Page 59 of Resisted

I leaned against the tree. “Is she capable?”

“Shifting? Why wouldn’t she be?” He seemed perplexed by the question, but it wasn’t an outrageous one to ask.

“Everyone in this town shifts. A lot. Almost daily. I was curious if she was still capable since she doesn’t. Is it a skill that fades away if neglected?”

He seemed annoyed, but fuck him. I had a right to ask questions. Especially when those questions involved Bella. “You don’t just stop being a fucking wolf, Boyce. She doesn’t grow out of her wolfhood when she becomes a certain age. That’s not how this works. Ever heard of those rare cases where a wolf procreated with a human? Years later, not raised as a wolf, bam, secret discovered. If a half human can shift, I’ve got no fucking doubt she could.”

She just…didn’t. And the only explanation for that was she didn’t want us. As hers, as her pack, as her family. Had we done something so wrong that all she really felt toward us was disappointment? I mean, I knew she found us attractive, I’d smelled her want, felt the truth of it against my tongue. Still, was it not enough?

At the thought of her body against my tongue, my cock instantly hardened. Pure perfection. Bliss. Heaven in its finest form. Even with that one taste of her, I was already a slave to her, willing to fall to my knees to drink her up any time she wished. And the sounds? The sounds that fell from her, the way her body moved against my mouth, grinding into Vince’s finger and moaning into Silas’ lips… Was it even possible that we had ourselves our very own goddess?

“Pay attention,” Silas ordered. “I hear something.”

I strained my ear, and sure enough, a distance away, I did hear a slight sound. It could’ve been a deer. It could’ve been a motorbike. It could’ve been—

“Do you think they have plans to stop at the diner before leaving town?”

We were on the outskirts of the city limits, scanning the zone, waiting for a sighting. We knew the exact day they would pass through our city, but the time was still murky. Roth and his men were on alert, keeping an eye open from within. Silas’ fathers were watching from the other side of town, and we were watching the main road. We didn’t want to get them while they were coming into town. It was the only town for miles, and odds were they would stop and get food, maybe fill up their tank. Alerting them too early of shifters here could be dangerous for our people. Catching them on their way out meant if we managed to not get them, they would be none the wiser and also easier to surround.

“Do people ever come through town and not stop at the diner?” Silas countered. Grumpy ass bastard was nearly impossible to deal with when he got in his moods, and man, he’d been in this one for weeks now.

“Rarely,” I said on a sigh.

“There’s your answer. Now such the fuck up.”

I opted not to speak any more. Not because he’d told me not to, but because I didn’t want to deal with his bullshit attitude any longer. Plus, I would rather think of Bella. Which I guessed I shouldn’t really be doing either if I wanted to keep my senses sharp. But she’d been so damn cute this morning, spitting mad because she’d had to call out from her shift at the diner and spend the day with Vince. There were worse people to spend the day with, that was for sure. But there were a lot better people too. Like me.

I would’ve loved to spend the day just lying about with her, snacking, maybe playing some video games if I could talk her into it. I hadn’t asked her yet, but I’d been dying to see her with a controller in her hand. Or maybe I could leave a trail of chocolate Kisses straight to my room and we could ditch the game idea in lure of something much more—

“Stop.”

I shrugged, playing off as if I didn’t know what he was talking about. “I’m not doing nothing.”

“Anything. Its ‘I’m not doinganything.’” He glanced back down at his phone as it buzzed in his hand. “And you most definitely are thinking something. I could hear your heartbeat racing and your blood pick up speed.”

Sometimes it was easy to forget just how great our hearing was. Even when you were intentionally trying to block out the sounds. I changed the subject. “What did your text say?”

“Roth said a caravan of trucks is approaching off one of the side roads.”

“Side roads? I expected them to take the main.”

“Yeah, me too.” He scratched his neck. “But a caravan? It could only be the poachers. Rarely do they travel solo.”

This was true. Mostly, they traveled in groups of five to ten, but every so often, we had to push our skills to the max with groups of twenty or more. Occasionally, if we know in advance, we’d call in some of the alpha’s pack to help, like today. Though we would have never had to ask them today. They would have jumped in uninvited and inserted themselves in our business, but asking them was a curtesy to the alpha and a way to keep control of our plans without them being overrun by overprotective men determined to save their females at all costs. Not like the alpha’s subpack had a female, but they all had mothers, with a few sisters here and there are scattered into it. Fuck if we would have been able to tell them no.

“Gage and my father, George, are going this way so that we could monitor the town from the inside as they move in.”

I snorted. The image of Gage working with George was ridiculous. Gage, a man closer to my own age than any of theirs, with his tattoos and piercing always seemed so out of place in the alpha’s pack. Though they seem to flow perfectly, just as ours ran, so could I really judge them?

“Should we call Lynn and let her know they’re moving that way?” I was all for protecting the old ladies of our town, especially when the old ladies made pies that were better than any other I’d ever tasted.

“Is your head even with this today, Boyce?” No, it really wasn’t. My head—both heads—was thinking about the taste of Bella. “It’s Roth’s mother. Do you think he would let a group of poachers just waltz right into the diner without warning his mother? He probably has Rig sitting there eating pie like the causal giant he is.”

Rig really was a massive mountain of a man, and if I didn’t know that he was the quietest, most chill of shifters, I would almost be intimidated. “I’ll admit, I forgot she was Roth’s mother. I was only thinking of protecting the pie at all cost.”

I saw Silas smirk. Such a rare occurrence for sure. “I would throw my body into danger to shelter and save her pies.”

I inhaled and let it out slowly. “Same.”