Page 134 of Untamed

"I don't like this color," I tell her.

She just humphs and tugs me back to the too-large house. "Well, it's what I grabbed, youngling. And if you want to see Sarj, you can't be stark-naked. The alphasons of the GriMaw and ClearHowl have arrived." She humphs again while Coffee just chuckles.

My she-wolf preens. She likes these older females. Coffee grabs my hand and squeezes gently. "Let's go, younglings," she says.

I like these females, too. There are a lot of females here I like. I inhale deeply. Other wolves,pack, surround me, and I like them? It frightens me a little how fast these wolves sank into my bones.

I feel the forest, nature's soft reassurance, that all of these wolves, even the yucky ones, are hers and mine, first.

---

Inuit

"So," I take a long swallow of the beer dangling between my fingertips, "tell me more about my mate," I put deliberate emphasis on 'my.'

"Naw," Orion Ferax replies, head lounging against the wall he is sitting against, legs sprawled out in front of him.

"Just fucking talk," I seethe. I'm pacing, the monster inside of me growling and snarling furiously.

"I don't know anything about her, right?" he snaps suddenly. "I know about my Aunt Anya and what happened to her. Dad and Mom never knew that she had a pup. How the fuck would we know?"

"What happened to her? What... what did my Pa do?" I rasp out the question past the lump in my throat.

Orion sighs. The chains on his wrists clank together as he rubs his hand over his hair. "Where are my wolves?"

"Here," I snap. "Alive."

He glares at me through his two swollen black eyes that still glint gold even in the dim light of the cell. "You don't want to give me info but expect me to spill, right?"

"You're the one in chains, you little prick," I spit out.

"Heard you chained my cousin, too, right?" he snarls sarcastically.

I laugh. Laugh until Orion leans back, his expression falling from anger into wariness. Recovering myself, I wipe the stray tear from the corner of my eye and take another gulp. "I wrapped my beautiful, wild female ingold, you fucker. It matches her," I murmur, my thoughts straying to what she looked like, asleep, mussed from our lovemaking. My cock stirs, and my wolf strains against my control. We can go back and just stare at her...

"Fuck, you're whipped," Orion smirks at me.

"Jealous, you MateLess fuck?" I hide the cringe at the word 'MateLess.'Sarj, fuck.

Orion snorts. "I'm not MateLess. That was a rumor my uncle started. All so that I couldn't take over my own fucking pack. And the pack, most of them? Yeah, they went along with it. Assholes."

"Dead serious?" I ask him in disbelief.

"MateLess alphason can't be alpha, right?" he smirks at the ceiling. "But, he couldn't kill me," Orion says slowly. "I hide well." His eyes... goddess, his eyes just like my mate's... look back at me. "Except from you, you piece-of-shit."

I wave the beer bottle at him. "I can hunt down anyone, Fuckhead." I pat my chest. "No one hides from me, long." Ironically,Qitsukeluded me for the longest. Orion doesn't count. I wasn't hunting him, personally, until last night.

"Apparently," he snarls. His head bangs against the cement wall a little as he looks back at the ceiling. "Your father mated your mother before he ever met my Aunt."I go still, just looking at him. "Shit was bad. You know that FeraxMaw used to be the eastern powerhouse? It was the Mountains, GriMaw, us, and your shitty pack. Then... my grandfather fucked up."

"What happened?" I prod, waiting for a tale of war.

"He found his mate, my grandmother. Everything was awesome, but she had this, like, false heat? I guess it's pretty common for really young females to have. Their first heat isn't a real one. Anyway, grandma doesn't fall pregnant for a year or so. Some of the pack, greedy fuckers, convince my idiot grandpa to take a breeder. Grandma gets exiled to the wild, breeder gets pregnant, my fuckface father is born."

I hand Orion a beer from the cooler and sit in the rusty metal chair in front of him. He thanks me in a bitter voice. "Then... shit... my grandma goes into real heat. Grandpa gets her pregnant with my dad. Now there's a fucking problem, yea?"

"Two Alphasons," I nod.

"Yeah. And who is the real Alphason? The firstborn from the breeder or the son of the true luna and alpha?"