be a pride bonding thing.” Dash grinned and rubbed his hands together with excitement. “Hailey will be so pissed when we aren’t begging for her to cook for us.”
“Dash—”
“No! Those fucks don’t get to wave their dicks around over this. Their fault loaning their rooms to the shitwolves that took my mate.”
“Your mate.” Seth pointed at his brother, then threw his arm wide. “Their mates. You’re all paired up and bringing cubs into the world. That is not my life. It won’t ever be my life. There’s a line between me and the rest of you. It was a mistake coming here.”
Dash’s eyes flashed. “Coming here was a mistake?” he asked in a low voice. “Guess that means all the brother shit was a mistake, too.”
Seth turned from him and marched for the dresser. As much as he could with his body screaming at him. “I do better on my own,” he grumbled, yanking open a drawer. “The pride will be better off without me.”
“Fucking hell. You’re moving like an old woman.” Dash snatched the shirts and threw them on top of the pile. Done, he grabbed Seth’s face between his palms and tried to turn his head side to side. “You look like shit. Did they get you with some silver?”
“It’s not silver,” Seth snapped and jerked out of the grasp. “I’m shiftless.”
Shiftless. The word was always muttered with disgust or pity. His very nature made other shifters uncomfortable. He was made wrong. Defective. Broken. Too human for their world, too much of a freak for the human world.
Shit. Seth scrubbed a hand through his hair. The deafening, engulfing silence tied them together in a truth he hadn’t wanted to share. Not yet, anyway. Not when he could still pretend he had a place among them.
But he didn’t, did he? He’d already given that up.
Seth grimaced at the duffle bag on the bed, then threw a look around the rest of the small apartment in the back of the Crowley barn. They’d made him feel welcome and helped him fill the place with secondhand furniture. In the months he’d lived there, he hadn’t added any personal touches. Not a photo to be found, nor any art on the walls. The place may as well have been a motel room. Maybe he’d always known he wouldn’t be a permanent resident.
His phone buzzed against the two-seater table where he’d left it. Both men snapped their focus to the interruption. Neither said a word. Neither moved.
The phone slid against the table with another vibrating rattle. Growl on his lips, Seth snatched up the device. He scowled at the number on the screen, then rejected the call and tossed it back down to the table.
Of all the damn days for her to reach out. She had the fucking nose of a bloodhound and knew exactly when to pile on more shit.
"Huh," Dash said finally, head cocked.
Anger churned in Seth’s gut. He’d put up with that shit his entire life. The stares. Attitude. The damn cold shoulder. Being eyed like a freak show curiosity.
“That’s it?” he snarled.
He’d learned to keep his mouth shut and his business to himself. Some small part of him hoped to avoid the reaction from his brother and the rest of his pride, but there it was. No fucking different from the rest of the shifter world.
Dash’s face broke into a grin. “Well, if you’re going to get pissy about it, it means you’re a damned dirty cheat. Undefeated in the ring,” he licked a finger and marked the air with a point, “until I beat you, my ass—”
“Fuck off. I won those fights fair and square.”
“On purely technical terms! Goading some asshole into showing fang is half the fun.”
When Seth raised his middle finger, Dash went on, “Shocked, mostly, that you kept it a secret all these months. You’ve been living here what, four months now? And not once did we question you never going on runs with us or hauling off for a fight in fur.” He shrugged. “Clearly, we’re idiots.”
“You said it, not me,” Seth muttered in agreement.
His phone rang again. Dash’s brows shot up and he pointed. “You need to get that?”
Seth thought—briefly—of rejecting the call a second time. Better yet, let it ring and ring until the robotic voicemail rattled off instructions to leave a message he’d never return. No personal greeting for his inbox; the only people from his past to call were his mother—who he always answered—and the woman looking to collect on