“The smell is going to be unbearable by the end of the day at this rate.” I turn over my shoulder, Bane sitting on the bed and watching me.
“Ensures everyone has a chance to see the message before we let his brothers collect his body,” he defends without remorse.
Letting the curtain close, I cross the small distance, taking a seat beside him. “I wasn’t arguing, simply stating a fact. Weird things you have to worry about with enhanced senses. Could you imagine having to work in a hospital or something?” The thought alone has me wrinkling my nose. “The bleached chemical smell was bad enough before. No wonder there aren’t any weregoose doctors.”
He snorts, hard features relaxing a fraction. “Weregoose? We aren’t ‘were’ anything, Risa, even wolves. Just people... with a bit more flair.”
My gaze flicks down to his hands involuntarily for the hundredth time since last night, phantom images of them dripping with blood overtaking reality, splicing it with memory. “Thank you for coming.”
Slowly, as if he knows where my mind is at, he tilts my chin up to face him. “I will always come for you, Risa.” A playful smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. “Whenever you want me to. Heck, why wait? Right here, right now, I’ll prove it.”
I smack his shoulder and he pulls away laughing. “Men never grow up, I swear.”
Getting to his feet, he grabs my hand so I’m forced to follow him downstairs and into the living room. Mason’s already there dozing in a recliner, but his eyes open the moment we step into the room.
“Fuck, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” I huff in complaint, hand on my chest. “Like something out of a low budget, vampire horror movie.”
A startled yip slips from my lips as Bane picks me up, only to drop me on Mason’s lap as he heads over to flop on the couch. “I’ll pretend not to be offended by the low budget quip.” He shares a look with Mason, who subtly shakes his head, and I frown.
“What?”
Ignoring him, Bane tucks an arm under his head as he stretches out on his back across the couch. “We need to talk about last night.”
My stomach flips, and I shamelessly sink into Mason. “I’m sorry for arguing with you and Stryker, I-“
Mason’s hand claps over my mouth, and he glares at me. “Stop fucking apologizing. You didn’t do anything wrong, and nobody is mad at you in any way, shape, or form.”
Stryker walks into the room with a bag of chips, kissing my cheek in passing before lifting Bane’s legs with one hand and sliding into the seat beneath, letting them fall across his lap. “Honestly, it was pretty hot.” He pops a chip into his mouth with an obnoxiously loud crunch. “Seeing you get all heated defending one of us?” Waggling his eyebrows, he finishes, “Was torture not to chase after you; especially in those shorts.”
Mason removes his hand from my mouth, dropping his palm to my collar and stroking a thumb over the hollow of my throat. Reluctantly, he admits, “We’ve been mulling over a theory.” Turning to Bane, he snipes, “That we agreed not to bring up until we had any facts to back it up.”
Bane plucks a chip out of Stryker’s fingers. “That was before I saw Risa staring at a man’s corpse like a sociopath and come sit beside his killer without her heart so much as skipping a beat. She’s one of us now, and that means she should be a part of discussions; especially ones that revolve around her.”
Mason turns to me with a raised eyebrow, and my cheeks heat indignantly. “Was not!” When he doesn’t back down, I throw a hand up in frustration. “Come on, like you’re going to toss a mutilated body in the center of the clearing and expect people to pretend it’s not there? Of course I was going to look, but that doesn’t make me some apathetic monster. I’m just not going to pretend to feel bad that he died when he brought it on himself by attacking us.”
I start to slip off of his lap, but Mason only tightens his grip around my waist and slides me back. The hand at my collar drops so that he can interlock his fingers at my side, keeping me caged in the loop of his arms.
“No one in this area has ever acted like that before.” Mason hesitates before continuing, as if he’s choosing his words carefully. “Not only in regard to being idiotic enough to attack one of us, but Marcus was so far gone as his wolf, there was no diffusing the situation. Even in our other forms, when we’re fueled by more animalistic instinct, there’s still cognitive thought and common sense. Yet when he looked at us?” He sighs. “That light in his eyes was gone, the one that lets you differentiate between a wild animal and a shifter.”
Stryker rolls up the bag and sets it aside, licking his fingers clean and acting way too casual for the topic at hand. “Have you ever been on a run and met an animal’s eye? Maybe a fox or rabbit that gets closer to humans than usual and you have that moment of breathless stasis where the rest of the world falls away? Where it seems like they actually understand what you’re saying, are more self-aware than other animals?” At my nod, he shoots a finger gun in my direction with a wink. “That’s how you know it’s really one of us instead of wild.”
Bane clucks his tongue. “But Marcus was gone beyond that of even a normal wolf. It’s not like there haven’t been cases where people like us choose to opt out, stay in their other forms permanently and go feral. Their cognitive thoughts fade more with every additional year that passes and they don’t shift back, until eventually, it’s like they forget that they can. That light dims in their eyes, and they either isolate like rabid monsters, or join their own kind in the wild, living out the rest of their days.”
I frown. “But that would be a gradual thing, not sudden. So how does that have anything to do with me showing up? I hadn’t even met the guy before last night, so I can’t see how me coming here would have triggered something. Well, unless he hated on principle.”
Bane releases a long, slow breath, buying time to figure out how to phrase whatever they’ve been discussing. “Remember how Stryker almost bit you when he shifted?” Confused, I nod, and he continues with less trepidation. “You were on the right track with the vampire comments. A lot of shifters have a blood kink. If we’re gravely injured, taking someone’s blood helps speed up the healing process, and biting someone to turn them has always been considered intimate. Some partake on the regular, and others just get off on biting, but sex tends to be generally-“ he wavers a hand, trying to describe it and failing, looking to Mason for help.
“More intense,” Mason finishes, kissing the bare skin on my shoulder. “We’re less afraid of breaking each other than humans are.”
Stop picturing it, stop picturing it. Important conversation going on here, supposed to be paying attention.
Clearing my throat, I look at Stryker’s smug face, seeing right through me. “So what does that have to do with Marcus wanting to take a chunk out of Mason’s arm?”
The man in question shifts beneath me, and I bite my tongue as it becomes clear that I’m not the only one getting distracted by the conversation at hand. “You mean wanting to take a bite out of you, and get me out of the way.”
My stomach flips as I catch onto their theory. “You were more focused on the fact that I was bleeding when I caught up to you than anything else. And Marcus showed up shortly after, likely catching the scent of my blood.”
Mason releases the iron cage of his arms to rest one hand on my thigh, going back to stroking a path with his thumb almost compulsively. “And we think that it was driving him mad with desire.”
