Page 38 of Fated to the Wolf Cowboy

My cheeks burned at the label even though they weren’t talking about me or my mysterious cowboy.

Not mine,I corrected.

My wolf growled at that thought.

“Oh yeah, this is a great story. You want to hear it, Tricia,” one of Thomas’s sisters said. I was pretty sure her name was Peyton, but we’d only briefly been introduced.

“So, that was the same night I met Lily,” Sydney began.

“Keep in mind Syd was dating Thomas at the time,” Ruby added.

“True,” Sydney confessed. “And this bitch right here befriends me over drinks. . . lots of drinks.”

The girls hooted with laughter.

“It wasn’t until then that she confessed that she was mated to thebiggest douchebag on the planet.” Only, Peyton and Ruby both chimed in for those last few words. “That was code for Thomas. Everyone in the Pack knew it too. I was shocked, but not really as upset as I thought I should have been.”

“Because he wasn’t your true mate,” Lily pointed out.

“So true. And I definitely know the difference now.”

The two ladies clinked their glasses together before drinking their beers.

“But that’s not even the funny part,” Ruby said.

“Yeah, it was the aftermath of Lily’s night out drinking with Sydney that really makes the story,” Peyton told me.

Lily groaned. “Fine, whatever. I was wasted. I climbed into bed—the correct bed, I might add. It wasn’t like it was my fault he was in it when he shouldn’t have been.”

“Who?”

“Thomas,” they said in unison.

“You climbed into bed with the man you didn’t like, who was also your mate?”

“I was very drunk at the time.”

“So much so that she threw up all over his closet the next morning,” Peyton explained.

“I’m pretty sure it was true love from that moment on, because that stench lingered for weeks. He had to have been head-over-heels in love with you already to put up with that,” Ruby teased.

It was a cute story, but as they told it and shared the memory together, I couldn’t help but feel a little left out.

My eyes scanned the room full of strangers.

They all dressed different.

They talked different.

They smelled different.

Everything about the place was, well, different.

It was clear I did not belong here.

But it was getting late, and I needed to find a place to hole up for the night. I doubted there were any hotels in a wolf Pack such as this. That meant I was going to be sleeping in my fur outdoors again.

I was just finishing up my drink when I noticed a group of men sitting in the center of the room. One moved and suddenly my eyes locked with a pair of steel gray eyes.