the drive, no doubt thinking about all the implications of what we might be walking into, but a thought comes to me. “I think Addie has a history with Pack Rockhead.”
Penn glances at me from the rearview mirror. “What makes you say that?”
“That day when her alpha showed up, they were talking about it. I don’t know, it’s just the impression I got. She seemed...scared.” I catch Herrick curling his fingers into fists and I consider my next words carefully. “Listen, I’ve thought about this a lot, and I decided I’m going to go see her. Apologize. I don’t want to let the bond sever. If she’ll have me, I’m gonna try this out, and I think you should too.”
Both of them go still. “We don’t even know her,” Herrick argues lamely.
“She doesn’t want us,” Penn adds.
I snort. “Are you seriously using that as an excuse to be a stubborn son of a bitch? She said all of that because she was hurt and pissed. Hell, I would’ve said that, too. She’ll change her mind once you’re actually nice to her. Or...maybe it’ll just fly over her head,” I add with a smirk.
Penn looks at me warily. “You’re gonna say a lot of duck puns aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
“But we’re coyotes,” Herrick puts in. “We can’t be mated to a—”
I punch him on the arm, hard, cutting off his words. He whirls around, nostrils flaring, but I point a finger in his face before he can respond. “That’s bullshit prejudice you’re spewing. You’re better than that. Sure, it’s not the norm for preds and preys to mate, but so what? Our animals are intelligent and instinctual,” I remind him. “You trust your coyote and he always leads you right. Maybe you should trust him now when it comes to a mate. Does it really bother you that much that she’s a duck?”
“Yeah,” he grits out. Then, “No. Fuck, I don’t know!” He turns his back on me again to glare out the window. “That shit was never done in our old pack.”
“Well, we aren’t in our old pack, are we?” I shoot back.
“Guess not.”
“We left for a reason, Herrick,” I remind him. “Because we realized that some shifters, especially huge pred packs like ours, are stuck in their ways. We were caught in centuries-old rules and expectations. It was all politics and power plays. We wanted something different, remember?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I remember.”
I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere. “Okay, then. Now look me in the eye and tell me you don’t like her, regardless of her animal.” He doesn’t say a thing. “Exactly. You do like her. And your animal definitely digs her, or he wouldn’t have answered the mate-call in the first place, or be sitting outside her compound at night. I’m gonna apologize and ask her out. You should, too. Both of you. Our animals formed a quad bond and we should see it through.”
After a moment of heavy silence, Herrick sighs. “Fuck. I was a dick.”
“Yep. But we can still fix this.”
Herrick arches a brow. “Really?” he drawls.
“Eh, maybe.”
Herrick shakes his head, but the corner of his mouth tilts up.
“She’s our mate. She’s worth the effort of trying. The worst that can happen is she rejects us, which we already did to her. If that happens, we’ll go our separate ways, same way we’re doing now. But at least we’ll know we tried. We owe it to her and to ourselves to apologize and try to fix this.”
He looks back at me, his expression unreadable. “When did you get so fucking wise?”
I try to contain my cocky grin. “Probably around the time you grew into a giant asshole.”
He tosses an empty bottle of water at me, but I dodge it with a laugh.
“So we all agree, then? We’re doing this whole quad mate thing with Addie?” Penn asks, stealing looks at us.
“Hell yes, we’re doing it.” And hopefully doing her again soon, too.
Relief washes over his expression. “Okay. Then we go talk to her after this. Agreed?”
Herrick and I both nod, and a huge weight lifts off my chest. Anticipation starts growling in my stomach, ready to be reunited with our mate. Our mate. It seems surreal, and yet, the three of us have always been so close that it feels right.
“Okay, then we’ll get this meeting over with and we’ll see if we can find anything out. If they did hurt Addie, then they’re gonna have a fucking big problem with us. But we can’t act suspicious. We’ll