed to put my game face on. If people thought I was having some sort of mental breakdown, word would eventually get back to my father.
And in my father’s world, weakness was unacceptable.
A commotion from the opposite side of the fire pit caught my attention.
I heard several females yelling obscenities about a honey badger shifter, while my nose picked up the acrid scents of fear and anger.
But beneath those, the faintest hint of burned sugar teased my senses and sent my beast into a meltdown.
Was the little hybrid wolf here?