Janet Lupo practically threw her invitation at the goon guarding the doors to the reception hall. Bad enough that one of the most eligible werewolves in the pack—the world!—was now off the market, but he’d taken a pure human to mate. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Humans were okay. If you liked sloths.

She stomped toward her table, noticing with bitter satisfaction the way people jumped out of her path. Pack members walked clear when she was in a good mood. Which, at the moment, she was not.

Bad enough to be outnumbered a thousand to one by the humans, but to marry one? And fuck one and get it pregnant and join the PTA and…

The mind reeled.

Janet had nothing against humans as a species. In fact, she greatly admired their rapaciousness. Homo sapiens never passed up prey, not even if they were stuffed—not even if they didn’t eat meat! They’d kill each other over shoes, for God’s sake. They had fought wars over shiny metals and rocks. Janet had never understood why a diamond was worth killing over but a pink topaz was hardly worth sweating about. Humans had fought wars over the possession of gold, but iron ferrite, which looked exactly the same, was worthless.

And when humans started killing, watch out. Whether it was “Free the Holy Land from the infidels!” or “Cotton and Slave’s Rights!” or “Down with Capitalism!” or whatever was worth mass genocide, when humans went to war, your only chance was to get out of the way and keep your head down.

But marry one? Marry someone slower and weaker? Much, much weaker? Someone with no pack instincts, someone who only lived for themself? It’d be—it’d be like a human marrying a bear. A small, sleepy bear who hardly ever moved. Fucking creepy, is what it was.

And there was Alec, sitting at the head table and smirking like he’d won the lottery! And his mate—uh, wife—sitting next to him. She was cute enough if you liked chubby, which the boys in the pack did. A bony wife wasn’t such a great mother when food was scarce. Not that food was scarce these days, but thousands of years of genetic conditioning died hard. Besides, who wanted to squash their body down onto a bundle of sticks?

Okay, there wasn’t anything wrong with her looks. Her looks were fine. So was her smell—like peaches packed in fresh snow. And the bimbo knew what she was getting into—her old lady had worked for Old Man Wyndham, way back in the day—so the whole family had experience keeping secrets. But to call a sloth a sloth, the new Mrs. Kilcurt was not pack. She wasn’t family. And she would never be, no matter how many cubs Alec got on her.