on the bucksaw makes my body respond to hers. What kind of shit am I to look at the faded marks left by her dead mate and think about the feel of her skin against mine, licking the marks at her neck like I could erase them with my tongue.
Suddenly, she stops. Taking a thin, clean rag from one of the small piles of them used to wipe sweat or stain or excess wood glue, she wipes off the sawdust, still looking at me quizzically. She drags the sweatshirt back on, pulling the hood up high, the sleeves down low. Then she thrusts her hands deep into the front pockets. Järv opens the door and she exits quickly, heading in the direction of the Great Hall and her office and whatever thing waiting for her there that is more maddening than the swarms of blackfly.
Unwrapping my blistered hands from the grip, I head to the window. She’s already gone, leaving nothing behind but a rippling of leaves and branches in her path.
That and half a dozen idiot wolves banging one another’s backs while they bend over, howling with laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
Ziggy rubs his hands on his pants, then rubs his tearing eyes and taps his nose.
“You smell,” he says, tapping his nose, “like a juvenile.”
Shit. I bend my head to my armpit, inhaling a deep breath.
“Not there, Connie. Here.” And Ziggy cups both hands over the fly of his pants.
I look down at the heavy salute straining against my zipper.
Then a terrible thing occurs to me about the Alpha’s cocked head and questioning gaze.
“Do you think she…knows?” I whisper to Ziggy.
“You don’t get to be Alpha if you don’t know wolves.”
“But I’m not a wolf.”
“If I smelled that smell on a turtle”—he slams the table with another hiccupped chuckle—“I would still know what was going on in his turtle brain and his turtle cock.”
Oh god. I rub at my eyebrow and then my eye and then my mouth, staring out the window at the wall of green where she disappeared, her enigmatic smile now humiliatingly clear.
“Nothing to be embarrassed by. Every unmated male would cover the Alpha if he had the chance. But since only dominant males have that chance, most of us don’t go all”—he makes a dismissive tchck, flipping his index finger high in the air—“all oop-richte. That’s when”—he points to the bulge in my pants—“your penis is—”
“I got it.”
I’m grateful when Sten thumps his hammer on the floor. He doesn’t do it hard, but the sheer weight of it vibrates through the floor and up into the table. Everyone stops and turns expectantly toward him. The problem is Sten is very good at getting everyone’s attention but has no idea what to do with it once he has it.
He grunts at Ziggy.
“Rupf,” says Ziggy, foundering around for where to start. “So we have to… I mean, the Alpha… Wait, no. So humans have these things up in the north,” Ziggy starts.
“Humans have lots of things up north,” Inga says.
“These things have wheels and are very loud on weekends.” He says weekends with a special preening emphasis like a child with a new word that none of his friends know.
“What’s a weekend?” Järv asks, dubious.
I edge slowly away toward the far back corner of the room where there is a huge worktable with two big bench vises holding a massive plank.
And that is where I am, fly unzipped, rearranging my bent and aching penis, when Ziggy turns to me and asks me to explain weekends to a batch of curious werewolves.
* * *
They are all in my dormitory. Every single one of the 7th Echelon has come into the place I have come to think of as my own. They pick up everything—library books, clothes, toothbrush—and sniff at it.
Because of blackfly, we won’t start work until after Evening Song, so the Alpha wanted us to get some sleep. Here. Which is why the entire echelon is sniffing and stripping.
Ziggy holds the tube of toothpaste to his good eye.
“I don’t like the liver flavor,” he says with a frown. “Tastes like—”
“Out. I’m taking a shower.”
It doesn’t matter that there is a passel of wolves separated by the thin door; I fist my cock as soon as I get into the shower. Leaning my forehead against the tile, I remember the amber fire of her eyes, the sawdust gathered in the curve leading down to her—
Evie.
I turn off the water, waiting for my breathing to slow as I watch the