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“Duly noted,” I promised. “I could think of worse fates than my sexy mate wanting me to fuck her like an animal.”
I felt Marley’s gaze on me again and looked over to meet it. She wore an adorably flushed expression, complete with a scrunched-up nose.
This was the best road trip I’d had in a long time.
Chapter 3
Marley
Stupid Cole with his stupid perfect body and his stupid sexy smile and his penchant for sweet torture. I couldn’t tell what was worse—that he wouldn’t tell me about the claiming, or that he’d left me to my own devices to imagine what it could be.
The drive was a long, torturous twenty miles after that. Cole seemed happy to engage in any conversation except the one consuming my thoughts, made all the more infuriating every time he cheekily asked me if I was feeling “a little distracted.”
When we pulled up to a set of gates, I fixed my face to not look too much like a petulant child. The kid working in the security kiosk was young, maybe seventeen, with bronze skin and dark brown hair. He wore a polo with a logo of a crescent moon. The moon had a wolf print inside it.
“Fancier than I was expecting,” Cole said under his breath as he rolled down his window.
The young man beamed at us. “You must be the old man’s grandson, and she, your mate,” he said to Cole. “Welcome to the headquarters for the Savannah Silver Moon pack. We’re happy to have you here.”
The young man handed a pamphlet to Cole. It had a map with a highlighted route through a collection of streets inside the compound. “If you just follow the route mapped out here, you’ll get to guest housing. The house number and door code are written on the corner there, so no pesky key to worry about holding onto or losing,” he said. “I’m Eugenio. I also put my number down there in case you need anything and the old man is away.”
“Thanks, Eugenio,” Cole said. “For the info and the warm welcome.”
Jack and Travis pulled in behind us. Cole looked back at their SUV in the rearview mirror. “That’s my second and my mate’s brother. You were expecting them, too, correct?”
“Jack and Travis? Yes, sir, we were expecting them. They’ll be staying in the housing directly next door to yours.”
“Thanks. Need anything else from me?” Cole asked.
“Not at all. Enjoy your stay.”
Eugenio reached for a remote and clicked the single button on it. The heavy gate opened slowly, as if it was made of solid steel. Perhaps it was. Cole took the route specified with me playing navigator. Jack and Travis followed behind us.
Driving through the compound sort of felt like we were entering an exclusive gated community or a military base. There were cafés, restaurants, parks, libraries. We even saw a small handful of shifters doing deep stretches in their lupine forms.
“This is...” I started.
“It’s weird,” Cole assessed.
“I was going to say it’s kind of beautiful.”
He looked down at me, his brows raised. “Beautiful?”
I nodded. “Sure. I mean, you always have to be so careful about where you shift when we’re back in New Middle Bluff. It’s kind of amazing to see shifters just doing their thing both in and out of their wolf forms, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of reading Stepford Wolves to me.”
I snorted and broke into a ridiculous fit of giggles. It started with a little trilling laugh before devolving into tear-jerking cackling. “That one tops all the others,” I said through my tears. “God, that is the dad joke of all dad jokes.”
“Well, now you’ve just given me a challenge,” Cole said, reaching over to squeeze the soft flesh of my waist. I gave a startled yelp before breaking into another giggle fit. “Hey, come on, focus,” he teased me. “You’re our navigator.”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry. Um, turn right up ahead, then left at the next street.”
Soon, we found ourselves deep in the center of the compound, surrounded by a little stretch of picture-perfect townhouses all painted in pastels like the famous ones in San Francisco. I could only imagine what Jack was saying in the car behind us.
Oh my god, Marley, you have to help me figure out how to find a shifter boy so I can live here.
I shook my head at the thought as Cole pulled into the parking spot with the same label as the building we’d be staying in. “Wait here a minute. Don’t get out of the car without me right next to you,” he said.
