Free Running with Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 1) by Roxie Noir Page B

mouth.
    “Noted,” he said.
    “Want a drink?” Shane asked. “I think we’ve both earned it.”
    He held up a bottle of whiskey and Elliott looked at it, longingly.
    “I shouldn’t,” he said. “Pack meeting tonight. I don’t want to say something I shouldn’t. Gotta be at the top of my game.”
    “Right,” Shane said. “I’d almost forgotten, actually.”
    “Liar,” said Elliott.
    “Well, I was hoping that maybe the date had magically changed, and I wouldn’t have to go to it.”
    He collapsed his big frame onto the couch, making it scoot back an inch or so on the floor.
    “It’s not so bad,” Elliott said.
    Shane knew that wasn’t quite how Elliott felt. The very first thing he’d said when he’d gotten the job at Cascadia State had been ‘ We can join the pack!’
    His mate had desperately missed the camaraderie of the pack he’d grown up in. The way Elliott described it, the pack was sort of like your family, but different. Even though most of the boys had bullied Elliott for years.
    “I guess I’ll skip the whiskey, too,” Shane said. “Probably not a good night to pick a fight with someone who beat you up in high school.”
    Elliott’s face was unreadable for a moment, and then he looked across the room and didn’t make eye contact with Shane.
    “I’m sure they’ve grown up,” he said. “We all have. It’s been twelve years.”
    “Did Greta grow up?”
    “Hell yes,” said Elliott. Finally, there was a smile on his handsome face, and he relaxed into the couch, turning his head toward Shane. “I remember her a little from high school, but nothing like that .”  
    He shook his head, still smiling.
    “I can’t believe I missed that.”
    “I bet she looked different,” said Shane.
    “She must have, or I’d have been all over her.”
    Now it was Shane’s turn to laugh.  
    “I don’t think so,” he said. “Between everything you’ve told me and the little I’ve gotten from her and your parents, I think you would have drowned yourself in a toilet to avoid talking to a cute girl when you were in high school.”
    “Unfair,” said Elliott.
    Shane just shrugged, and Elliott stretched his legs.
    “Any chance you found my shitkickers today?” he asked Shane.
    “I did,” Shane said. “In the box labeled shitkickers .”
    “And you made fun of my labeling,” said Elliott. “See? It helped.”
    “Was it your idea to take our dresser apart so it would be easier to move?” Shane asked. “I thought I might just toss the thing on the fire today.”
    Elliott made a face, but didn’t respond.
    “I gotta go get changed,” he said. “Pretend I know something about horse breeding.”
    He rose from the couch, and Shane watched the lines of his body move underneath his clothing, a quick hunger swelling inside him.
    “You could just tell them the truth,” Shane said, gently. “What are they going to do?”
    Elliott looked down, then at the bare walls of their house, and then at Shane.
    “I know you’re right,” he said. “I just... I can’t, yet. Every time I think about doing it, I think about getting clocked in the face with my Latin textbook, or about the time that my father pointed out a lawyer driving a nice car in Canyon City and told me that man was a pussy who’d shamed his family.”
    Shane balked.
    “Give it time,” Elliott said. “I’ll tell them. I will. I hate it, but since coming back here I still feel like a skinny seventeen-year-old in a locker sometimes.”
    Shane felt a wave of emotions rise inside him. There was anger, which was pretty normal, but there was also the urge to protect his mate, sympathy for everything he’d been through. An odd pang of regret that they hadn’t known each other longer, that Shane hadn’t been there in high school to punch people for Elliott.
    Shane put his arms around Elliott from the back. He had to stand on his tiptoes to balance his chin on Elliott’s shoulder.
    I don’t think anyone’s going to kick his