Page 147 of Pucking Feral: Part Two
He glances over his shoulder. Wraith is sitting on the floor near the window with Ivy in his lap, her head against his chest as she reads a book on her phone, his massive arms around her like she's the only thing keeping his organs inside his body. He hasn't signed anything in over an hour. His eyes are open but distant.
"Yeah," Whiskey mutters, lowering his phone. "No, you're right. Bad idea."
He keeps scrolling in silence.
"Okay but look at this one, Val. We're neck and neck."
He shoves the phone at me again. It's a fan poll. Rate the Ghosts pack: who would you most want as your alpha?
VALEK: 38%
WHISKEY: 36%
PLAGUE: 23%
WRAITH: 2%
THANE: 1%
"Thane's at the bottom," Whiskey cackles, slapping his knee.
From the kitchen doorway, Thane clears his throat.
Whiskey's phone vanishes so fast I'm genuinely impressed. I don't even know where he put it. Between his legs, maybe.
"What?" Whiskey asks innocently.
Thane's dark eyes move between us with the exhausted suspicion of an older brother who walked in on his idiot siblings doing something he'll regret investigating.
I would know from experience.
He holds a mug of coffee in one hand and a sandwich in the other. His third in an hour. Stress-eating, which I've gathered is his default coping mechanism.
"Nothing," Thane says.
His gaze lingers warily on me before he disappears back into the kitchen, and the room goes quiet.
Too quiet for my liking, really.
I look around the room to occupy my eyes, but my gaze keeps getting drawn back to Ivy. The armchair is a perfectly acceptable distance between us. Close enough to be present, far enough to maintain the boundary I've kept since the first night I sat against that wall and didn't join the nest.
Wraith's eyes have finally slipped shut, his breathing gone slow against Ivy's hair.
I pick up my tea and cross the room to settle on the floor near the window, my back against the wall perpendicular to hers. If she stretched her leg out fully, her foot might reach my knee.
"What are you reading?" I ask her, because apparently I've lost control of my own mouth.
"Fanfiction," she says without looking up.
I pause mid-sip. "Of?"
"Us."
The tea burns the roof of my mouth. I swallow it anyway because I refuse to give her the satisfaction of a visible reaction.
"Whiskey sent me a link," she continues, her voice light and innocent in a way that is absolutely neither. "Apparently there's a whole tag. Want to know your character archetype? You already have one."
"No."
