Page 7

Seven

H omemade pizza night with Jodi reminded Lucy how much she’d missed her roommate and friend. One more example of the fact she wasn’t always the best at noticing what she felt until after she was finished with the feeling. They caught up on girl gossip around campus, bemoaned the upcoming reading list for American Lit 2, and fangirled over the most recent episode of their favorite regency-era romance show.

Lucy could hardly believe they hadn’t discussed Jeremy yet. Maybe Jodi didn’t really want to hear all about a guy. If not, Lucy didn’t want to be one of those obnoxious girls who could talk about nothing else. Still, she would have gushed about him without thinking the minute she walked in the door if not for…

…his secret, which she hadn’t known last time she talked to Jodi.

Could she discuss her boyfriend without mentioning he was more than human?

Pizza consumed and a pan of box-mix brownies in the oven, Jodi took hold of Lucy’s arm and hauled her into the den. She set her down in one of the recliners with dramatic gusto, and Lucy laughed.

Jodi pulled up an ottoman and sat across from her. “Okay, I’m done waiting for you to bring him up. Tell me what’s going on, whatever it is.”

“I was starting to think you didn’t really want to hear about him,” Lucy said.

Jodi rolled her eyes. “I was starting to think you broke up in the last two days and I shouldn’t ask.”

“Um, no, definitely not.” She grinned. This would be easy. She’d just pretend she didn’t know she was dating a wolf. “I guess I don’t need to point out his hotness.”

“Cuteness anyway.”

Lucy mock-glared at her. Hotness was the better word, but Jodi tended to go for blonds.

Her friend laughed. “I’m messing with you. But I want to know all the other reasons you’re into him.”

“Well, he’s hilarious and so much fun. He’ll make a plan if he needs to, but he loves being spontaneous. His mind’s going a mile a minute all the time. I think sometimes focus is hard for him, but when we’re together I can tell he’s really trying not to go off on too many rabbit trails, especially when it’s something important to me. I just love being with him, Jo. And he wants to know about me. He asks questions about me and listens all the way through to the end of my answer without ever interrupting me one time.”

Jodi’s smile grew bittersweet. “I’m sorry that’s a big deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wanting to know you, listening without interrupting. Those things are sort of baseline decency, you know?”

“They don’t feel like it.” Lucy gave herself a moment to ponder. “But you’re right. At one time they did.”

“Good for Jeremy, bringing your standards back up.” Jodi winked.

When the brownies were cut into unreasonably large squares and topped with mint chip ice cream, Lucy and Jodi took their plates to the dining room. Lucy nudged aside a few stapled papers left out on the table.

“How goes the proofreading business?” she said. On principle Jodi wouldn’t write papers from scratch or even correct another student’s sentence structure, but for an affordable fee she corrected typos and punctuation.

“It’s been great the last few weeks. I’m almost done with those.” Jodi pointed to the stack.

Lucy glanced at the paper on top, then stared.

SOC 203, Ms. Worth An Introduction to Social Dynamics in Lupine Communities by Katharine Gregoire

“Interesting subject,” she said.

“It is ,” Jodi said. “I thought I’d be bored to death, but I really liked that one. And it really makes you think. How they sort of… walk among us , you know? According to Kate’s paper, lupines make up possibly five percent of the world population. There are more lupines in the world than vampires, which is just mind-blowing, because how often do we even hear about their existence? But vampires show up in the news and stuff, in Hollywood, openly at college…” Jodi shook her head. “If you know a hundred people, you might know five lupines.”

Lucy nodded as she flipped past the title page. She had to read this paper. Every word of it.

“I bet there are one or two lupines on our own campus.” Jodi leaned toward her as if to read along. “And we have no idea who they are. That’s wild to me.”

Definitely not commenting on that . Lucy scanned the table of contents. I. Introduction II. Demographical statistics and typical psychological profile of the individual III. Social attachment IV. Possessive behavior V. Aggressive behavior VI. Community hierarchy VII. Mate bond: fact or myth? VIII. Conclusion

Wait…what? Mate bond? Lucy itched to flip to the final section, but she should read the whole thing. Good thing she was a speed-reader.

“Distracted much?” Jodi waved a hand between Lucy’s face and the pages in her hand. “We were discussing your boyfriend.”

“Sorry, but now you’ve got me intrigued and I have to read this for myself.”

“Or I could summarize.” Jodi shrugged.

“It’s twenty double-spaced pages; I can read it faster than you can summarize it. Just give me a minute.”

“Oh, fine. You read and I’ll eat. Your ice cream’s melting, though.”

Lucy took a few bites while she scanned and flipped pages. As she read, her scalp prickled. This…this wasn’t her wolf. Not at all. She’d heard the stereotypes all her life, of course—angry lupines, low-IQ lupines—but she’d been raised to ignore them.

The way Kate had written about Jeremy, about wolf packs…this was documented. There were actual studies that said lupines—wolves—were subjected to the will of the strongest in their pack and called him Alpha . Actual studies that said wolves were more likely to commit violence. Based on this paper, wolves were…kind of scary.

But none of this was Jeremy. Lucy shook her head as she flipped another page and reached the last section of the paper. VII. Mate bond: fact or myth?

She kept her hand steady. If the paper started shaking, Jodi would notice. The author was not able to find any primary sources on the topic of lupine “mates.” It’s hard to know if this is something to be taken seriously or not. The theory or rumor is that a lupine will mate only once in his lifetime and that his connection to her is very intense and possessing. She might be human or lupine. If she doesn’t want to be pursued, she is likely to be at risk because of the behaviors discussed in the previous sections of this paper. Unfortunately the author could not find confirmation of this theory but will continue to investigate.

Lucy forced herself to finish reading, to set the paper on the table beside her plate of cooling brownie and melting ice cream.

“Wow, you took that very seriously,” Jodi said.

“Well, it’s…I mean, isn’t it sort of…inflammatory?”

Jodi’s brow furrowed as she forked a bite of dessert. “It’s not flattering, but Kate has a bibliography page. She didn’t make anything up.”

“No, I know, I just…I don’t know.”

She wanted to take the paper with her and thrust it into Jeremy’s face and demand an explanation. She scanned the works-cited page. Four sources. She fetched her phone and took a picture. She’d look them up later.

“Wow,” Jodi said.

“Never mind.” If she tried to talk about this, she might say too much. She might say, I’m dating a lupine. A wolf. But if he thinks I’m his one-and-only mate, he sure hasn’t mentioned it.

The taco shop had become one of their favorite haunts, but two days after her catchup night with Jodi, Lucy sat in a vinyl booth across from Jeremy and stared down at her shrimp tacos without a hint of appetite. Jeremy’s earth science class had prompted him to use his scant monthly disposable income on a rock tumbler—the amateur version, purchased from the science aisle of a big-box toy department. Few things could be more endearing than his excitement as he showed her the little pouch of smooth, shiny, worthless stones he’d brought into the restaurant with him.

She liked this guy so much.

But she couldn’t ignore what she’d learned this week.

Well, maybe she could. Suppose she pushed him away with her questions? She didn’t want to hurt him. She didn’t want him to break up with her.

“Lucy?”

“Sorry.”

Jeremy squinted at her, his signature curious face. “You’re not usually one to zone out.”

“I, um, just have something on my mind, and I’m trying to decide…if we need to talk about it, or if I need to think on it more first, or…”

“Well, now you have to tell me.” He gave her a crooked smile.

Lucy took a few bites of taco and felt calmer. His smile was reassuring. She thought over their relationship so far, new though it was. Never before had she felt the need to walk on eggshells with him or keep a secret for the sake of staying with him. In fact, without noticing, she’d started to trust him. Really trust him. She would trust him now too. But she’d also choose careful words and do her best not to offend him.

“I sort of stumbled into some information this week about you. About wolves, I mean.”

Jeremy’s eyebrows arched. “What kind of information?”

Shoot. There was no polite way to ask. Lucy set aside her taco and wiped her fingers on her napkin. She cleared her throat, but the words still came out squeaky. “I read about this thing called a mate bond?”

Jeremy froze. Blinked. Sighed. “Crap.”

“Why?” Suddenly she did need to know the truth. “Because it’s a myth or—or because it’s not?”

“I, um, well, where did you read about it?”

“First tell me if it’s a myth.”

He shoved one hand through his curls. “It’s not a myth.”

Now she was the frozen one. Not until this moment did she realize…she’d been counting on Kate’s paper to be nonsense from front to back. If the part Kate had acknowledged as most dubious were actually real …

“What about violence and aggression and—and—obedience to a dictator alpha wolf? Is all that true too?”

“ What ?” Jeremy yelped. “Where did you get all this?”

“From a sociology paper for Ms. Worth’s class. Jodi Naylor was proofreading it. I was at her house making pizza and brownies and catching up, and I saw the paper and read it and…”

For some reason this seemed to calm him. He drew a long breath, let it out, and nodded. Then he deepened his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s part two of Ask Me Anything, Wolf Edition.” He pointed at her as if he were the game show host and she the contestant. “Ms. Campbell, you’re up.”

She allowed herself to smile, to give him his game if this made it easier to tell her. But she wouldn’t be letting him off the hook with her questions. “Well, Mr. Freeman, I just asked you several questions. Could we start with those?”

“Sure,” he said, sobering for a moment. “Well, first—I promise none of the wolves in my pack are violent. People throw memes out into the world all day long, but that doesn’t make a stereotype true.”

“This was an actual news source, supposedly an actual psych study.”

He flinched. “Well. That doesn’t make it true either.”

He couldn’t prove it to her while they sat here eating tacos. He couldn’t prove it to her at all really, not for every wolf or even for the majority of wolves. But he could prove himself a good, safe guy who told the truth. So far he had. Lucy nodded.

“I believe you,” she said.

He sighed, then smiled. “Next? Um, if you don’t mind repeating them.”

“What’s with the dictator alpha thing?”

“Well, every pack is led by an alpha, but it’s not a dictatorship. He only makes decisions that affect the entire pack. Otherwise we live our lives how we want.”

Tacos finished, she wiped her hands again, then used one to prop her chin. “So…he’s like a township supervisor or mayor or something?”

“Uh, no?” Jeremy’s lips pressed together for a moment in thought. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s like. Our alpha’s name is William, and he’s held the position for…I think fourteen years. He’s still in his fifties, so we’ll have him for a while yet.”

“It’s a lifetime appointment?”

“Yeah.”

“So like the Supreme Court.”

“What? No.” He gave a chuckle that held the barest hint of good-natured growl. “And not like a monarch either. And he can’t legislate us. But, like, if there were an emergency, we wouldn’t take a vote. William would weigh all the factors and decide.”

“What sort of things has he decided in the past?”

“Well, here’s an example for you. When I was a pup and started changing under the moon, my parents found out about the alpha directory and called William because this pack was the closest to our home. He vetted my folks to make sure they weren’t scamming or anything. Then he considered the size of our pack, the resources and living space we have, stuff like that. And he determined it would be okay for me to join as long as someone was willing to take me in. He didn’t force Patrick and Nicole; he asked them, and they said they’d love to. So they had legal guardianship of me for five years until I turned eighteen.”

“So he’s kind of…the pack’s executive officer.”

Jeremy threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Sure. If you really need an analogy, sure.”

“Okay, last question.”

For a long moment, their gazes held. Then Jeremy looked down at his hands in his lap.

“So…about wolves recognizing their mates…that one is true.” He looked up. “And I know what your next question’s going to be, and yeah, I recognized you when I met you.”

She gave a soft gasp before she could stop herself.

“I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t figure out how to make it sound…fair to you. Non-creepy. I get that to humans it sounds super weird. And like the girl doesn’t have a choice. But you do, Lucy. You can stay with me or break up with me or whatever you want.”

“But if fate chooses your mate, if fate chose me , how is that a choice?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Why’d we get coffee that first time? Because you had to, or because you wanted to?”

“I wanted to,” she said.

“And why did we keep going out? Did you want to or not?”

“Well, yeah, I did. Of course I did, or I wouldn’t have.”

“See, there you go. How it is for me doesn’t change how it is for you.”

“That’s…sorry, but that’s just too bizarre.”

She shook her head. This was going to take some processing. Some journaling with her purple gel pen. She stared down at the tabletop for a long minute. When she looked up, Jeremy sat with his head down and his shoulders hunched. Compared to his usual squared shoulders and confident grin, right now he looked almost small.

“Hey,” she said.

He looked up, and his eyes held more emotion than she’d ever seen from him, even when he’d been so scared and stammering over the scent of blood. Right now he looked just as panicked, but he also looked hurt, and Lucy’s heart responded with a painful squeeze.

“Do you think I’m breaking up with you?” Lucy said.

His bottom lip wobbled. “You’re…not?”

“I’m weirded out right now, but I’m not going anywhere.”

“Really? For real?”

“Yes, for real, silly boy.” She rolled her eyes, and the squeezing of her heart eased as he slowly grinned. “I don’t know if I believe I’m your mate, but I am your girlfriend. And I have one last question for you, Mr. Freeman.”

“Ask the wolf anything, Ms. Campbell.” His grin just kept growing.