Page 36 of Wolf It Down, Knot Me Up

Every cell I own stands up.

“Oh, sweetheart.” My voice drops. “I’ll walk you anywhere you want, all night, if you ask nicely. I’ll even carry you.”

“Perfect. Because I hear there are wolves out here.” She pats my chest twice, her touch on fire, and it takes all my strength to not bring it up to my mouth to kiss each finger. “I’d hate to get eaten by the wrong one.”

Roman and Grayson lose it by the barbecue, chuckling out loud, and it takes me a full beat to catch up to being played.

“Walked right into that one,” Roman announces, pointing his spatula. “Both feet.”

“Fuck the both of you.” I glare in their direction and then back at her. She’s wearing the most satisfied smile I’ve seen on a woman. And I can’t be mad about it. “Touché. Well played.”

“Thank you.” She goes back to stretching her hands out toward the fire, pleased as a cat. “Been saving that for you.”

I narrow my gaze at her, but I let her keep the win because watching her collect it is worth more than the point.

“So what’s the occasion?” She nods at the spread over on the table by the barbecue.

“We do this a couple of times a week,” Grayson details, already plating burgers. “We’ve spent too much time indoors.”

“And it might be our last one outdoors, if our parole officer gets his way.” It’s out before I realize I could shut my mouth.

“For fuck’s sake, Wolf,” Grayson grumbles.

Lucy glances between us, then lets out a breath and pushes the hair off her face. “Well, that’s part of the reason I came here. I talked to your parole officer today, and he gave me an offer.” She wraps her arms around herself. “He’ll put me on suppressants for the bond so I don’t have to feel the agony. No charge, no fuss. But in exchange, the three of you go back inside to finish out your time.”

The fire crackles into the quiet. Roman’s frozen with a burger half off the grill, while Grayson stops with the spatula in the air.

“That’s the deal,” she finishes. “Me, medicated and comfortable. You three, gone. Crazy, right?”

Nobody says a word, because there’s nothing to say that isn’t a plea or a threat, and she deserves neither.

I long to tell her the truth as I’ve lived it: that suppressants numb the body, but the mind keeps suffering. And in my experience, the pills never fully mend the torn bond. I watched what it did to Grayson when his Omega dumped him the week he went inside, watched a man built like a mountain wake up clawing at his own chest for a year. He’d take suppressants to prevent him from dying from the broken bond, but it didn’t alleviate the agony and loss. But saying it now would sound like a man pleading for his own freedom, so I hold it. My gut knots, because our whole future is sitting in her hands, and the maddening thing is that I can’t even be angry at her.

“Okay,” she says. “You’ve all gone very quiet.”

“Yeah. That’s not what we planned for tonight, or expected.” Grayson sets the plate down. “Then again, Mr. Colby’s had it out for us since they handed him our file. Told us on day one he’d have us back in a cell as soon as he could.”

“Well.” Lucy lifts her chin. “We’ll see about that. And for the record, I really hate him.”

“We all do,” I state.

Roman moves to her side and shoulders me over, not roughly, just clearly staking his claim, and I let him, because he’s the one who bit her. My gaze drifts back to the fire.

The two of them bend close, going over what Mr. Colby said, and I keep half an ear on it while the rest of me goes dark. Four walls. A cell. After six months of this sky, it would gut all of us, and I don’t think Roman was joking about breaking out.

A cherry tomato suddenly bounces off my chest, and I glance over at Grayson, who jerks his head to join me. I head over toward him.

“If it’s our last night,” he whispers, “we go tonight. Woods run a hundred miles, and we know how to live off the grid.”

“Funny.” I keep my attention on the fire. “I said the same thing to Roman in the kitchen not twenty minutes ago.”

“Great minds.” His mouth curves. “So we take her with us?”

“Add kidnapping to our rap sheet, sure.”

“Still working out the scent-match part.” His gaze shifts over to her, and mine follows. She’s laughing at something Roman said. “Any other circumstances, we’d already be all over her. Instead, here we are, playing decent, while she decides whether to feed us back to the sharks.”

“Don’t let it live in your head. We deal with it when it comes.”