Or maybe I’ll learn exactly where their weaknesses are. But I don’t say that part out loud.
15
Archer
Iwatch Darius half-drag, half-lead Blue toward the cottages, her sneakers kicking up little clouds of dirt as she digs in her heels.
A chuckle slips out at the string of curses trailing behind her.
“Fuck you and your whole goddamn pack of dickheads,” she snarls, baring her teeth. There’s still fire in her voice, but less bite than usual.
She likes it here. She won’t admit it, but her wolf already has. We all saw it yesterday: the playing, the rolling around with us, the belly-up submission.
Her wolf knows… she just hasn’t caught up yet.
Darius grunts, unfazed. His hand is wrapped around her arm as he pulls her along. He’s been different since we discovered the wires. Quieter and more careful. The guilt of chaining her is eating him alive.
I walk on her other side, keeping pace, ready in case she bolts. Not that it matters. We know her scent now. There’s nowhere she could go that we wouldn’t find her.
I glance down at her, and a smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it.
Fuck. Stop smiling, you moron.
I don’t smile. That’s not what I do. I’m the steady one, the second-in-command, the one who keeps his face blank and his thoughts to himself. I’ve spent ten years building that reputation, and this scrawny omega is dismantling it in a few days.
Blue senses my eyes on her and looks up.
My smile widens.
She flips me off, her eyes flashing. And that look, the defiance, the fury, the refusal to bend even when she’s outnumbered and outmatched and being marched toward a crowd of strangers against her will—something about it hits me in a place I thought I’d sealed off a long time ago.
My amusement fades as yesterday’s revelation creeps back in—what was done to her. After everything she’s survived, her distrust makes perfect sense. The fierce independence, the need to push us all away. It’s not stubbornness. It’s armour. And she built it because every alpha she’s ever known gave her a damn good reason to.
My jaw clenches.
Whoever hurt her will pay. That’s a promise.
“You okay there, knuckle-knot?” Blue’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “You kinda look constipated.”
I smile again.
Fuck.
She rolls her eyes, but I catch the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
Because here’s the thing. When Blue shifted yesterday, when her scrawny little wolf came tearing toward us, everything changed. We all felt it. The moment she got close, her scent shifted. The usual wild berry sweetness was still there, but it deepened. Got richer. Warmer, with a hint of cinnamon. Like something had unlocked between her wolf and ours.
We all knew at the same time.
Blue is our scent match. Our mate.
We played for hours. All of us except Darius. He hung back, watching but never joining in. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that head of his.
This morning, Blue woke up human again, back to her prickly, defensive self. She has no idea what her wolf knows, what all of us know.
She’s ours.
And somehow, we have to make her see that without scaring her off for good. Which, given our track record of chaining her to a wall and chasing her through forests in Halloween masks, is going to be a challenge.