Page 17 of The Reveal
I clear my throat and wonder what Ty Ceridwen’s “protection” might cost me. “So you and Ty, then.”
We’re sitting so close that it’s almost tempting to forget both that she’s awerewolfand that she wasthatMaddox Hemming in high school.Maybe I have forgotten, because I’m not pointing my gun at her. Maybe because I’m not, she leans in, pressing her shoulder to mine. For some reason she doesn’t scare me when I think she should.
Maybe I’m just pathologically desensitized.
“Me and Ty,” she says, and again, there’s that rueful sound. “How much do you actually know about werewolves?”
I wrap my hands around my mug. It’s cooler out here than I expected, but I wasn’t kidding. I don’t go out much at night. I forgot that even when the days are warm this late in September, the nights get cold, and fast. The mug feels good in my palms.
“Let’s see. Full moons. Jagged teeth. You walk around like humans until you decide to tear faces off. Silver bullets. That one werewolf in London who got a song. You know, all the usual stuff.”
“Just say you know nothing, then,” Maddox says with a laugh. “First, there are two different kinds of werewolves. There are the blood and there are the bitten.Bloodis what I am. And what Ty is. When you talk about the pack, that’s what you’re talking about.Blood.” I think for a moment I can see the moon in her eyes, but she keeps talking, and I don’t see any sudden, hairy transformations out here on this step. “Thebittenare foot soldiers, at best. They’re entirely slaves to the moon. We’re not.Affected, yes. But if we have to, we can hold back the shift. Critical difference.” She punctuates that with a sip of her drink. “Another critical difference, pack leaders win that position through combat. Bloody. Brutal. Probably as bad as you imagine, and worse. But the mate of a pack leader is preordained.”
“What do you mean by preordained?”
“I mean full-on fated mates, Winter. Straight up.”
“Oh.” I try to digest that. “Okay. You’re fated to be his mate, but you don’t want to be. He does want you to be his mate, though, so he doesn’t like you’re hiding out here, somehow escaping that destiny.”
“Close.” Maddox’s smile is looking lazy again. “Of course I want to be his mate. Did you look at him?” She laughs at whatever expression I have on my face. “I like power. I like a male who can wield it. AndI really like the fact that I’ve been promised to theRixof the Western Wolves since before I was born. I’ve always been his. I don’t have a problem with that.”
“But instead of living with him in ... What was that word? Rick’s?”
“Rix,” she says, a subtle correction. “It basically means ‘king’ in the old language.” She waves that away. “I have every intention of taking my place beside him, but the thing is, I want to do it my way.”
In the midst of all these things that don’t make sense and that I should probably not be just accepting so easily, this tracks the most. Maddox Hemming, doing it her way. Whether that’s not going to prom despite the fact she was named prom queen, randomly championing the kids in high school who everyone treated terribly, or even this. Showing up at my house. Moving away from whatever her situation is because she feels like it. Maddox all the way.
Maybe she sees my appreciation of that on my face, because she nods. “Mates of the Rix don’t go to college. And don’t really stay in high school half the time. Their job is to support their man, keep him calm when necessary, and fire him up when needed.” She is looking at her feet again. “But there’s a meekness there, if you see what I’m saying. It’sassumed. And I don’t like it.”
“Well,” I say, frowning out into the dark, where there are definitely no zombies tonight, because who would dare defy Maddox in anything? “One thing I think we can all agree on is that you’ve never been meek.”
She taps her mug to mine. “There’s a ritual. It can only be performed during a full moon, and once it happens, he and I are bound together. Permanently. He wanted that done years ago. But I want him to make it clear that it’s me, specifically, that he wants. Not just whatever woman could have come along to take this role. I’ve been holding him off, and as you saw tonight, he doesn’t like it.”
“He did not like it at all.” I study the tree line, wondering what’s out there, watching us. “So you’re refusing to get intimate with him until he—”
“I didn’t saythat.” Maddox lets out a low laugh. “Tonight might be the first time in as long as I can remember that we’ve been in the same room together andhaven’tfucked. Intimacy isn’t the issue.” She laughs again. “There’s no doubt at all that I’m his mate, Winter. The whole pack knew before I was born. Everyone can sense it, like a change in the wind.That’snot the issue. The issue is, I want him to see me as a whole person first. And only then as his mate.”
I sit with that for a minute. Maybe a lot of minutes. The smoke isn’t as thick at night, and I can stare up at the stars. I can’t remember the last time I simply sat here, beneath them, without keeping watch over my perimeter—or running for my life.
It’s been more than three years. I know that.
“Your brother is on his side of things,” I say, remembering that scene in the yard earlier. “And I’m betting all your cousins are too.”
“They are, because they’re assholes,” Maddox says, but cheerfully, as if assholery is only to be expected. “They want power. Once Ty claims me, their status changes in the pack. Me refusing to submit to the ritual puts that off, and they’re pissed. They’ve been pissed. They would probably all stop talking to me to really show me how pissed they are, but then how would they use me once I take my fated role?” Her laugh this time has an edge. “Such a conundrum.”
“If I’m following this, and I’m probably not, what you’re telling me is that you defied your entire culture to stay in school, to not be the prom queen, and to go off to college.”
“Proms are really dumb,” Maddox says with a roll of her eyes. “And you know, werewolves live a long time. There’s a movement within the pack, to be more ...” She pauses, as if she’s trying to translate it into words I’ll understand. “Instinct based is how I’d put it. ‘Let the wolf lead,’ they say. That’s fine, but we don’t live in a world that’s only wolves, and sometimes it makes sense to take in other perspectives. That was how I pitched it to Ty, and that’s why he let me go to college. Because he could have said no. Half the pack thought he should have. He’s mad about that, too.”
I try not to look at her then. “How long have you been actually with him?”
Her laughter floats up again. “I can’t tell you. You humans are so prudish about the most natural things. Remember, you and I are not the same species. I was never as young as you were. Not in anything but years.”
I’m still thinking about that later, tossing and turning in my bed upstairs, because I can’t keep myself from thinking about the scene I witnessed right there on the front porch. I saw the way they looked at each other. I don’t know why I ever imagined that theyweren’thaving sex constantly. They practicallyexudesex.
I also think about the fact that I could barely meet Ty Ceridwen’s gaze. Every single thing inside me screamed at me to look away, and I did.
Yet I watched her stare right at him.
