Page 19 of Hungry Like the Wolf

“I’m his mate,” she repeated.

JJ gave her an indecipherable look. “He was brought here by his mate.”

“She doesn’t smell like him!” The person stood after their interjection. They wore a sundress with sunflowers all over and had their hair shaved close to their head. “I was near them when I was getting coffee, and she smells nothing like him.”

Another voice chimed in, “And there’s no claiming marks. Not a single bite on her. Look at that neck.”

Nadja looked at Rose, who gave her the same sort of long-suffering look Magda so often wore. The kind that said, “Figure it out, kid. And fast.”

“We’re waiting until it’s official. We eloped,” Nadja said, the lie tripping off her tongue with ease.

“Well, ain’t that romantic,” an old man crowed. “Just like you and me, Evelyn!”

“So you’re not mates, then,” the person in the sunflower dress said, crossing their arms over their chest.

Dozens of pairs of eyes were on her, including JJ’s.

“Matings are consecrated at the full moon. Everyone knows that. That’s two weeks away,” they continued suspiciously. “So you’re not mated. You can’t make it official for another two weeks. How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

Nadja fumbled but grabbed hold of a thread that felt believable, for all that it was hastily concocted.

She gestured to his twitching form, “Robbie and I were leaving a… situation. He was very anxious about it and needed to leave.”

There. That wasn’t exactly a lie.

“We planned to elope, but then he started to shift. I didn’t know where else to take him, so I brought him here. Please, you have to help him.”

Rose cleared her throat.

“My mate,” Nadja corrected. “Please help my mate.”

The silence had weight and volume as Nadja looked out at the crowd. But then Agatha nudged the children off of her, rose to her feet, shook her coat, and padded over to where Nadja sat. The wolf looked at her for a long moment, studying, before dropping to her haunches next to Nadja’s knee, staring out at her pack.

Nadja didn’t understand the dynamics of this pack yet, and she certainly didn’t understand Agatha’s role within it. But her endorsement, or what felt like it, caused a hush to fall over the pack.

“Well, alright then,” JJ said, breaking the silence. “I move to allow Nadja and her mate, Robbie, to stay on a trial basis, pending their mating at the full moon in two weeks’ time. Is there a second?”

Whit seconded. Agatha yipped.

“Very well. All those in favor, raise your hand so Rose can count you.”

Hands and paws lifted. Rose counted, her pencil bobbing in the air at every number.

“All those opposed?”

Nadja closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see. There had been a lot of hands raised in support—but not all.

But then JJ said, “The ayes have it,” and her knees gave out.

CHAPTER 8

Robbie drifted in and out of consciousness as he bounced along. Judging by the iron bars of arms under his back and knees, he was being carried. Cracking his eyes open, he saw light filtering through the tops of trees. When had he last seen the sun? It had been so gray in World’s End.

He was burning up, his jeans chafing against his overheated skin. He wanted to strip his clothes off and be in his skin, to feel the pine straw beneath his bare toes, to run through the windswept trees and not stop until he was up to his neck in an ice-cold lake. He wanted to shake the water off and run and run and run until he dove back into the water and floated, belly up, arms spread out like a benediction as the sun set and the moon rose and the world spun around him.

He took a deep breath and felt his stomach lurch.

“Put me down,” he said.