14

kestrel

"IT'S PALADIN," SAID Griff to me, holding my gaze with an easy smile. "She's mated to Paladin. Obviously, it's Paladin."

I shook my head at him. Griff didn't get Paladin, not at all. He had ideas, from when he'd come to this place after the big fight, but his ideas were all wrong. "It's not Paladin."

Griff turned to look at Paladin, who shrank from his gaze.

"You're just the kind of guy who wouldn't keep her to yourself, aren't you?" said Griff softly.

Paladin was starting to tremble again.

"It's not Paladin," I said firmly. Wow, they were harping on this, weren't they?

Lazarus appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

Paladin got up and scurried around to pour Lazarus some tea, so that by the time Lazarus sat down, he had a glass in front of him. That was the kind of shit that Paladin had learned while being enslaved, essentially, to other wolves. They'd demand he behave that way. We didn't demand it, but Paladin did it anyway.

And, fuck, whatever. It helped, because Paladin was shit at remembering to do his chores and stuff. It was hard to be mad at him when he acted like this, serving you voluntarily.

"Lazarus, Griff and his mate are here, and they're pretty convinced that only one of us is mated to Clementine," I said conversationally.

"Oh," said Lazarus, furrowing his brow. "Yeah, that would make sense, wouldn't it?" He looked at me and Paladin. "It's weird that we never considered that, right?"

"I think it just means she's mated to all of us," I said.

"She is," said Lazarus with a nod. "But that is rare."

"It happens, though, right?" I said. It was funny, wasn't it? How far I'd come in days. I guessed I fucking believed in this mating bond shit now. I guessed I thought it was real. I sure as hell didn't think Clementine was out here because she was a danger junkie, hot on the idea of our claws and teeth. It was sort of the only other explanation.

"Is it you?" said Griff, eyeing Lazarus.

"She belongs to all of us," said Paladin softly. "You don't need to worry that'll be causing a rift with us. We don't rift like that."

I glanced at him.

He was still trembling. I held his gaze, and I got what he was trying to say, so I picked up for him. A rift between us made us volatile, and Griff was trying to determine whether he had to worry about in-fighting when considering us as possible allies.

"Yeah, Griff, let's not play games here," I said. "Whatever is going on, it's an upset to the entire way the system works out here. You figure, we have a mate, we want to keep her, we're on your side, and you're not wrong. The question is, however, how many of us there are with mates, and how many there are without."

He leaned in. "We have to assume that every single one of the tithes is a potential mate, do you understand what I'm saying? If we weren't sending those tithes back, unfinished and unmated, they'd be here with the man they were supposed to be with. Who knows how much that's been fucked with because the way we were gang-banging the tithes? If we can just hang in there, there will be mates for everyone."

So, that was his plan.

"Might not be enticing to certain wolves, though," rumbled Lazarus. "Some people spent a lot time working their way to the top parts of your little outfit, and now they have unlimited access to a whole pool of women—"

"Well, not anymore, they don't," said Griff. "I put a stop to that shit. If a man gets a charge out of fucking an unwilling woman, I'd say he's dangerously deranged, anyway."

My lips parted, because… had he been to a gathering lately? Did he remember what a gathering was like?

That was eighty percent of the wolves out here. "Thing about dangerously deranged wolves is that they cause a lot of damage," I said.

"You're doing nothing to appease them?" said Lazarus.

"Madrigal says—"

"No offense to your mate, Griff," said Lazarus, "but Madrigal doesn't really understand how things work out here." He'd just interrupted Griff, and I thought Griff would put him in his place or at least react in some way.

But Griff didn't. He just made a face. "I know."

That left all of us speechless, Griff's lack of decisiveness.

Griff toyed with some of the condensation on his glass of iced tea. "All right, you three haven't had this woman for very long, so I don't know if you'll get this, but… you want to please them. You want to please them more than you've ever wanted to please anyone in your life."

"No, we get it," I said tightly. "Believe me, we all know it's idiotic for her to be here. It's a recipe for disaster—"

"How so?" said Griff.

I sighed, because I'd just given away that we didn't believe he could hold his position.

"You think I'm dead in the water," said Griff, leaning back in his chair, holding my gaze, daring me to say it out loud.

I shook my head. "I didn't say—"

"Fuck," said Griff. "You think that someone's going to make a play for my position, and that I won't be able to keep it. Then you think they'll come for your girl."

"We'll die trying to protect her," I said. "But there will be too many of them and—"

"Fuck," said Griff. He lifted a finger. "The other thing is, that they see you differently, the mates do. They're in love with you, so they think you're amazing and infallible and so strong and powerful… and you get caught up in seeing yourself how they see you. Which is bullshit. This is why I need to be around other wolves sometimes. And not yes-men, like I keep finding myself around. I need people to give it to me straight."

"How many wolves?" said Lazarus. "How many have mates?"

"Ten," he said. "Eleven counting you, well, I guess you would make thirteen."

"Thirteen," I said in dismay.

"It's actually quite a lot so quickly," he said. "But in a lot of the packs, it's causing internal issues, already, because one of the wolves now has a woman. If he's alpha enough, it doesn't matter too much, but if he's not, it's a problem. Everything's in turmoil."

"We can't count on the packs, then, you're saying?" I said. "Just the individual wolves."

He sighed. "I'm fucked. I'm seriously fucked."

This was not what I wanted to hear from him. My stomach turned over and my chest squeezed.

Paladin looked practically green and Lazarus was grim.

The women came back into the room at that point. There weren't enough chairs, and Griff laughed and said Madrigal could sit right here and patted his thigh. She did, looping her arms around his neck and grinning at him like he hung the moon.

Clementine glared at me and I knew she wasn't going to sit in my lap, so I got up and had her sit in my chair. Then I leaned on the back of it and surveyed the table.

"I think we need to think about going back to what I said before, Madge," Griff said to her. "This is too fast. We can't cut off the access to the women entirely, all at once."

She drew back. "What?"

"I'm not saying it's right," said Griff. "We can work our way out of it—"

"Those women are forced into it," said Madrigal. "They have no choice, and it's institutionalized sexual assault—"

"I know that," said Griff. "This whole place is backward, though. And these men agree with me, okay? They think I could be toppled."

Madrigal turned to look at Clementine, and then up at me.

I couldn't meet her gaze. I looked away.

"Hey," Griff said, bringing her face back to look at him. "My reason for existing right now is you." He looked meaningfully at her belly.

She winced.

"If I die, Madge, then what happens—"

"Shut up, you're not going to die," she said.

"We have to do this in steps," he said.

"It's like you're trying to convince me ," she said. "It's like you think I'm the werewolf boss."

Griff raised his eyebrows, a little smile playing on his lips.

"That's the threat of a woman, isn't it?" said Paladin. "The Yoko threat. Some guy gets himself in deep with a woman you don't much like and she uses her wiles on him. And then you wonder who's really in charge, him or her? That's why men fear women, that's why men think women have power they'll never have."

"I don't have any power out here," said Madrigal, angry now. She shot up off Griff's lap. "I am only lucky that he listens to me, because if it was any other way, I'd be his plaything, right? He could do whatever he wanted to me."

"I know," said Paladin, twitching nervously. "I'm just saying what they're saying about you." He said that to the table.

I went around the table to stand behind him, resting my hand on his shoulder. He didn't have to talk if he didn't want to.

Paladin glanced up at me, and I couldn't read his expression.

I moved my hand though. I wasn't sure he wanted that from me.

"Why?" said Madrigal, hands clenched in fists. "Why would they think that?"

Paladin glanced at me and then pointed his forefinger into the table. "They understand only strength, only force. They don't understand emotion, and so they react to it as if it is force."

Madrigal sat down slowly on Griff's lap again, shaking her head. "I don't know what you mean."

"People get caught in a way of thinking and they think everyone thinks the way they think," said Paladin. "So, they are trying to get power over other people, and they assume everyone else is doing it, too. Then they see a relationship between two people where the people care about each other, and they see it as a power dynamic because it's all they're capable of seeing. They assume women are wielding their charms over men like a weapon, because—if they had charms—that's what they'd do. They just don't understand what it is to embrace being vulnerable or to be loved or to be… they don't get it."

"Yes," said Griff. "Yes, it's that exactly. I clawed my way up to the top here, thinking that it would mean something, thinking that I'd feel safe and… I don't know, uh…" He ducked down his head, embarrassed. "Happy?"

It did seem crazy out here, to think you could pursue happiness.

"But it backfired," said Griff. "I think I was more worried about my safety as the leader than I ever was before that. I had to worry twice as hard about protecting my position as I did when I got it. It was hell. I thought if I beat everyone it would mean something, mean that I deserved it. But it became clear to me that it only ever meant that I got lucky. Those challenges with other wolves? If they fought me again, there was no guarantee it would go my way. It was all fucking random. And then… her." He looked at Madrigal.

She smiled at him.

Griff turned to Paladin. "It's like you're saying, though, once you get past this idea that life is some race or competition or something, that it's about winning and beating and ruling over people. It's not about that. It's about, uh, fuck it, but, uh, love ."

I dragged a hand over my face.

"You can never say that to them," said Paladin in a low, urgent voice.

Griff laughed. "Too late."

Paladin went stiff.

"How do you convince them of it?" said Griff. "How do you show people who are stuck in searching for that meaningless bullshit what they're fucking missing?"

Paladin didn't say anything.

"We do it with mates," said Madrigal.

"Right," said Griff, nodding.

"It's too slow," said Lazarus. "I'm reading something about how there's a scent attraction. I wonder if we can facilitate that better. Have the women line up at the beginning of the gatherings, let the wolves scent them—"

"But there are wolves who want it the way it's always been, probably," I said. "Wolves who can't see why it would be better to be with one woman when they could stick their cocks in four or five throughout the night."

"That's it exactly," said Griff. "They don't see any value in mates. I talked to Red about it, you know, and Red and I are like this." He held up his first two fingers, crossed around each other. "But Red said he thought it sounded horrible all around, just a recipe for weakness. He said even if he found a mate, he wouldn't want one."

"You and Red are close?" spoke up Clementine. "Really close?"

"We're like brothers," said Griff. "That's the only thing that's reassuring here, is that no matter what happens, Red has my back, and other wolves would be insane to challenge him."

clementine

AFTER THE VISIT from Griff and Madrigal, everyone in the house was nervous.

Lazarus decided that we needed to have a big batch of vegetable soup. He put everyone to work. He sent Kestrel off to the garden to get herbs and Paladin down to the cellar to get onions and garlic and me to the pantry to find some jars of tomatoes that looked as if they'd been canned right here at the farm.

Then we all stayed in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and doing whatever Lazarus said.

At first, the entire kitchen seemed full of nervous energy, and everyone was frantic at whatever we were up to. We were all chopping or scrubbing or stirring. But then, as the aroma of cooking onions and garlic began to permeate the air, the atmosphere seemed to change.

Soon enough, we were all laughing as we bumped into each other in the space, and the stew was bubbling on the stove, smelling delicious. Soon enough, the nervousness seemed to have melted away in the face of what we'd all done together.

Maybe it wasn't much, just cooking food, but it had been accomplished by all of us together. I wondered if it was as Paladin said, that people needed connection. It was less about what we did than it was about how we did it.

If Lazarus had done all the cooking himself, without involving everyone, would we all feel better?

We sat at the kitchen table together as the stew simmered, and we drank iced tea together and talked about how the fuck this was going to even work.

I realized with a jolt that I'd been gone for two nights now, soon to be three, from home, and that I'd done nothing to contact anyone. Why hadn't I been thinking about my dad worrying? Or about my roommate, sitting there the next morning, possibly with another Starbucks coffee for me, wondering if I was dead?

I guessed maybe I hadn't wanted to, because the minute I did, I only felt guilty.

I wasn't relishing the discussion with anyone back home.

No one was going to understand. I could just imagine Ninnia gasping and sputtering, unable to even put together words .

Lazarus told everyone how I was planning to be the savior of the wolves and sue the government. "She said a class action suit," said Lazarus. "We have to help her get her degree by correspondence out here or something."

"We need to go back and get your things," said Paladin. "We can do that, go over the wall, the place where we did before. You bring back your phone and some clothes and whatever else you'll need out here."

"Get her things," said Kestrel, sounding tired and a little defeated. "Because she's staying."

"Oh, come on, is that still a question?" said Lazarus, shaking his head at him.

Paladin gestured broadly with his hands, lowering his voice to mimic Kestrel. "Come on, everyone, I'm the leader here, and I have to make the tough decisions, and I say it's too dangerous—"

"Shut the fuck up," said Kestrel, but it was good-natured. He chuckled to himself, shaking his head. "Well, Griff knows about her now. And maybe there's some chance this works out."

"What he said about Red," said Lazarus. "That's a good sign."

"Yeah, if Red isn't gunning for Griff's spot, that's something," said Kestrel.

"I'm staying," I said, rolling my eyes. "You want me to stay, Kestrel, and you're not going to make me leave."

"She's staying," said Paladin.

Kestrel smiled at me, and his expression was gentle. "So, uh, what do you need to survive out here, huh? A hairdryer or something? Makeup?"

I laughed. I'd never been one for wearing a lot of makeup, honestly. As far as I went was to swipe on some lipstick, maybe a little smudgy eyeliner, but I didn't see the point of foundation—though Ninnia said this was because she fucking hated me and I had even skin tone. I had dark eyelashes, so mascara only seemed to make it clump up in a way that I didn't like. Eyeshadow I could take or leave, and I definitely didn't see the point in making my cheeks look red. Who wanted to look like they were blushing all the time?

"Tampons, probably," said Paladin.

"Yeah," said Lazarus. "As you have probably guessed, we have a decided lack of feminine products across the walls."

"Well, luckily I like menstrual cups," I said.

"Yeah, that'll make things easier," said Paladin.

"What's a menstrual cup?" said Kestrel, making a face.

"Think about it," said Paladin, rolling his eyes. He turned back to me. "Not that we won't find a way, understand. We would move heaven and earth for your comfort."

"Except you'll have me pregnant soon," I muttered, thinking of Madrigal, rubbing my forehead. I had a finite amount of birth control patches at home. They came in a box of nine, and those lasted about three months, and I had… six left. I'd need to go back to get the prescription filled, back across the wall. And then I'd eventually have to go back to a doctor to get a new prescription. And it might all be moot, anyway, because the tithe business, the wolves, whatever, it might just override all of the fake hormones.

"No, we should avoid that if possible," said Kestrel. "This is exactly the wrong environment to bring a child into." He lifted a finger. "And nothing from you two, because you've both knotted her, too, so this is not my fault."

"All the knotting does is keep it in there, anyway," said Lazarus. "It's not a necessary component to pregnancy."

"I mean," said Kestrel to me, "you don't, like, want to be pregnant?"

"No," I said. "I mean, someday, but I am twenty years old. So, maybe in eight years or something?"

They all just surveyed me.

"Ideally?" I whispered, cringing. "It's not going to go that way, is it?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Paladin, waving it away. "The way I see it we need to get several things underway before we think about that at all. First, she needs to be comfortable and settled. Second, we need to make a plan for defense of the farmhouse. Third, we need to make inroads with the other wolves with mates so that we can use that as defense, if necessary. We could all retreat somewhere strategic together maybe. Someplace with only one way in, maybe?"

"Like a medieval fortress?" Lazarus snorted. "Come on, Paladin."

"No, it's smart," said Kestrel. "What about the quarry?"

Lazarus sat back, rubbing his chin. "It has possibilities, I guess, but we couldn't stay there. We'd be in the water."

"Yeah, true, but we could defend an entrance, hiding off in the dark, inside those caverns, and anyone who comes in…" Kestrel mimed shooting a gun. "We could hold that for a while, long enough for Paladin to think of some genius way to negotiate."

Paladin ducked down his head. "Yeah, don't count on me for that shit. I don't want to be our only hope here."

"Maybe it'll be fine," I said. "It seemed like Griff understood what position he was in. He seemed smart enough to understand that he has to play it differently."

"True," said Lazarus.

"Yeah, and like we were saying," said Kestrel, "if Red sides with Griff, it's a totally different scenario."

"Let's get her comfortable," said Paladin. "Let's go across the wall and hold up a convenience store for Kotex or whatever—"

"What?" I said, eyes wide. "You're not—"

"That was a joke," said Paladin, reaching across the table to touch me. "I'm kind of excited, though. I was never in a thing with a woman where it was intimate like that, you know? Send me on a tampon run. I want it."

I snorted.

He leaned back in his chair, grinning at the ceiling. "Sometime, if we're all bored, ask me to talk about my theory about how menstruation caused humans to evolve so much differently than other primates. Did you know, like, no other primates do it? There's only one other animal that does, and it seems like they must have evolved it separately than us."

"What other animal has a period?" I said.

"Dogs," said Lazarus.

"No, that's different, that's heat. It's not the same thing at all," said Paladin.

"I'm curious now," I said.

"No, I'm hungry," said Paladin, grinning. "We have stew or what, Lazarus?"

Lazarus got up to go to check the pot on the stove. "Oh, we have stew all right."

"Let's eat," said Kestrel.