have?”
“He shouldn’t touch her anywhere .” Hunter’s angry words proved he was human again. I was starting to lose track of his lightning-fast transformations, something an ordinary werewolf could do perhaps once in an hour if he was strong and well-trained. But nobody had ever said Hunter was an ordinary werewolf.
“Ignore the peanut gallery,” I said, filing the uber-alpha’s frequent shifts away to be analyzed at a later date. “ Did Quill touch you, Lia?”
The kid kept her eyes trained on the ground and merely shook her head. No, it appeared her disapproval of the cowboy shifter was a gut reaction only. And while I didn’t like to ignore her intuition, everyone else seemed okay with adding Quill to the pack. Which suggested Lia was just young, inexperienced, and overreacting.
Yes, I’d seen Quill’s covetous gaze last night. But the cowboy shifter had also seemed to accept my admonishment and I’d noticed him keeping a greater distance from Lia afterwards. The unfortunate truth was that the girl was going to get those hungry looks from pretty much any outpack male. And given the fact that females were probably few and far between in his life, it was hard to hold the cowboy shifter’s initial reaction against him.
So I made the decision for all of us. “Ginger will train some manners into him,” I promised our youngest member. “And like Glen said, we’re only letting him in on probation. So if anything happens, Lia—anything at all—you can tell us and we’ll kick him out. Okay?”
“Okay,” the girl whispered, and I hoped I wasn’t making the wrong decision.
Still, the clock was ticking. Every minute we spent in the comfort of our tent debating our next move was another minute that the barflies could use to track us down. We needed to get back on the road ASAP, and that meant deciding which, if either, of the two strange males was going to ride along with us as we traveled to our next destination.
“So, Quill’s in, tentatively,” I continued. “How about Hunter? You can vote with thumbs up or thumbs down since he’s sitting right outside the tent and listening to every word we say . ” I raised my voice in annoyance, but the uber-alpha only laughed. And my pack mates, as usual, ignored the nuances of my request.
“I like Hunter,” Lia said, her voice a little louder than it had been previously. “I want him to come with us.”
I rolled my eyes. The timid halfie was terrified of the charmer Quill but was thrilled to have an uber-alpha in the pack? I’d never understand the minds of children.
“Ginger?”
“Definitely out,” the red-head responded, her eyes sparkling with passion. “We don’t need him and we don’t want him.”
“What she said,” her brother quickly chimed in.
My gaze turned to Glen at last and he tilted his head to one side in consideration. I could see my beta doing the same math I’d engaged in a few moments earlier. If he voted pro-Hunter, then the tie-breaking choice would be up to me. And I somehow didn’t want to be the one to say that the uber-alpha had to go.
And yet...the uber-alpha had to go. He was too strong for our young pack to handle and we had too little understanding of his purpose in following us around to trust him at our backs. In short, Hunter was a danger to our clan, so we couldn’t welcome him into the fold.
Nodding his understanding of my dilemma, Glen sealed Hunter’s fate. “Tentatively, probationarily...I say no. Hunter is out.”
Chapter 7
I expected the uber-alpha to be annoyed. What I didn’t expect was the flood of invective that came surging out of his mouth, some of the words so intensely imaginative that Cinnamon felt moved to cover up Lia’s sensitive ears. Ginger, on the other hand, was clearly taking mental notes, and I had to admit the female trouble twin had a point. Hunter’s language was almost poetic in its pure, unadulterated filth.
“Dude, tone it down,” Glen growled. “We
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