“Nah, can’t. Gotta keep moving till I find what I’m looking for.” Storm was “between packs,” as she put it. “It’s not that I’m not happy with my own pack. There’s a good chance I’ll go back there someday. I just wanna know what else is out there, you know?”

“Why don’t you stay with us and join the Cleary pack? You’ll love it, you’ll see.”

“Uh-uh, no way. Told you, I can’t ’cause your alpha’s a douche.”

“But you said all alphas are douches, so you may as well stay here with our douchey alpha. At least this pack comes with Sully and me.” It was hard to fault his reasoning.

“It’s not just that. I guess I don’t want to be part of an aging pack, you know? I want kids. Lots of ’em. I want a whole litter of pups and I want to be part of something a little less rigid. I mean, your pack’s kind of weird. You get that, don’t you?”

“What’s weird about our pack?”

“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you don’t know.” The look on Jules’s face, and quite possibly on mine, must have told her that we weren’t all that clear on the matter. “All the secrecy is weird, okay? It’s weird that Dalton pulled me aside when I got here and said I could stay, but I had to agree not to talk to you about shifting. That shit is strange. And what’s with your alpha deciding when you can shift? That’s fucked up. It’s even weirder that he decides who you get to mate with. Like, omegas can’t be mated? What’s with that? And guys can’t mate guys? I’ve never heard of a pack that does that. It’s so weird. No wonder you guys still haven’t shifted.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“In other packs people teach their kids about shifting. It’s something you learn, like tracking or hunting. I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t they teach you?”

“Dalton says that shifting is one of life’s greatest mysteries,” said Jules, mimicking Dalton’s words almost verbatim. “He says it’s like how some humans like to find out the gender of their baby when they’re expecting, and some humans like waiting for a surprise. He says it’ll be the best surprise of our lives and why would we want to ruin that?”

“Why not? I’ll tell you why not, ’cause that shit is fucking you up. It’s making your wolves grow too big. It’s changing your magick and probably not in a good way.”