Page 24 of Same Thing
“It’s easy for you to say, ‘just pick one,’ but I saw how Oren and Ida were, and I don’t want that for me, and I certainly don’t want it for you.”
“What happened last night?” Bridger asked from the doorway. “With the Arrangement.”
“I’m assuming you have already heard.”
“She went right to the Elders, and the rumors spread fast,” Tabian said.
Liam offered an empty smile and sat back down. “That’s a deal breaker for me. Rat behavior isn’t something that I’m attracted to, nor do I want the job of curbing that behavior in a grown female. Before that though, she was already one high heel out the door. Hated the place I took her to, hated being around the humans, hated what I wore, hated the food, hated all of you. She brought up ‘upgrading’ the members of our Pack.” Liam used air-quotes.
“Ew,” Nate muttered.
“I’m not going for Ida 2.0. If I have to pair up and get us to where I know we can get to, I need someone who sees the potential here like I do.”
“You have agreed to go on a second meeting with her though,” Vic said.
How much did he tell them about the reasons he’d changed his mind about that on the drive over here? He couldn’t admit to his Pack that the hurt in Nory’s eyes when he’d told her he was going on another date with Laken had gutted him. He didn’t understand what was happening on that front yet, or why that little human affected him so much, but he knew one thing…if he introduced Nory to the Pack, she wouldn’t ever think they needed to upgrade members. He knew she would be quiet, like Delta, and watchful, and then she would find some good in each of them.
God, he wished Nory was a werewolf.
Instead of explaining all of that, he sighed. “The Arrangement felt threatened by a human at the bar. You’ve probably all heard that part.”
“Yep,” a few of them said in unison.
Delta looked up at him for the first time and held his gaze. She was curious, he could tell.
“There is a human woman who lives in the same apartment complex. I met her yesterday. She’s funny. Entertaining. I had a couple of conversations with her, and she made me laugh, and it’s been a while since I did that. Hell, it’s been a while since any of us did that.”
“Do you care for her?” Vic asked. There was a growl to his voice.
The answer was yes, but they needed to hear ‘no.’ Werewolves could sense a lie though, so instead of answering the question, he dodged it. “I want to fuck her,” he said.
Tabian snorted. “You owe me twenty bucks,” he said to Vic, who pulled a twenty out of his pocket and threw it at him. The money fluttered clumsily onto the floor.
“You’re making bets?” Liam asked.
“Everyone has wanted to fuck a human at some point,” Dodger said. “There are pornos about it. I watched one called Railed by the Weremoose—”
“Dude, you could just stop talking any time you want, you know,” Tabian said. “There’s free will floating around in your body.”
“Hear me out. It wasn’t really about a moose, they just called it that because mooses have big peckers, and even in their human forms—”
“I think the plural for moose is moosies,” Vic said.
“Moosi?” Tabian guessed.
“Anyway, this werewolf named Moose is all dressed in this delivery driver uniform, and he gets into this elevator with this human chick—”
“Wait, was he Changed when he boned her?” Vic asked, face all mortified looking.
“What? No. Gross, man.”
“Where is the website we can watch this,” Dodger asked, poking around on his phone.
Liam pinched the bridge of his nose and prayed for patience.
“This right here is why we don’t get invited to the big hunts,” Nate muttered.
“Look, my point,” Dodger said. “Pick an Arrangement, fuck the human. Who cares, just mind the rules and get the Elders off our backs. Nobody wants good morning texts from Aro Lorsdacado first thing in the morning reciting the laws of the Pack, like we’re kids who forgot the rules. Pisses me off. We’re all busy. Fix it.”