Page 37 of Brutally Mated
The scents of the restaurant draw me inexorably. My stomach growls.
“We could go in and eat at a separate table,” Skor suggests.
“We should let them eat alone,” I say. “Thorn needs this time with her. We are all going to have to find ways to bond with her individually.”
“Hm,” he says.
We start to move on, but a sudden flurry of motion in the restaurant draws our attention. Tabby has gotten up. She grabs a stranger’s drink and dumps it on his head.
“What the…”
The man, now covered in beer, looks at her aghast, then clenches his fists.
Skor and I are in the restaurant in an instant, the plate glass window shattering around us as we burst through the translucent barrier. The diners break into screams as Skor grabs Tabby and throws her over his shoulder.
We leave as quickly as we came in, jumping out the window. Thorn follows, and the four of us escape into the night, leaving behind a shattered restaurant and dozens of frightened diners.
“What was that about?”
Skor sets Tabby down and questions her.
“Did he touch you?” Thorn adds a question. “I’ll kill him if he touched you.”
Tabby looks deeply upset. We might have to kill someone tonight. The expression on her face is pitiful and creates pure rage inside me. Skor is shaking glass out of his hood.
“He didn’t touch me,” she says.
“What did he do?”
“He was making noises with his mouth,” she explains. “And it made me want to die.”
“What?” Thorn looks at Skor and me, deeply confused. “He was making noises?”
“There were too many noises,” she repeats. “And he was slobbering so loud it felt like I was inside his mouth, or he was inside my head. But there’s no… I couldn’t take it. It drives me crazy.”
“You can’t throw drinks on people because they’re making annoying noises,” Thorn says.
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“People are allowed to be annoying?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says. “I guess they are.”
“Well, I don’t want to be around them,” she says. “I don’t want to be in rooms full of stinky people saying stupid things and chewing with their mouths open.”
Thorn looks thoroughly confused. Skor does not. He understands what has happened more quickly than any of the rest of us. I have to give him credit. He understands our little mate more innately than either Thorn or me.
“We are predators. We are made to notice the smallest things, and when we are surrounded by too many small things it can overwhelm us. But you should have asked to leave, rather than attacking a man with his own drink,” he says.
“I suppose,” she admits reluctantly. “But I didn’t like him, and I didn’t like his sounds, and it was better than using magic, right?”
“I am going to go back and pay for the damages,” I say. “You two keep an eye on her. There’s a hot dog stand down the road that might not provoke her rage.”
I go to the restaurant to make amends, which are significant. As wolves in a largely human world, the need to fix what we have broken is sometimes necessary. I might have to expand the fund significantly now that Tabby is in our lives. She seems like one to cause perpetual chaos.
“You broke our window, sir,” the manager says.
