Page 140 of A Broody Mate for the Human

“You’re lying.” Noah grins. There is no malice in his words, and I’m starting to relax. Dave is a confident and smart person; he can handle some teasing.

Dave smirks. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“What, ask the gamma directly?” Noah makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “I pass. He leads the advanced warrior training, and I’m in that.”

“Thanks for being so welcoming,” Dave says. “I know it’s not usual for humans to be part of a pack.”

Noah shrugs. “Alpha Liam and Luna Annalise allowed you in, and we trust their judgment.”

I smirk at them. “You’re aware that he is also one of the luna’s closest friends?”

“What?” Noah exclaims.

Marilou giggles. “I’ve heard that too.”

“We’ve been friends since middle school,” Dave admits.

“Wait a moment.” One of the guys looks at him intently. “You were at the luna ceremony! I knew I’d seen your face somewhere. They did cloak your scent, though, so not everyone noticed back then.”

It wasn’t intended, but having them know that Dave is not just any human will make the pack respect him more. And Dave being Dave will make it easy for everyone to like him.

“Say, it didn’t shock you to find out about wolves and alike?” Marilou asks curiously.

“No, not really. Annie and Ella were pretty secretive sometimes, and once I found out, it made so much more sense,” he muses. He doesn’t notice that he just said their names without any titles, which makes the guys gape a bit. I grin inwardly. “There is a lot of cultural stuff I will need to learn, though,” Dave continues. “I’m sure I’ll make a lot of mistakes first. So just point it out to me if I do or say something silly.”

Noah clinks his beer bottle with Dave’s. “Will do.”

“And you can ask as many questions as you want,” one of the omegas offers. “Don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Oh, can I?” Dave beams.

The others nod, eager to share their knowledge. “So, when Alpha Liam said there would be new members joining, you all bared your necks to him. How come?”

“It’s an instinct,” Noah explains.

“You couldn’t feel it, but he let his alpha aura shine through,” another one agrees.

“Just don’t piss him off,” one of them tells me. “I got my ass kicked by him once.”

“Yeah, you were super-cocky during training,” Noah grins.

“I have another question,” Dave tilts his head. “What is so special about a pack having witches?”

“Witches normally live in a coven,” one of them explains. “They have their own little packs if you want to call them that. So even a mated witch doesn’t necessarily move to a wolf pack.”

I nod. “In Stella’s case, she isn’t someone’s mate. She is a full-fledged witch now, working for an alpha. Having a witch pledge their loyalty to an alpha without being mated to a wolf of his pack is pretty rare.”

Noah nods his agreement before eyeing me curiously. “You know a lot about this stuff.”

“I was supposed to become beta in my old pack,” I explain because there is no use hiding it. Better get it over with before rumors spread.

They eye me curiously. “And what happened?”

Before I can answer Esme chimes in. “The alpha wanted to sell me off as a bargaining tool to another pack, as a chosen mate to a creepy old sociopath, against my will. My chosen mate was known to be a rapist. Raphael couldn’t accept it. He saved me and Hayden, my true mate.”

“That’s a very short summary of a complicated story,” I point out. “And it makes me look better than I was.”

“Conflicts of interests,” Dave points out. “You were trying to be loyal to your alpha and save your sister. There is only so much one person can do.”