Mated to My Step-brother and His Best Friend novel · Chapter 19 of 32

Chapter 19: All Three

I was out the door before either of them could stop me.

The cold hit my face.

The man on his knees in the road was young, maybe twenty-five, with a burn scar fresh across his jaw.

I knew him.

He'd sat on the third bench in the hall when they voted.

I didn't know which way he'd voted.

I didn't ask.

"Where's it in you?" I said.

"Legs," he said. "Both legs. Birdshot."

"Who shot you?"

He laughed, and it came out a sob.

"Your uncle," he said to Deacon, who'd come up behind me. "Training. He shoots silver at our feet so we learn not to flinch at the moon."

Deacon's face went white and then went to stone.

"He won't let the doctor near us," the young wolf said. "She's under guard since she talked in the hall. Somebody said the handler opened a clinic."

"Somebody said right," I said. "Bowie. Get his other arm."

They came in one after another.

Twelve of them.

Burns on their shins and their hands, birdshot in their calves, one with a pellet in the meat of his thumb.

Some of them had been on the benches laughing at me a week ago.

I didn't care.

The silver smelled the same in all of them.

At three in the morning the clinic door opened again, and the gravel-pit man from the diner came limping in with his bandage soaked through.

He stopped in the doorway.

He looked at the room full of Lovett wolves on quilts.

"No," he said. "Hell, no."

"Sit down," I said. "You're bleeding on my mother's clean floor."

"Dovie, they're Lovetts."

"They're shot," I said. "Same as you. Sit down."

He sat down.

He sat next to the young wolf with the burned jaw, as far away as the cot would let him.

By four they were arguing about whose truck was worse.

I drew it all.

I couldn't have done one of them alone.

I did twelve, with Deacon's open hand on the back of mine and Bowie's palm on my neck, and the silver ran out of them and split three ways and burned off in the three of us.

Somewhere around the ninth one, Bowie started talking.

"And for the Lovett behind door number nine," he said, "a pellet. Beautiful. Shiny. Stamped by your loving uncle."

"Stop it," I said, "I'll drop it."

"The judges also accept a thumb."

Deacon laughed.

Out loud, in front of twelve wolves from his father's hall.

The young wolf with the burned jaw stared at him.

When the last pellet clicked into the jar, I slid off the stool onto the floor.

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