“Oh. Well. Maybe? We could… go. Someplace.”
“Are you going to bring me more dead animals or mini muffins?” I blurted out. Then cringed. “You… ah. Don’t have to.” I didn’t even get to have any mini muffins because the guys at the shop had eaten them all. Except for Gordo. Gordo had just glared at them.
He looked at me strangely. “Do you want more animals? I can go hunt right now! I’ll get you another deer. Or a bear. I’ll get you a bear!”
Then he started taking off his clothes, so I said, “You’re getting naked?” Because of all the skin.
His shirt was already off when he said, “What?”
I grasped onto the only thing that made sense. “You’re seventeen!”
“Not for too much longer,” he said and his voice was deep. Because he was leering.
Instead of focusing on that, I said, “I don’t need a bear.”
“Deer?” he asked.
I shook my head because the idea of him dragging a dead deer out of the forest and leaving it on the front lawn made me queasy.
“You should put your shirt back on,” I said.
He squinted at me. “Why?”
“Because of… you know. All of that.” I waved my hand at his entire being.
Then he grinned. And it was evil. “All of this?” He flexed his chest. Unfairly.
I managed to say, “Yes. To all of that.”
He took a step toward me. “We could… ah. You know.” He waggled his eyebrows at me and I thought, fuck.
I took a step back. “Or we could wait until you’re eighteen.”
Now he glared. There was a bit of wolf in it. “That’s not how this works.”
“Yeah, because you know how this works. With all the courting you’ve done.”
“I can’t wait until I’m Alpha so I can tell you what to do all the time.”
“I’m going to tell your dad you only want to be Alpha so you can get in my pants.”
He groaned. “Don’t talk about my dad while I’m trying to seduce you.”
“Stop talking,” I begged him. “Please.”
And then, of course, Carter and Kelly appeared, on their run.
They stopped and stared at us.
We stared back. I felt guilty. Because their underage brother was shirtless and it probably smelled like a whorehouse where we stood.
Kelly said, “This is awkward.”
I said, “Nothing happened!”
Carter said, “Oh my god, it stinks like sex.”
Joe said, “I’m going to kill him a bear.”
There was more staring.
Kelly said, “I am so uncomfortable right now.”
I said, “Put your clothes back on.”
Carter said, “It’s like I’m drowning in pheromones and boners.”
Joe said, “Or maybe a deer.”
All the staring.
Kelly said, “I hope you both know you’ve ruined life for me.”
I said, “Your shirt, Joe. Put on your shirt.”
And then, just because he was a dick, Carter said, “It’s a good thing I popped Ox’s gay kissing cherry like years ago. You’re welcome.”
Joe roared and Carter laughed and took off, Joe’s shirt falling to the ground and his shorts tearing as he shifted into his wolf. They took off through the trees, Joe snarling and howling in anger.
Kelly and I stood on the dirt road.
“So,” I said.
“Yeah,” Kelly said.
“Is he really going to kill a bear?”
Kelly snorted. “Probably. Now that you’ve made out with Carter.”
“I didn’t make out with Carter!”
“But you kissed him?”
“He kissed me.”
“I really don’t see the difference.”
“He’s straight.”
Kelly arched an eyebrow at me. “I don’t know if werewolves identify as anything but fluid.”
“But… he said… he told me—”
Kelly rolled his eyes.
“I don’t know anything about werewolves,” I muttered.
Kelly huffed as he heard Joe’s angry roar echo through the forest. “Pretty sure we’re listening to fratricide,” he said.
“I don’t know what that is.”
Kelly said, “Joe’s gonna kill Carter.”
“Seriously?”
Kelly shrugged. “Probably. It certainly sounds like he wants to.”
“You don’t seem too worried about that.”
“Eh,” Kelly said. “What can you do? I haven’t had sex with either a guy or a girl yet.”
“Uh. Thank you for sharing?”
“Thought about it,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Seems like a lot of work,” he said with a frown as some wolf got thrown into a tree by the sound of it.
“It is,” I assured him.
“I made out with a guy, though,” he said.
“What? When?”
“At this… thing. I don’t even know. Then there was this girl. I don’t know if that counted, though. She just… put her tongue on my face. Like, near my nose.”
“Okay?”
“Is it bad to be twenty-one and not have had sex?”
“Uh… no? Why are you asking me?”
He stared at me. “You’re the future mate of the future Alpha. You have to answer questions like this.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. It’s, like, your job.”
“Oh. No one told me?”
“What did you think you’d be doing?”
“Honestly? I’m not really sure. This was all kind of… sudden.”
“When you got a boner for Joe?” he asked sympathetically.
“Oh my god.”
“So you have to give advice and stuff. Help the pack when we have problems. It’s what Mom does. It’s what she did too. When the pack was bigger.”
“I’m not your mom.”
He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Might as well be.” His mouth twitched. “Or something like it. Dad?”
“I will make sure you never get laid.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure it’ll happen when I’m ready.”
I nodded. “And not a day before. Don’t let anyone pressure you into anything.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Dad.”
I took a breath to stop from punching his face. He would have healed from it while I walked away with a broken hand anyway. “Okay. I’m not very good at talking. Or advice. Or much else.” Because if he needed it, if they needed me, then I’d do what I could.
“You do okay.”
I smiled at him. “Yeah?”
“Except for the part where you made out with Carter before Joe has ever gotten to tap that.”
Wolves snarled somewhere in the forest. I said, “That’s just swell.”
“JOE’S TAKING me out on a date,” I told Mom because I told her everything now. It seemed easier that way.
She said, “Oh? Where?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He might kill me a bear.”