by Penny Alley
Karly had flushed hot all the way from her belly to her eyebrows. “We’re going to do it right there wherever we drop?”
“No point waiting to seal the deal.”
“My divorce isn’t final yet.”
“Have you signed your fancy, legal papers yet?” Mama Margo countered.
“Yes.”
“Then time’ll take care of it. Shuck down.”
From that point on, everything Karly did revolved around the upcoming hunt. She had to bathe, twice: once to get clean and then again, immersing herself head to toe in brown, thickly-herbed water that smelled like something dead had been marinating in it for at least three days.
“Smells like a possum’s behind, but this recipe’s been in the family for centuries and believe you me, it works!”
“Oh my God.” Karly held her nose, doing everything she could to keep from gagging while Mama Margo washed that smell all through her hair. “They’re going to smell me coming from fifty miles away.”
“Exactly.” Mama Margo thumped her on the head. “Don’t expect me to do it all for you. Come on, girl. Get it all up in your privates.”
Age and hard living had given Mama Margo the kind of hands that only seasoned fishermen and lumberjacks displayed with pride. A cranky disposition and ill-concealed urgency made them rougher still as she gathered Karly’s long blonde hair, beading, braiding, and twisting it up in a series of loops and ponytails behind her.
“There,” she said, eyeing the whole mess with critical pride once she was done. “That’ll give him something to grip onto.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Karly groaned. “How long do I have to sit in this god-awful stench?”
“Try and do something nice for a chevolak,” Mama Margo tsked. “Fine, big baby. Get out if you want to, but don’t you dare touch my towels! That smell’ll never come out!”
Karly ended up standing on a wad of paper towels in Mama Margo’s tiny kitchen, drip drying in full display of three open windows
The body paints came out then, and with Karly doing nothing but watching as the kitchen clock worked its way around to 5 am and the slow gray of pre-dawn began to extinguish the stars, Mama Margo began to cover her in dark blue symbols, squiggles and lines. Starting at Karly’s shoulders, she let the paintbrush play down Karly’s spine before breaking to dash brilliant dots and swirls across her belly, and hips and eventually ending halfway down her left thigh.
“What does it say?” Karly asked.
“What do you think?” the old woman countered.
“Barefoot, pre-pregnant, get her while she’s hot, boys,” Karly guessed. When Mama Margo sat back far enough to give her a hard look, after a moment, Karly gave her own head a censuring smack. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Pushing herself back to her feet, Mama Margo came around to Karly’s front. Lifting her chin with the tip of one finger, the old woman dabbed a little paint on her brush and then placed a single dot high on the bridge of Karly’s nose. The crowning touch was the thin swooping lines she drew directly above the brow of Karly’s left eye all the way to her hair line, then from her hair line to the middle of her cheek, and from there all the way down her jaw to her chin.
“The women of my line have worn these markings, if not from the very first Hunt, then from the second. We have no written record. Mothers remember and paint them upon their daughters when their time comes to run. Should you have a daughter, remember these. From this moment, my blood is your blood. My scent is your scent. My line is yours.”
The seriousness with which Margo said that effectively sucked the levity from the small kitchen.
“I’m too old to adopt,” Karly said, but it was impossible not to feel touched by the sentiment.
“Don’t look a gift wolf in the mouth.” Mama Margo washed what little paint remained in her cup down the sink. “Wait a few minutes to let this all dry and then you can dress. Just your nightshift, girl. Pants are a waste of time. You won’t wear them long enough to make putting them on worthwhile.”
As Karly fanned the drawings on her leg with her hand, helping the paint to dry faster, the first fluttering of doubt moved through her. “He probably won’t even chase me, you know. There’s plenty of other women here. Volka women.” Prettier. Younger. Steeped in the traditions Colton seemed to prize so highly…
Less damaged than she was.
When she raised her eyes to the kitchen window, it wasn’t the lightening sky, but her own reflection she found herself staring at—her blackened eyes, her split lip. This awful smell and her hair, sticking out in a mass of spiky swirls and tangled braids that made the worst case of bedhead imaginable seem fashion-show-runway worthy. She was a mess.
“He’ll chase you,” Mama Margo said confidently.
“What if he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
“But—”
“There’s no way that boy will stand by while another male tackles you to ground,” Mama Margo finally snapped, exasperated. “Especially not if that other male is McQueen. Stop your fretting.”
Instead of waylaying her fears, if anything that brought them all exploding to life inside her. “Another male? How many other males am I going to have to worry about?”
“We had a good female turnout this year,” Mama Margo said. “Including you now, eighteen bitches are running. Of course, we had a good male turn out too.”
“How good?” Karly couldn’t believe she was bothering to ask. She already knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Forty, forty-five,” Mama Margo said airily. “Could be sixty by now. There’s always those last minute stragglers who limp in just before the chase starts. Outcasts mostly, looking to snag an easy Bride so they can start their own territories. Try not to get caught by one of those. That’s a hard life.”
Karly barely heard her. She was still lost on ‘sixty’. Her knees weakened. “I-I don’t think I can do this.”
“Of course you can. Doing this is the easy part. With so many men, every bitch who’s willing will be taken, including you. After your display on the field yesterday, I can all but guarantee you’ll have some strong males targeting you right from the start. In fact, all things considered, you’re probably going to be taken first.” When Karly gaped at her, Mama Margo shrugged. “You’re human. Humans run very slowly.”
It was hard to be offended with facts that were laid out so bluntly.
“Don’t worry.” Margo softened her previous statement with a conspirator’s wink. “We’re going to give them all a show worth remembering. They’ll be talking about this for years.”
Karly would have groaned, but the attempt was ruined since she couldn’t even breathe right. “What if I don’t want anybody but Colton? What if someone else grabs me, Margo? I-I can’t! I just…I can’t!”
Coming back to her, Margo settled a rough hand on Karly’s shoulder. She squeezed. “Do you trust me?”
“Are you crazy?” Karly shot back. She wanted to laugh, but without steady breath that was also impossible. “I don’t know you! I don’t know any of you! I don’t even know what I’m doing here! What was I thinking?”
Margo squeezed her shoulder that much tighter, a grip that felt both comforting and secure. “Breathe,” she said.
Karly tried. She sucked a great gasp into her too-tight chest.
“Close your eyes.”
Both hands pressing down hard against her own constricted ribs, Karly obeyed. She squeezed her eyes as tightly closed as they would go and struggled to slow her gasping down.
She was still fighting for that when she felt Margo step in close to her and her low voice murmured near Karly’s ear, “Clear your mind, girl. Think of the safest place you’ve ever been; the safest place you’ll ever be.”
Karly tried, but the first thing that popped into her head was her first night here in Hollow Hill’s, lying with her face buried in Puppy’s soft fur while the owl from hell stood sentry right outsid
e her window. The second night hadn’t been much better, but Puppy had been there for her then too, letting her grip and pull at him every time the thunder crashed and the storm raged on into the very small hours of the morning. He’d been there for her, making safe every scary moment she’d had since she’d left Dan. Karly tried, but no matter what she thought up, nothing felt as safe for her as it had that first time, cuddled up next to Puppy.
And Puppy was Colton.
Karly took a soft breath and held it.
“That’s what you’re doing this for,” Mama Margo said, as if she knew exactly what was in Karly’s mind. Giving her one last pat on the shoulder, Mama Margo handed Karly a nightshirt. “Time to go.”
“I’ll get my keys,” Karly said, resigned and grateful that the interior of her car was leather and not cloth. Hopefully the smell wouldn’t absorb into the seat.
Hopefully.
“Don’t bother,” Mama Margo said, already heading for the door. “Nobody drives to the Hunt. We all walk today. Tradition, girl. Tradition is very important. Hope you enjoy three-mile hikes in the early morning mountain air.”
“Not particularly.” Her legs were aching already.
“Oh well.” Mama Margo smirked. “Sucks to be you then, doesn’t it?”
“Oh my God, why do I like you?” Karly laughed, and followed her out the door.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The three-mile hike to the top of the ridge was in actuality almost four miles because Margo insisted on coming in up-wind of the camp, letting the early morning breeze announce Karly’s presence long before they cleared the curtain of trees and brush that skirted Hollow Hill’s traditional Hunting ground. Karly didn’t know if it was Mama Margo’s secret recipe, her foreign humanity, or the fact that she was practically naked, but every eye and nose attached to a male contestant was turned to her. Considering her female competitors were already assembled and already completely naked (apart from their own body paints), she figured her nakedness was the least likely explanation.
If nothing else, the volka believed in equal opportunity embarrassment. It wasn’t just the females dressed in only a few squiggles of body paints. The men were every bit as scantily attired, and it wasn’t hard to tell who was there to participate and who to cheer on the participants. Mama Margo’s estimated ‘sixty’ seemed more like a hundred, especially when Margo leaned into her and whispered, “Take off your shirt. Let them see what they’re getting.”
“No.” Karly flushed, already sweeping the crowd for any sign of Colton.
“Oh, like you’re anything they haven’t seen before!” she hissed.
“No!” Karly hissed back.
Mama Margo gave her a withering glare, then stepped aside, gesturing for Karly to head on in and join the rest. Glaring back at her, Karly started to, but the minute she stepped ahead of the old woman, she felt an ominous snag at the back of her nightshirt, followed by a loud rip of sundering cloth.
“Oops,” Mama Margo said drily, and put away her pocket knife.
It was either let the torn shirt fall and join the others, as if she did the naked body-painted hippy in the woods thing all the time, or just stand there, foolishly trying to hold the cut back of her shirt together.
“You’re an evil old woman,” Karly told her, choosing the latter.
“See the way they’re looking at you.” Mama Margo nodded proudly. “My secret recipe. It works every time.”
Something was working anyway, because people definitely were staring. Not all seemed pleased. Many, like the buxom blonde daughter of the Alpha Deacon, were openly annoyed. But it was surprising just how many of those naked—plainly aroused—men were staring hungrily back at her.
“Give ‘em a good run,” Margo whispered to her, and then shoved, that shove being the overwhelming force necessary to get Karly’s stilted legs moving again. She still couldn’t see Colton, but it was easy to see where she was supposed to go.
The female volka were gathering within a roped off corral, held separate from the men not only by a barrier of multi-colored banners, but by an entire football field of grassy distance. Even from this distance, it was plain the males viewed this as an agitating hardship. They were crowded all along the barrier that kept them from advancing, not a pennant-dotted rope, but a hastily constructed three-rung wooden fence. They were tense and silent, completely oblivious to the physical reactions either they or their neighbors were having to the visual proximity of the women, the vast majority of whom pretended not to notice. Nobody was shifted, but all Karly saw among the females was wolfish posturing—the non-existent tail swishes, the preening and strutting, and the enticing aloofness with which the females beckoned potential suitors to ‘come hither’.
When she drew near enough, an elderly volka standing guard over the female’s corral moved to block her way. She frowned at the torn shirt Karly stubbornly held onto, her gaze sweeping what paint lines she could see on Karly’s thigh and face. While it looked like squiggles and nonsense to Karly, the old woman must have read something of note because she eventually stepped back and even raised the rope, allowing Karly to join the other women.
She went in like Moses parting the seas. Although her god-awful stink led the way, she doubted that was the only reason for her shunning. As an outsider, she was way out of her element and she knew it. She tried to find a quiet place away from the others, eventually taking up a quiet post by the rope, tucked up between a tree and a fraying green pennant. With some creative folding of the cut halves of her shirt, she was able to prop herself against the trunk without fear of a stray breeze leaving her anymore exposed than she already was.
“Chevolak,” someone spat. “She has no business here.”
“If you can’t run faster than her, you’ve got no business being here either,” another drawled, which pretty much silenced the first.
Karly quietly shredded the fraying edge of the pennant and pretended she hadn’t heard either of them. She glanced across the field, because everywhere near her was occupied by someone who didn’t like her—and that’s when she spotted him. In the thick of all those men, Colton grabbed the highest wooden rung to scale the fence, lifting his face to the breeze as if scenting the air.
Could he smell her all the way over there? Heat flushed her, turning her core molten and sending it flowing down onto her painted thighs. Her nipples peaked, tightening and abrading themselves against her torn shirt. She had the most overwhelming urge to break out of her corral and race over there just to apologize for how bad she smelled.
But she didn’t.
She was crazy. She was absolutely crazy.
Pushing back off the tree, Karly let go of both ripped halves of her shirt, letting the cloth simply slide off her shoulders, down her arms. She bared herself. Not to the crowd, that was incidental. She bared herself for Colton, and even from all the way across the field. She knew the instant his eyes finally found her. Every inch of him tensed. Naked as he was, that was a lot of inches to drink in, but she couldn’t look away. He was rippling, that strange yet beautiful undulation of flesh that meant the wolf in him was fighting to reach the surface of him every bit as hard as he was fighting to keep it down. He wanted her.
That was when she knew, absolutely knew all the way down into the pit of her quivering, knotted stomach, she was going to run…because he was going to chase her.
“They will fault you for many things, you know,” Maya purred as she brushed up against Karly’s side, “but they cannot fault your good taste in men.”
Karly barely took her gaze from Colton long enough to glance from Maya to the three packwomen who accompanied her. Between the four of them, a rainbow of body paints was represented. Yellow, green, metallic silver. Maya was the only one who sported two colors, swirling dots of pink and white that played over her dips and curves. No two women wore the same design.
Maya turned her head, her smile turning sly as she nodded across the female’s corral. “If pissing Joela off was your intent,
you’ve managed it.”
It wasn’t hard to follow Maya’s stare to the Deacon’s blonde daughter, huddled amongst her tight circle of friends, all of whom sported bruises and scrapes from the day before. “I wouldn’t call it intent,” Karly said dryly. “It’s more like a bonus.”
I knew there was a reason I liked you, chevolak.” Maya bent to briefly rest her chin upon Karly’s shoulder. “Don’t be offended, my friend, but your stink is marvelous. May I borrow it?”
Before Karly realized what Maya was truly asking, the volka caught her shoulders and hugged her. She rubbed, her full breasts pressing hot against Karly’s back as she ground herself against her.
Across the field, three more men jumped up onto the fence, craning to get a better look.
“My thanks,” Maya said, panting that soft, breathy laugh of hers when she noticed Karly’s stunned face. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep the Deacon bitch off your back long enough for you to reach the woods.”
A roaring shout went up across the field, and Karly turned in time to see Colton punch the man standing on the fence next to him. He succeeded in knocking the other man down, only to be ripped off the fence a half second later by someone else. And just like that, suddenly Karly was watching a barroom brawl. Every male erupted in snaps and snarls. It was the most unholy cacophony—more animal than man—punctuated by punches and body slams.
A shiver—half excitement, half apprehension—prickled up her spine like icy fingers.
“Your Alpha is calling to you,” Maya whispered in her ear. “I hope you let him catch you, because that is the Alpha Joela was supposed to win.”
“Over my dead body,” Karly couldn’t help muttering.
“Don’t say that too loudly. She might comply.”
The brawl among the men wasn’t easing. If anything, the intensity was picking up. They were making the most unholy baying sounds now, interspersed amidst the growls. They were all rippling now, a chaotic tide moving in every direction at once. Some had transformed already; others were in the process. Karly couldn’t see Colton anymore. She tried to look for Puppy, but there was more than one black wolf in the males’ corral.