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On a scale ofnice eveningtoart gallery, this added a new tier to my repertoire of social gymnastics.
“Overwhelmed?” Sarah asked when I’d escaped to the house (which was off-limits to the guests) to catch my breath. It was a matter of thirty seconds before I’d get shooed back out again into the loving arms of my new pack.
I breathed deeply, hands braced on the counter. “You could say that.”
“Nothing like that back home?”
I shook my head.
Sarah herded me back towards the outdoors. “Equinox is the party where everyone puts prestige aside. It’s to celebrate the thaw, so everyone thaws out.”
Wolvesneverput prestige aside. I dug my boots into the floor and stared at her. Equinox wasn’t a nice party, it was about digging a big, obvious pit and seeing who was stupid enough to fall into it. It was anand this is why we can’t have nice thingstest. A very clever and beautiful trap. The proverbial, here’s an inch, take a foot and let’s see if you hang yourself with it.
She shoved. I didn’t budge.
“Don’t test me,” Sarah growled.
And here I thought prestige didn’t matter today.
I headed back out to the party. The swarm of bodies cascaded down the hillside. I paused on the porch steps for a moment, taking in the scene, and looking for a pale, silver wolf moving among the sea of flannels and denim and hoodies and pelts.
Maybe they were keeping him somewhere separate until the time came. They weren’t going to expect him to be in the crowd while I got presented with Searle, right?
Searle appeared at the steps. He looked up at me, expression quartz with no moss. He was carrying two drinks—both ice tea—and without a word he shifted the drinks, and offered me his free hand.
It took a second to process what I was supposed to do with his hand. And despite practice, my skin still jolted as I put my hand in his. He offered me my tea and guided me down the steps.
“You’re looking for him,” he said, low and dangerous by my ear. To everyone else, it looked like a gentle caress.
“Of course I am.” I kept my eyes on the crowd. “Do you want him startling me and I jump like I’ve seen a ghost?”
“Fair enough.” Searle nodded towards the hillside. “He’s down there, far at the edge. Get your look, since it seems everyone else is curious and gawking.”
Searle stood close, angling his body so his muscled chest brushed my shoulder, and cast his gaze towards the back of the body-ocean.
My heart flung itself against my ribs and a painfulthumptried to punch its way through my belly scar. My left fingers danced. I instinctively clutched Searle’s hand, then caught myself.
Sterling wasn’t at the edge of the ocean, he was well into the currents of mingling, moving through the press of people. He appeared to have on the same battered duck coat I’d seen in Clare, and a flannel in some dark shade, presumably wearing jeans. He moved through the crowd, surrounded mostly by males, and they all parted and moved away from him, preferring to squish each other than squish him. A few other males trailed behind him.
My throat went dry, then wet, then dry again. My brain threw some sparks. He took up a position towards the long side edge and watched the crowd. Some of the males orbited him and talked amongst themselves, but did not speak to Sterling, and he didn’t speak to them.
In the press of bodies, a moat had formed around Sterling, and the wolves nearby packed closer to each other rather than distribute themselves like a fleshy liquid to fill the available space.
I wasn’t the only wolf looking at him with interest, and Searle permitted me to indulge myself for a solid five minutes before he pulled me down into the flow of wolves.
“Congratulations,” an older wolf immediately told Searle. I’d lost count of how many wolves had congratulated us so far. My brain spun around inside my skull, dizzy from the never-ending parade of well-wishers. I tried to focus on the other wolves instead of craning my neck into a knot, looking for another glimpse of Sterling.
“Thank you,” Searle was saying.
“A lone wolf, though?” the older wolf turned his attention to me. “You really have never lived in a pack before, Summer?”
The lie stung hard enough to yank my focus back to the wolf. “No, my mother was a lone wolf. I’ve been on my own.”
“This must be a huge change,” the older wolf said, while a few others leaned in to listen. There was the familiar tinge of disapproval and distaste in his tone. Ah, there it was. Judging Summer for being a lone wolf raised by a lone wolf mother, as if it were somehow the fault of the pup or the dam that they’d opted to live apart from the pack.
“Not as much as you’d think.” I sipped my iced tea and watched while he tried to parse what the hellthatmeant.
Searle’s face remained quartz. The older wolf, instead of flounderingordelving into why I claimed my life as a lone orphan running from rogues was notradicallydifferent from life at AmberHowl, beat a hasty retreat. The other wolves who had been in orbit near him drifted away.
