Free Bloodlines by Alex Kidwell

honestly. Then not so honestly, “I’m looking for a pack to join. Since Filtiarn, I’ve… pretty much been on my own.”
    He hated having to say it. He was well aware that Jed knew he was lying, but it felt like dismissing him, somehow. Redford would make it up to him later.
    “There’s not many of Fil’s pack left wandering around alone,” another of the group said. “Which is good for them. A wolf without a pack is just about the saddest sight you’ll ever see.”
    Redford tilted his head, curious. He was getting closer to the topic he wanted to discuss. “I haven’t had any luck,” he admitted. “Are you all pack?”
    Sophia gave him a warm smile, leaning against the side of the man sitting next to her. Even in the chaos, Redford could smell that their scents were mingled. “Oh,” he said, surprised, and nodded toward Sophia. “Um, congratulations?”
    Her smile brightened into a grin that was verging on a laugh. Redford noticed she looked younger, almost. The lines of stress and wariness she’d worn with Fil were gone, replaced with a lightness in her expression. “You too,” she said dryly, indicating Jed. “He’s not really your pet, is he?”
    “I should fucking hope not,” another wolf growled. “That shit is for the bloodsuckers. We don’t keep pets . We’ve got enough leeches trying to do the same to us.” Redford almost asked him to explain, but he remembered in a flash, the big wolf that Gabriel had kept chained in his office. That wolf had seemed slavishly devoted to Gabriel, to the point of ignoring his own imminent danger in favor of mourning Gabriel’s apparent death.
    “No, I, uh—” Redford gave a sheepish smile. “I was told that it’s the only way to get humans in here.”
    “And it’s true,” Sophia replied. “We just don’t involve ourselves with humans all that much. We definitely don’t keep them around on leashes.”
    Redford wanted to untie the rope then and there. But just because they were on a different side of the club didn’t mean they were invisible. They’d have to keep this up until they left.
    “Well, I look fucking fantastic in leather, darlin’,” Jed drawled, winking at the table at large. “So trust me, this is not a hardship.”
    “You definitely do,” Redford approved. Not that Jed needed a club to wear it to. He was far too happy to make leather pants or too-tight jeans his everyday wear, and Redford fully supported that choice.
    As he sat up straight again, his eye caught the edge of a poster plastered to the wall near the table. In bold, blocky letters it proclaimed Half blood Revolution . There was a picture of a man, angular features, lean build, standing behind a podium. At the bottom of the poster, it said that someone named Phoenix was going to be giving speeches there every Thursday for the next few weeks.
    It was the man Edwin had spoken of coming here to listen to. And that wasn’t the first poster of its kind that Redford had seen, he realized. They were all over the club. Sophia noticed what he was looking at, and she made a derisive noise under her breath, but she didn’t comment on it. “What were you looking to find out, Redford? We know of a few other packs. We could point you toward some.”
    “Actually,” Redford started, dragging his gaze away from the poster. There was something oddly hypnotic about it, like the old World War II posters he’d seen pictures of, with propaganda smeared everywhere. “I heard that there was a big pack looking for the remains of Fil’s group. The Gray Lady?”
    “That she is,” Frank confirmed. “Says she’s looking to right Fil’s wrongs, or something like that. It’s the biggest pack we know of.”
    “I’d like to know where she is,” Redford replied. Then, deciding he may as well be honest, he added, “It’s not really for me. I have a friend who’s sick, and his family thinks that the Gray Lady might be able to help him. It’s not really a case where he can go to