Page 5 of The Thief

After swallowing the last bite of my okra, I said, “This is incredible.”

He tilted his head and smiled, his brown eyes twinkling. “Wait’ll you taste my thigh.”

Virgil snorted and continued dissecting his roll and dipping it into the pinto bean juice.

While everyone else used utensils, Archer ate his chicken with his hand. Cutting meat took longer for him since he only had one arm. If it was boneless, he usually chopped it up with a knife first. Tonight’s chicken was easy to pick up and eat, but he’d had a difficult time the other night when Bear served bone-in chicken breasts in cream sauce. When Joy had offered to cut his meat for him, he isolated himself in silence for the rest of the meal.

I watched Lucian across the table to my right, scrolling through messages on his phone. The screen illuminated his face, and his blank expression didn’t give the slightest hint at what he might be looking at. Had his family sent pictures? Immortals avoided photographs to prevent discovery, but phones with password protection changed everything. Lucian had recently shown me a family photo of his brothers, all of whom possessed desirable Chitah traits of light hair and tall stature.

Chitahs weren’t Shifters, and the name wasn’t even spelled the same as the animal. Their Breed had stereotypical physical traits that were not only considered desirable among their own kind but were also the standard. Being defective with dark hair and a shorter stature must have been tough for Lucian—both now and growing up. It explained his reclusive personality. That man spent more time with his surveillance cameras than he did with his packmates.

Of course, packmates weren’t required to be sociable. Chitahs and Shifters didn’t usually live together, but we had a similar nature and way of life that centered on family. We shifted into animals, whereas they had a primal animal inside them that governed their behavior. It created unique physical traits in them that came out when their emotions were heightened, such as the upper and lower fangs and cheetah-like spotted pattern. Maybe because of that underlying thread, we understood each other better than most Breeds. As long as Lucian joined us for meals and pulled his weight, he fit in just fine aside from having the personality of a snapping turtle. Lucian didn’t possess a filter between his brain and his mouth, and in any debate, he always presumed he was right. Krys was similar. Only, he had the personality of a vicious honey badger.

“I want to build a fence,” Tak announced, which silenced the chatter. “That field behind the house is good for grazing, but I need to keep my horse penned.”

I swallowed a bite of chicken. “I hope you don’t mean one of those barbed fences.”

“No, nothing that will injure her or our wolves,” he assured me.

“I have an idea,” Lakota piped in. “We can build a wooden rail fence without the bottom slats. It’ll be tall enough to keep her penned, but the opening at the bottom will give our wolves easy access at night when we’re running around.”

“Why does your wolf need to be in my horse’s field?”

Lakota set down his glass. “Maybe he’ll be tired after a run and not want to walk all the way around.”

“Maybe he’s lazy.”

The two men tittered like schoolboys.

Tak wiped his mouth. “Now that the stable is done, perhaps I’ll divide the jobs. Virgil can oversee construction of the heat house while others build the fence. I first need to call the contractors to level the ground and lay the foundation.”

As much as we needed a heat house, I preferred a hotel. A woman’s scent changed while in heat, and it drove men wild with lust. Simple biology. Even mated Shifters got aroused by the scent. They wouldn’t act on it, of course, but what about the rest? Would the temptation drive them to knock on my door? Those without a shred of decency might try, so how could I trust these men not to seduce me? I had never lived in a pack as a full-grown woman, so I had concerns.

Heaven help me if Virgil Nightingale wanted to be the savior of my hormonal firestorm. Would I have the common sense to deny him? If not, I’d have little Virgils running around.

Outside of rare instances, heat is the only time a female Shifter gets pregnant. A heat house around here would offer privacy, just not enough for my comfort level. Even with mated couples, not every woman wants to get pregnant. Without a little distance, there’s too much temptation otherwise. Only sex can alleviate the terrible pain. It’s a primal calling that turns our ovaries into the dick whisperer. Common sense goes out the window.

“How was it?” Bear asked, snapping me out of my musings.

“Dee-licious.” I bumped my shoulder against his thick arm. “You should open your own restaurant.”

He held up his fork and examined his okra. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would,” Virgil said, eating his chicken with his bare hands the same way Archer was doing. “If you have a talent and nothing’s holding you back, use it. I despise cooking.” He dropped the chicken bone onto his plate and licked his fingers. “When they first invented TV dinners, I lived off those for a decade. And back then, we only had two or three options.”

“Have you been to a grocery store lately?” Archer finished swallowing his roll. “How many types of cereal does a person need? I spend more time looking than buying. Then I wind up with those variety packs so I can have it all.”

Virgil pulled a bone out of his mouth. “Story of my life.”

“That reminds me,” Tak began. “Bear has plenty of meat in the freezer, so I don’t want anyone hunting deer. I saw a fawn at the far end of our property when I was out yesterday, which means her mother is grazing nearby.”

Lakota set down his glass. “In other words, don’t kill Bambi’s mom on Mother’s Day.”

“Exactly.”

Wolves are predators. Though we have no control over our wolf’s actions, we communicate our wishes to them. Since most Shifter animals can smell a new mother, we avoid them. Maybe it’s the human in us that steers our wolves away from the kill, or maybe it’s that our wolves aren’t hunting for their survival.

Lucian craned his neck and searched the bowls on the table. “Are there any onions?”

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