One Bite

Chapter 2-1

"So, Elena..." My tired eyes looked up from the book I read for the past three hours.

She had tossed the thick, heavy paperweight at me, The Art of Seductive Persuasion, Vol 5. I couldn't imagine how awful the first four volumes must have been that this was an edited improvement.

The entire text was, essentially, how to be a slutty female werewolf one-oh-one.

My head tipped toward where her brown eyes gazed out the window from behind her curtain of brown curls. "Why do I need this?"

"Read it," she replied with a smile.

Secretly, I assumed that she was tired since I chatted her ears off. My eyes dropping to the utter crap sitting in my lap, I stifled a scoff that wanted to escape.

Females wanting to attract mates should draw as much attention to their lips and scent, drawing the hair back to expose the neckline. Males are naturally drawn to this area. Rubbing the female mating areas and using the sexual scent is highly effective.

Effective at what?

"Elena..." I glanced up from this particular passage in the book. "I'm not fingering myself for my own perfume."

'Mate perfume...'

Lumi rolled on her back, laughing.

"I don't think you need to take it literally." Elena reached over to her purse for something of interest. "Your mate will recognize your scent above all others, that's all. Once you enter a room, he will smell you before he sees you."

"Doesn't hurt to give your scent a boost." She tossed me a small, white plastic cylinder. "Here, use this."

I rolled the small item in my hands, frowning at the artificial, sweet, waxy scent I smelled with the cap still on.

Cherry-flavored chapstick?

At one whiff, my nostrils twitched with the magnified smell. I gagged and snapped the cap back on. "I'm not rubbing this on my neck."

She pushed her round glasses up her nose and winked. "Only on your lips. Trust me."

I shook my head and closed the book, but tucked the chapstick in my pocket anyways.

We rode in a motorcade north. The entourage my father's security team had organized was ridiculous. Elena and I were in the middle of five black Escalade SUVs, with a security escort of about thirty men from my father's pack in identical vehicles that sandwiched us.

I glanced at the two vehicles ahead of us through the front windshield, wondering out loud "What's with all the security?"

"Rogues," was her reply, in a bitter tone like the word left a bad taste.

I frowned at the word my father had also used, although he attached more colorful descriptions.

As if she'd forgotten that I know nothing, she added, "Packless wolves. They make their own decisions, quite reckless and unpredictable."

"Why would they want me?"

I could sympathize with the not having a pack aspect, at least.

My own father didn't want me in his.

While I didn't know what being in a pack meant, the rejection still stung days later. Whenever I thought about why he'd done that, it felt like a festering wound that I poked.

"Killing the future white Luna and disrupting our hierarchy would be the dream of any rogue," she cupped her chin in her palm and shifted her eyes to mine. "Your father -"