not really arguing. I now know it’s pointless, given the difficulty Pack have with facial recognition. Strip away sound and smell and feel, and for wolves, it’s like trying to separate one stick figure from another.
Once speakers, projector, and screen are set up, I help other wolves distribute the rickety gold-toned party chairs with their bloodstained ecru cushions in rows with ample leg room on either side of the projector tripod connected to the computer.
We toss around large claw-picked pillows on the floor up front and bowls with water and the teeth-shattering sweet potato pucks that wolves like to gnaw. On the short wall to the right of the door is a table with napkin-lined baskets filled with peanut-butter muffins and popcorn. Chipped earthenware jugs are filled with water and iced tea.
There is no swinging door here, so pups jump their paws up on the screen, whimpering until someone opens up. A pup takes the corner of one of the large cushions between his jaws and drags it across the floor. An older wolf drops his cheese chew, clambers to his feet, and drags both pillow and pup back across the floor.
The door opens again, admitting a wolf dragging a slack Nils in his teeth, his legs dragging along the floor.
“Hey!” I grab at Nils and the wolf growls until I smack him in the jaw, not hard, but in the way of wolves making a point. He opens his jaws and drops the baby into my arms.
“How many times do I have to say this: don’t carry maggots in your teeth.” I smooth out Nils’s rumpled and spit-covered shirt. It would help if he complained about the rough treatment but he never does. I suppose he’s so used to being carried around by the scruff that it doesn’t occur to him that this is not natural. That he should be screaming and crying, not looking up at me with his big, dark eyes and the tip of his tongue sticking out from the corner of his two-toothed smile.
“And just how do you suggest picking him up?” asks Ziggy.
“Arms, Ziggy. Arms.”
Ziggy and the wolf exchange glances. The wolf shrugs, then starts to pick something out of his forepaw with his teeth as though to point out the hole in my logic.
I dampen a cloth with some cold water and wash the dirt from the front of Nils’s legs and the back of his feet, then drag another pillow over, angled to the side so he can be with the pack but not overwhelmed by the flashing lights on the screen.
Soon, the Meeting Hall is crowded. There’s a lot of posturing for the one remaining floor pillow. Magnus gets it until Elijah dumps him out, dragging it away for Thea. Ziggy is once again showing some female his comparison of Bill Nye and Bill Nighy; she lifts her hands up as though to say of course they’re the same. Several pups have joined Nils on his big pillow. Lying on him for a moment, then running off. Poor Nils raises his arm awkwardly after them. One juvenile taunts him by waving her tail in his face. He finally catches it and brings it to his mouth, though there is too much fur and it makes him sneeze.
In the third row on the left side, in the chair one over from the aisle sits Poul with his arm around an empty seat.
“Alpha.” I nod to Poul and sit down, feeling the warmth of his arm stretched around my back, smelling the scent of his slaggy armpit.
“I’m saving this seat for the Alpha,” Poul says, staring at me.
“And if she asks me to get up, I’ll get up. Until then, move your fucking arm.” I feel the strength, the warmth, and the hesitation in his arm as he tries to decide whether his status is more likely to suffer from giving in to my demands or staying seated with his arm curled intimately around a Shifter.
He taps his finger rapidly on the back of the chair before finally deciding to extricate his arm. Then to make it clear that he’s not giving in, he pushes his face close, his eyes boring into mine. I may not be a wolf, but I recognize a dominance play when I see it.
Removing my cheese chew to the hand carrying the iced tea, I rock onto the back legs of the chair and slam forward with fair to middling momentum. Poul backs up, his head raised, trying