Page 14 of In Doubt
She shakes her head. “I didn’t say that. I don’t know anything about your pack.”
She rocks backwards and twists around to face me.
“Exactly, so what the hell would give you that idea?” I say, battling hard not to lose my temper; the vein in my neck thumping with blood.
She sighs as if she is going to have to explain something difficult to a child. I grind my teeth together.
“I don’t have any ideas. I don’t know if you’re doing that or not.” She hesitates. “But you have to admit that your pack does have a …” her eyes swivel up towards the sky as she searches for the word. “Reputation.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read in that stupid paper,” I mumble, cursing those damn gossip columns about the pack’s exploits earlier in the year. Sure we partied a lot, went a bit wild when we first formed our pack – we were fucking riding high – but most of the stories were grossly exaggerated. And it was months ago. We’ve mellowed since then. Not that it matters. The labels about us have stuck.
“It’s not just the articles,” she says, staring directly at me. “Girls talk.”
I snort at that. “I’ve hardly looked at a girl this year.” If you discount Giorgie Martinelli and her delectable arse. “I’ve been too busy studying, training, and playing rugby.”
She raises her eyebrows, telling me she doesn’t buy that one bit.
“You’re incredibly judgemental sometimes, you know that?”
“You asked me,” she says, throwing her hands up.
“We’re a real pack,” I insist. “It isn’t some ruse to gang bang girls,” I add, my lips curling with disgust at the thought. “These men are my brothers. There is a bond between us and we’re committed to our pack, to each other.”
“How long have you known each other?” she asks with a hint of curiosity in her voice.
“Coming up a year. I met them when I moved to Studworth.”
She halts, her trowel hovering in the air above the ground. “Less than a year? Is that enough time to form a bond like that?”
“I think there are some people you meet and the bond is there almost immediately.”
“Like fated mates? You don’t believe in that nonsense stuff, do you?” She chuckles.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve honestly never given it much thought.” I look up to the lip of our trench and the dust swirling in a lone beam of sunlight. “Maybe it’s something you can’t understand until it happens to you. Pack life hadn’t even occurred to me until I met my mates. Now I can’t imagine living any other way.”
She examines my face, then seems to dismiss whatever thought she was entertaining in her mind. Instead, she starts scraping away again, lifting her arse up into the air as she does and god if I’m not tempted to sink my teeth into it. “People don’t always turn out to be what you expected,” she says quietly.
I still. Does she have first-hand experience of that? Something about the weariness of her tone leads me to believe she does.
I decide there is no use in pursuing the conversation. No matter what she might say, Giorgie Martinelli is clearly not one to change her opinion about someone or a whole pack of people for that matter. What do I care what she thinks? I know the truth. Deep in my heart and in my gut. I’ve found my brothers, my pack. We have each other’s backs.
We work in silence, scraping away layer after layer of dirt and finding nothing for our hard labour. I don’t feel frustrated by it – no, that emotion is reserved purely for the woman with whom I’m sharing this trench – this is how the work of an archeologist goes. You need bucket loads of patience and a hell of a lot of concentration. I’m pretty unusual for an alpha because I happen to possess both. Or I usually do.
But her singing…
Not loud enough for me to hear the words. Just this incessant whispered noise under her breath. Cheerful and happy.
I wipe at the sweat forming on my brow and sweep my hair out of my eyes and back under my hat. The ground is hard against my knees and my back aches.
And that fucking noise.
“Do you think we could give the one-woman performance a rest for a bit?” I grumble, half under my breath.
“Huh?” she asks, dragging one of the clipboards into her lap and scribbling some notes.
I eye the writing, wondering if she’s found something of interest she’s not sharing.
“The singing. Could you give it a rest?”
