Page 37 of Planet Wolf

“Stay like this a minute.” He whispered in my ear. “I need to seep into you, too, and I already know you love me. I can smell it.”

I did. I particularly loved it when he acted so cocky. “I’d stay here all day, if you wanted.”

“I hate Jadon’s father, too. And my parents. And Alfie’s parents. I’m ready to be done with all of them.”

Their reactions weren’t encouraging, to say the least. “Tell me something nice. Not about them, just anything nice. Something I can keep in my head all day. And you may know that I love you, but I can’t scent if you love me.”

“I do.” He rocked me. “So much. Something nice? Okay. We went to go spy on the Union. It was a dreaded day. The three of us away from our pack. Away from our jobs. The weather was shit. We thought it would be nothing but the worst people in the universe. And then this scent hit us. I can’t speak for them, as I think it’s different for everyone, but for me, the world was lighter. The sun was brighter. Everything smelled better. You were there. And then it exploded. I thought you were dead, but you weren’t. I could breathe again.” He kissed both my cheeks. “This time I will keep you. Forever.”

I didn’t know if we’d have forever, but I wasn’t going to spoil the thought for them. “You guys never told me, what happens if one of us dies? What happens with all of you?”

“We always know if our mates die. We don’t have to be told, because we can feel it wherever we are. Most of the time, the remaining mate—if it’s a true mating—they die, too. Unless there are young children to raise, and then they might wait until the children are older. Like it pauses. The grief goes away, hidden. And then it turns back on.” Carl sighed. “But it will be a very long time until we have to worry about that, okay?” He kissed me again. “I’m there now, too.”

I hated that thought for them. They were young, virile, important. They wanted to make things right on their planet. Would life be so unkind as to wipe them out because of me?

I never got to worry about that for very long. It was time to go.

* * *

The last timeI’d come to Planet Wolf, I’d been in the woods. Now, I was in a city, one as big as any I’d ever visited on Earth. We walked through to audible gasps and stares. I wasn’t going to blend in, that was for sure. They could smell instantly I wasn’t one of them.

“We greet my father. It’s polite.” Jadon spoke in a low voice. “Then we go. As fast as we can, we go. You’ll be home tonight, and tomorrow, you’ll see why we love it at home.”

I was eventually hustled into what had to be the modern-day version of a throne room. It was the pack meeting space. My guys had pulled out of their pack, but they were still related to it as though they were under the umbrella for their fathers’ pack. At least as far as I understood it, and that was only for the moment, since they had a major plot going to fix things.

In the meantime, I had to sit down in that pack room and be glared at. I wished I’d studied canine behavior more at some point. Would it be bad if I looked down? If the guys were dominant, did I have to be? Or could I just be a human who was really uncomfortable with the glares and growls in the room? My pulse kicked up. That wasn’t great. I didn’t want to faint there, of all places. That would, for sure, be very bad.

“The next person who growls or stares at my mate with anything but respect will lose their fucking head.” Jadon sat next to me after the proclamation. For his part, he looked bored. I didn’t know what I’d smell if I actually could scent anything.

Someone filmed us. There were lots of murmurs. I shifted in my seat. Maybe we should have just gone to the planet where that former union pilot Jessica moved. I was all for fixing things, but I might just melt into the floor. I never really felt so unwanted before.

“You dare to do this?” Jadon’s father looked just like him but older and with mean eyes. He jumped to his feet. “To bring this human here?”

“I bring you my true mate to say hello. I could have bypassed seeing you at all. Spared her the discomfort. I’d have preferred it, but I’m still hoping there is some semblance of decency inside of you. I see that I was wrong. This is why all the sons and daughters of every pack in the world are leaving their parents’ rule. You will all die with this misery if you don’t stop this now.”

His dad didn’t seem to hear him. “She’s not even well. I can smell that. She is unfit to be yours.”

Jadon was on his feet and across the room, in his father’s face immediately. “She is my true mate. You don’t know what that means because you settled for power and not love. She is my whole world, and I will end you for what you just said.”

“You challengeme?” His father snarled. “You dare? Fine. At the next full moon, we’ll see if you really are the Wolf you think you are.”

I couldn’t smell what others could, but I saw something then. Something I’d seen at home when powerful men doubted their rhetoric. Jadon’s father bluffed. He wasn’t at all sure he could take my mate in a physical fight.

I looked at Carl. “When is the full moon?”

“Three weeks,” he answered me, taking my hand. “This will all be over then.”

Maybe it would. Or maybe three weeks was a very long time to leave a man like that unsupervised. But I wasn’t a Wolf, and I didn’t know how things were in Wolf politics. I certainly wouldn’t express my concerns in this room, in front of so many strangers. Besides, whatever I thought I knew, my guys had to know more. I was scent blind.

The best thing I could do was to try not to make things worse.

I stayed quiet and hoped that was the right decision.

* * *

We’d no sooner boardedthe transport that would take us from their fathers’ city to the smaller town they called home that I finally gave in to the fact that I was probably going to faint. It was amazing I’d made it as long as I did. There wasn’t a kind word for me in that whole room. Not one person looked at me with anything other than hate.

My skin crawled. Alfie immediately picked me up onto his lap. “I don’t know how you held on that long.”