I snort, but push the zipper back up. “As if they don’t have enough gossip fodder already?” I slide into my car. “Thanks for making me lunch. Well, second lunch. I feel like a hobbit, but it tasted great.”
Rook grins. “You’re welcome. Now, go home and take it easy. I don’t want to see you back here until Sunday for the pack social. We’re not training this week.” He means business, so I don’t argue. His jaw relaxes when I nod. “Meet me at my house, and we’ll walk over to the social together.” I cock a brow at him, and he shakes his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to show up to the social alone. They’ll swarm you.”
Yeah, I don’t want to be swarmed by werewolves, no matter how friendly—or not so friendly, in the women’s cases—they may be. “Your place it is. See you Sunday.”
Sunday comes too quickly. I’m a little nervous for my first werewolf party. So far, as a whole, I’ve really liked werewolves, but it’s like they’re all extreme extroverts. Haven’t met one yet that wasn’t energetic, outgoing, fun, flirty, and intense. Even Wulf—the lone wolf—is still extroverted. He just doesn’t like other wolves. Get him around anyone else, and he’s the life of the party.
I’m not shy, but nor am I an extrovert. Little wallflower me is going to be strung out by the end of the night. I can just sense it. Even the guy in the guard shack as I enter the compound tells me his name is John and asks me to save him a dance tonight.
The party is held in the large multipurpose room in the pack’s clubhouse. There’re no decorations, just a stage at one end where a DJ has a nice setup, and there’s room to dance on the floor in front of the stage. The other half of the room is filled with tables and chairs, where families and friends are eating and socializing. There are buffet tables lining the back wall piled with food. The party seems to be potluck style, with the exception of the hot dogs and cheeseburgers they’re bringing inside from some sliding glass doors that open to an outside picnic area.
I’m glad I meet Rook at his house instead of showing up to the social alone, because when we get there, the party is in full swing and every pair of eyes looks my way when we walk in. There are almost five hundred wolves here, from babies to elderly, and every single one of them stops what they’re doing to openly gawk at me. That they’re all smiling doesn’t make me feel better about the staring.
Maya dissolves the awkward tension by breaking away from the group of people she was talking to and shooting straight for me, squealing my name. “Nooooorrrrraaaa!”
I brace for the tackle hug, but Maya is so strong that if Rook didn’t reach out and steady me when he did, we would tumble to the ground. “Easy on the human, Maya,” he growls.
Maya blushes under the reprimand and lets me go. “Sorry. I keep forgetting you’re so fragile,” she says to me. Her grin quickly comes back. “I’m so glad you made it. I’ve got a ton of people to introduce you to.” She elbows me and winks. “Everyone’s interested in the woman who saved my life and got Wulf to come home, even if temporarily.”
She grabs my hand, and her thoughts immediately swarm me. She doesn’t just have a list of people to introduce me to; she’s been talking me up to all of the pack’s single males. She likes me—likes how brave I was when we were captured last month—and hopes to find me a mate within the pack so that I’ll join. I hate to burst her bubble, but that’s not going to happen, for several reasons. Still, for this job, I do need to be social, and I couldn’t have thought up a better plan than to have someone else throwing me at a number of dance partners.
“Hang on a minute, Maya,” Rook says, grabbing the hood of my jacket before Maya can successfully sweep me away. “Alpha Toth wants to introduce her to the luna, and I get the first dance.”
Maya pouts, but it’s playful, and she hands me back over to my escort. “Oh, all right. But don’t hog her all night. She’s my friend, too, and I promised I’d introduce her to a few people.”
Rook snorts, as if he knows Maya’s plan without needing to read her mind. He drags me away without promising her anything. “I don’t know whether I should thank you or yell at you for acting like you own me,” I tease Rook as we make our way to the stage, where Alpha Toth is standing with his mate.
Alpha Toth is talking to someone who has a clipboard and is saying something while pointing toward the food. He’s wearing designer jeans and a nice button-down shirt, and is holding hands with a beautiful blonde woman wearing a warm smile and a short black cocktail dress. The handsome couple makes me feel underdressed in my jeans and hoodie. “You said this was casual,” I mutter to Rook, who’s got my hand tucked in his arm like some old-fashioned gentleman.
Rook chuckles. “I said casual, not sloppy.”
I scoff, but he has a point. “For your information, I have on a nice halter-top blouse that Cecile picked out for me under the hoodie. And my hair is down, for once, thank you very much.”
Rook looks at me with an envy-worthy cocked eyebrow that I immediately find annoying. “And you’re wearing the hoodie because…?” he asks.
“Hello. It was cold outside. We humans don’t have the same inner heater you werewolves do.”
He sighs as he leads me up onto the stage beside the alpha and the luna. “All right, fine, you’re excused, but hand it over.” He holds out his hand to me, waiting for me to give up the hoodie, and my stomach drops. I know I need to glean some thoughts from these people, and I can only do that by skin-to-skin contact, but knowing that and being ready to do it are completely different.
“Come on, take it off.” Rook shocks me by leaning in so close to me that his lips brush my ear. He rubs his cheek against mine and says, “You were the one who said you’d need to show a little skin to get good reads on people, or whatever.”
I gasp when he lifts the bottom of my hoodie up, forcing my arms into the air. He slowly raises the hoodie over my head, caressing my sides as he works it off, and tosses it aside, all while giving me a heated gaze, as if we’re in a bedroom about to get naughty. The move is sensual and so full of tension that it makes my body shiver and my face flush.
My eyes grow so wide they begin to hurt. Rook has just marked me with his scent and sort of undressed me in front of the entire pack. Rook’s mouth twitches, snapping me out of my shock, and I immediately punch him on the arm. “Rook!” Everyone in the room laughs—Rook most of all. I hadn’t realized they were all still watching us. My face turns bright red. I lean in and hiss at him. “I can’t believe you just did that! That is beyond giving them something to gossip about.”
Rook nods, unrepentant. “That was the point.”
“What? Since when are you a possessive douche?”
That earns me another laugh—from the crowd and Rook. “Sweetheart, I’m a werewolf. We’re all cavemen when it comes to women.” The room chuckles again, and Rook lowers his voice a little. “Sorry. My wolf is close to the surface with you around so many unmated males. That was all him.”
I stand back and eye him skeptically. “I thought you don’t date.”
“I don’t. But my wolf senses your dominance. He can’t help himself. And it doesn’t help that even my human side feels protective of you. Wulf told me how you’re very wary around men. With good reason, he said.” Rook looks out over the crowd, narrowing his eyes at a few people. “Wolves can be…enthusiastic. I just want to make sure any man interested in you is a little more reserved than normal. Trust me, with my scent on you and a public display of intimacy, any man who wants you will think twice before making a move on you now. They’ll be too afraid of the competition.”
“Too afraid you’ll rip them apart for touching me, you mean.”
Rook gives me a proud smile that is all wolf. “Exactly.”
Inside, I’m really grateful, but I can’t say that to him with everyone in the room subtly listening to our conversation. “Well,” I say, huffing a little in exasperation, “I appreciate the thought, but isn’t the point of being here tonight to get to know people? No one is going to come near me at all now.”