Page 16 of Hungry Like the Wolf
Robbie saw JJ rub the back of his neck. “It’s supposed to start at four, but people will start meandering in any time now. And it won’t start right on time because we need a quorum and almost never get one until four-fifteen.”
“When will we get to talk?”
“Well, we have to get through scheduled pack business, and then we open it for new business. Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour.”
“So, what? We make our case, and the council decides?”
“The pack votes.”
“What?”
“The pack is the council, the council is the pack. The pack will vote.”
“Do you have any sway?”
“Look, Nadja,” JJ said, “I love you, but I’m not going to bully my packmates into accepting him. This isn’t like other packs. Half the people here were running away from something. Escaping bad packs, escaping bad matings. They’re safe here, and I’m not about to jeopardize those feelings of safety. Not even for you.”
There was a long silence. Robbie could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights, the heating grate vibrating as the furnace kicked on, his own labored breathing.
“But what happens to him if they say no?” Nadja asked.
“There are other packs?—”
“He needs help now.”
Robbie was suddenly more exhausted than he’d ever been. He couldn’t keep on like this.
“Please,” Robbie whispered, blinking his eyes open slowly.
JJ groaned.
“I won’t influence anyone,” he said, pointing a calloused finger at Nadja before turning it on Robbie. “They’re allowed to vote how they see fit. But you have my vote. And I’ll speak on your behalf. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t and something happened to him during the shift.”
“Or someone else,” Nadja said quietly.
“Fuck,” JJ muttered.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Robbie said through clenched teeth before the darkness took him under again.
CHAPTER 7
Nadja had imagined a shifter council looking much like the council that had banished her to earth. She’d always pictured a tall dais, elevating the council members high above the plaintiff and assembly, intimidating and ominous. What she hadn’t expected was for the council to take place in what was an old summer camp mess hall.
JJ unloaded folding metal chairs off the racks and placed them in rows facing a banquet table that was covered in children’s stickers and crayon marks. When she’d asked him why they didn’t just leave the chairs out, he shrugged and said, “Zumba.”
Robbie was asleep, and she was thankful for small mercies. His mouth was slightly open, relaxed in sleep, and she saw that his canines were longer than they had been before. JJ had refused her help, and so she sat, nervously waiting on the couch next to Robbie, as members of JJ’s pack made their way to the hall. Someone brought an ancient-looking percolator from what must have been the kitchen and got it started. Soon, the smell of coffee filled the room.
Another person carried two large zip-top plastic bags filled with cookies and unceremoniously plunked them next to the coffee. Most people were on two legs, but a few drifted in as wolves, sniffing the air and rubbing the tops of their heads under dangling hands as they passed. One wolf slunk up to the refreshment table and nosed at a plastic bag before getting bopped on the nose by the person arranging paper cups.
“Nuh-uh, Agatha. If you want a damn cookie, you can ask. But you’re not gonna pick it up with your mouth and get your damn germs all over the rest of ’em. It’s cold and flu season, don’t you know?”
The wolf ducked its head and whined, chastised.
The person sighed but reached into the bag and took two cookies, holding them out in one hand and scratching the wolf behind the ears with the other.
The person saw Nadja watching them. They turned to her and said, “We can’t really get the flu, but it’s the principle, you know?”
Nadja smiled, so disoriented by the casual affection surrounding her. She’d never experienced anything like it. Even when she’d been in Hell with the Stonebreaker clan, there had always been nine layers of formality to be mindful of. Who to bow to, who should bow to you, who appreciated jokes and who didn’t. The list went on and on. But the wolf, who appeared to have swallowed the cookies whole, was currently lying on the floor, belly and legs up, while two young children scratched their fur and giggled.
