Page 59 of Feral Werewolves

I couldn’t meet her gaze. I looked away.

“Hey,” Griff said, bringing her face back to look at him. “My reason for existing right now is you.” He looked meaningfully at her belly.

She winced.

“If I die, Madge, then what happens—”

“Shut up, you’re not going to die,” she said.

“We have to do this in steps,” he said.

“It’s like you’re trying to convinceme,” she said. “It’s like you thinkI’mthe werewolf boss.”

Griff raised his eyebrows, a little smile playing on his lips.

“That’s the threat of a woman, isn’t it?” said Paladin. “The Yoko threat. Some guy gets himself in deep with a woman you don’t much like and she uses her wiles on him. And then you wonder who’s really in charge, him or her? That’s why men fear women, that’s why men think women have power they’ll never have.”

“I don’t haveanypower out here,” said Madrigal, angry now. She shot up off Griff’s lap. “I am only lucky that he listens to me, because if it was any other way, I’d be his plaything, right? He could do whatever he wanted to me.”

“I know,” said Paladin, twitching nervously. “I’m just saying what they’re saying about you.” He said that to the table.

I went around the table to stand behind him, resting my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t have to talk if he didn’t want to.

Paladin glanced up at me, and I couldn’t read his expression.

I moved my hand though. I wasn’t sure he wanted thatfrom me.

“Why?” said Madrigal, hands clenched in fists. “Why would they think that?”

Paladin glanced at me and then pointed his forefinger into the table. “They understand only strength, only force. They don’t understand emotion, and so they react to it as if itisforce.”

Madrigal sat down slowly on Griff’s lap again, shaking her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“People get caught in a way of thinking and they think everyone thinks the way they think,” said Paladin. “So, they are trying to get power over other people, and they assume everyone else is doing it, too. Then they see a relationship between two people where the people care about each other, and they see it as a power dynamic because it’s all they’re capable of seeing. They assume women are wielding their charms over men like a weapon, because—if they had charms—that’s what they’d do. They just don’t understand what it is to embrace being vulnerable or to be loved or to be… they don’t get it.”

“Yes,” said Griff. “Yes, it’s that exactly. I clawed my way up to the top here, thinking that it would mean something, thinking that I’d feel safe and… I don’t know, uh…” He ducked down his head, embarrassed. “Happy?”

It did seem crazy out here, to think you could pursue happiness.

“But it backfired,” said Griff. “I think I was more worried about my safety as the leader than I ever was before that. I had to worry twice as hard about protecting my position as I did when I got it. It was hell. I thought if I beat everyone it would mean something, mean that I deserved it. But it became clear to me that it only ever meant that I got lucky. Those challenges with other wolves? If they fought me again, there was no guarantee it would go my way. It was all fucking random. And then… her.” He looked at Madrigal.

She smiled at him.

Griff turned to Paladin. “It’s like you’re saying, though, once you get past this idea that life is some race orcompetition or something, that it’s about winning and beating and ruling over people. It’s not about that. It’s about, uh, fuck it, but, uh,love.”

I dragged a hand over my face.

“You can never say that to them,” said Paladin in a low, urgent voice.

Griff laughed. “Too late.”

Paladin went stiff.

“How do you convince them of it?” said Griff. “How do you show people who are stuck in searching for that meaningless bullshit what they’re fucking missing?”

Paladin didn’t say anything.

“We do it with mates,” said Madrigal.

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