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Chapter 1 - Slater
That woman looked too familiar.
And I shouldn’t really have been paying attention to her, right? Because this was a meeting, a pack meeting, one of those boring sorts of meetings that made me picture a more corporate setting. I didn’t know much about that kind of crap, but I knew when something was boring.
This was definitely a boring time for everyone. Try as our alpha might, he just couldn’t seem to get people excited aboutmate bondsandtrue love. While it was heartwarming to witness the union of others, I never considered myself to be on that list. It wasn’t like I’d had any great experiences with any of my relationships.
Even my dick had seen better days. The pickings were slim in town, and I wasn’t eyeing anybody around here despite how much my mother insisted my eyes wandered. Not many people understood why I kept such a close eye on my surroundings. It was a matter of habit, and it often led to me pointing out things in need of repair that only an inspector could have noticed.
But I wasn’t an inspector. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about what was degrading. My interest was in fixing things because I wanted to fix them, not because they needed to be fixed. Mom called it my ADHD hyperfocus (something she had read on the internet) while my father insisted it was just me being a man (something he also had read on the internet).
Neither of them were technically wrong. I just didn’t care for the technical side of it. I liked what I liked, and I liked doing things that I liked. It was even better when no one asked me to do it. Suggestions didn’t get me anywhere. But my brain could go just about anywhere without any guidance. Mom called it rebellion.
I called it creativity.
Mom wasn’t a terrible mom. She wasn’t an invasive mom or a paranoid mom. She just didn’t take a lot of time to understand me—she was the kind of mom who made tea and went back to the paper with her husband next to her. Those two were quite a pair together. True love, or whatever, persisted because they didn’t cause each other issues.
If only that were an easy thing to find.
But that didn’t really matter to me anymore. Whatdidmatter, however, was that chick with the crisp tan wearing the Sex Pistols t-shirt. Worn and rugged fabric stretched over her voluptuous curves all the way to her tight black jeans. Those slender fingers played with strands of thick, long hair, midnight black with bubblegum pink tips.
She did look familiar. But only because her ass reminded me of something from so long ago it wasn’t even worth mentioning. I was willing to bet that her face was gorgeous and likely different from what I was picturing. A name slithered into my awareness and then disappeared just as quickly, forcing me to keep staring at those delicious curves.
Impossible. Anybody as alt as this woman couldn’t have possibly survived this crew of doorknobs. Though I had to guess the twin kids sitting with her were likelybecauseof surviving whatever these dead nails had put her through. If that guy staring her down like she was a witch from two tables away was any indication of how this pack treated alt chicks, then I couldn’t imagine it was particularly great.
Maybe she needed a friend. And not just because my cock was begging for attention.
I knew what it was like being on the outskirts. Scar tissue dimpled the right side of my face underneath my cobalt-blue eye. My white-blond hair was always messy and in my eyes, recklessly trimmed with a pair of shears I kept in my bathroom at home. My box build wasn’t something that could be ignored even underneath the baggy t-shirts I wore.
Today’s choice was The Smiths. I had to bet this chick had heard of them too, maybe even liked them if she liked that overseas whiny stuff. She kept shifting, kept moving, kept wiggling that bottom of hers. Though it wasn’t on purpose, I could have sworn something in my heart recognized it from an old memory.
Feedback whined from the speakers. Everyone cringed. I turned my attention back to Troy who was fumbling with a microphone while Blake attempted to help. Years of attending dive-bar punk shows had gotten me used to such sounds like the hiss of static through a speaker and the sudden jolt of sound. I tried to hide my laughter but didn’t succeed given the glares from a couple of folks around me.
Whatever, it wasn’t like I needed their approval. I was only here because my mother insisted that she needed to hear the latest mate pairings so she could keep up with her report column for the pack’s modest newspaper. The bank in town would have probably given her the day off if she asked, but she was a proud woman who hadn’t missed a day of work in her entire life.
I wasn’t sure if that made her insufferable or reliable.
Another chuckle rippled its way to the surface, one I was able to contain as Blake fixed the microphone for Troy. The crowd cheered. I clapped lightly, keeping my attention on the curvy woman seated with her kids. Was it wrong to check out a single mom? I mean, I had to assume she was single if nobody was seated at her table. Then again, maybe she had a mate who was working in the field.
But if that was the case, then why did that guy keep staring at her with a mixture of fascination and frustration?
My left eyebrow shot up.That might be something for Mom’s juicy gossip crew.
“Friends, thank you for your patience,” Troy said. Static crackled every so often, though it wasn’t as bad as before. “We’ll be announcing a few more pairings today.”
Someone up front stood up. “Sorry for the interruption, Alpha, but are we having another auction soon?”
Troy smiled. “That was a remarkable success that we weren’t expecting, so we plan to do it again soon.”
Blake stepped forward. “We’ll plan to hold an auction every month until we have everyone of mating age paired.”
Mating age, I thought bitterly.It sounds so archaic when they say it like that.
A hand went up on the left side of the room. “What if we’re in college when we get paired?”
Troy adjusted the microphone on the stand. “We always encourage our members to continue higher education and will do everything in our power to ensure their success.”
“So, if we’re eighteen, we should just expect to have our whole lives set up for us?” called another voice. “That sounds pretty weird if you ask me.”
