Chapter 2

Thank goodness I’m sitting in the shadows. I know I’m bright red. I’m the world’s worst blusher. Best blusher? Whichever, it has to be some kind of medical oddity. Skin shouldn’t be able to get the shade of a poppy in full bloom. It’s not natural.

Anyway, I’m not answering the question. “Pass.”

“You can’t pass.”

“You don’t make the rules.”

“I literally do.” It’s true. She does. She always has. She’s the shot caller. I go along.

“I couldn’t possibly choose. There’s no difference. Khaki pants. Dress shirt. Boring hair.”

Essie raises the eyebrow with the hoop. She must hear it in my voice—whatever it is that’s making me squirm in my sweater. Is it talking about males in general? Or saying the names of these males in particular, out loud, like they’re the same as Bert or Richard or any other every day, ordinary packmate?

All I know is I was hanging out by an old Airstream trailer in the middle of the woods, making a potion with my best friend and freezing my ass off, but now my face would sizzle if you flicked a drop of water on it.

Maybe it’s the moonshine. I did take a decent-sized gulp, and I’m not a big drinker.

“Pick,” Essie says.

“I decline.”

“Come on.” She squints into the shadows. Yeah, she knows something’s up.

What the heck is up? Indigestion?

“Nope. I can’t do it. They’re the same guy.” I’m lying, and I don’t know why.

Nick and Preston are cousins, and that’s pretty much all they have in common.

Nick oozes. Smarm. Entitlement. Human hair product. He won’t make eye contact with a scavenger. If he absolutely must, he’ll address the spot directly above your head.

Preston, on the other hand, exudes. Confidence. Innate authority. Strength, command, intelligence. Superiority.

He genuinely doesn’t notice us. He’ll give us a benevolent nod or a casual chin dip when he walks into a room, but I’d bet all the buttons in the tin that he doesn’t actually know a single scavenger’s name. Bet he couldn’t pick any of us out of a line up, either, and we’ve been going to school together for twelve years, fourteen if you count kindergarten and nursery school.

It’s not a complaint. No scavenger wants the future alpha to know him by name.

I personally don’t care that last month, when he dropped his pencil in Art Appreciation, and I handed it back, he said, “Thank you, Ruby.” Ruby’s a lot closer than I would have expected.

“They’re total opposites.” Essie keeps going. She senses weakness. “Nick wants to drive us out of Sunset Pride like vermin. Preston would like us to be a little more discreet as we shame the pack with our mere existence.”

She does her fancy human lady accent for “a little more discreet.”

“See? Why would I pick either of them?”

“Because you have to. Biological imperative. Propagation of the species. We’re endangered, you know. It’s your duty.”

“Can I pick the bear shifter?”

“No. Play the game, Nevaeh.” Essie sighs and goes double-handed on the spoon. The dragon’s tongue must be almost too thick to stir. Cassie says that’s what we’re going for. “The consistency of hashish,” she said. I had to ask Uncle Dewey about that. He got all misty-eyed and told me it was like taffy.

“Nope. I don’t want either. Neither would claim me. I’d be stuck like Drona.” My older sister’s mate is a ranked shifter. He visits her when he wants some ass, impregnates her periodically, and otherwise lives his best life with a mid-rank female in a nice big house in the Estates on the other side of the lake.

“We’re not talking about shacking up.” Essie grimaces. “Fuck that noise. We’re just talking hot monkey sex.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“When the monkey shifters come out, I’m gonna tell them that you said so.” Essie cracks herself up, dissolving into a gale of giggles. I don’t think she slept much yesterday in school. She’s getting punch-drunk.

“Come on, Nevaeh. Pick. Pick or I stop stirring.” She lifts the spoon dramatically.

“Fine. Nick.” I can’t say Preston. The name won’t come out of my mouth.

“Wrong!” Essie’s face puckers in disgust. “For Fuck’s sake, why?”

Why? Shit. Why, why, why—

“I prefer blonds?”

“Bull crap.”

“I like bad guys?”

She gives me duck lips. “No, you don’t.”

“All right, then. Preston.” Hot pinpricks dance across my skin.

“Why?”

I heave a sigh. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Come on. Entertain me!” She raises the spoon like a scepter. Fuck.

“Put it back in!”

She rounds her eyes and lifts it higher.

“Okay, okay. Fine. He—he talks nice.”

Her mouth falls open. The spoon’s still high in the air.

“Dammit, Essie! I do not want to spend another night doing this next month.”

She flicks her pointy ears like she’s shaking off fleas and goes back to stirring. She’s gone pensive. It makes me nervous.

“How does Preston talk?” she asks.

“You know.”

She blinks. “I have literally never paid attention when he speaks unless it’s a command, and then, to be honest, I just do what other folks start doin’.”

“Well, if you paid attention, you’d know.”

“Do you mean he uses big words and shit?”

He does. All the nobs talk like educated humans around the instructors, but Preston and his crew do it all the time. That’s not what I mean, though.

“He says ‘please’ and shit.” I toss a shoulder like it’s nothing. It is, and it isn’t. It’s a cheap thrill when the alpha heir says “thank you” after you hand him a pencil. Like Fate herself is deigning to notice you.

I’m expecting Essie to roast me, but she seems mystified more than anything else. “That’s really all it takes for you?”

“No, but for the purposes of this game, and to shut you up, yes—a please is all it takes.”

We both sit with that for a minute.

Eventually, Essie says, “You know, I don’t think Richard’s said ‘please’ once in his life.”

Her mate is sprawled on his back, paws up, big ol’ balls dangling in the dirt, tongue lolled. Essie sighs.

Poor Richard. He means well.

“My turn,” I say. We need a change in conversation. “Would you rather—”

“I don’t want to play anymore,” Essie interrupts, her shoulders slumping. That’s how she gets when we get on the subject of Richard. He’s not the mate she would’ve picked for herself. They say Fate doesn’t make mistakes, but Essie and Richard are pretty clear evidence to the contrary. “How much longer?”

I squint toward the east. A gray gloom is rising beyond the glittering glass and metal Tower where the high-ranking five families live. “Maybe twenty more minutes.”

“And then what?”

“We lock it in the trailer and let it cool.”

“And then?”

“Tonight, we grind it to powder with a mortar and pestle, and then we deliver it to a dude named John at the loading dock behind the hospital by the end of the week.”

“Don’t the nobs inject dragon’s tongue?”

“Yeah. Apparently, the hospital will mix it with human chemicals and put it in vials with labels and barcodes and shit. Make it look official.”

“They don’t smoke it?”

“Nope.”

“Wild.”

It is. The ranked wolves do almost everything the human way, though. If we did it in the dens, they want no part of it. They’d turn their wolves into house pets if they could. It’s a tragedy, and they don’t even know it.

“You’re cutting school on Friday then?” Essie asks.

“I have to.”

“I’ll see if my cousin Kaitlyn will cover for you.”

“Cheers.”