Idler (Norseton Wolves Book 3) Read Free

saying is—”
    “You’re saying you don’t think it’s a good match.”
    She turned her hands over, conceding. “I hate to get off on the wrong foot, but I gotta be true to me. I don’t have it in my spirit to endure misery for the sake of tradition. My compulsion is to buck against tradition if it doesn’t make sense. I know that makes me a little defective as a wolf, and a lot pain-in-the-ass, but I’m not going to apologize for that.”
    He stared at her quietly for a while—a whole minute, maybe—and rocked on his heels again. It was such a casual, playful movement for such a powerful wolf. She couldn’t really wrap her mind around it. Then again, she couldn’t wrap her mind around much about the place she found herself in.
    “Between you and me,” he said finally, “all you girls are a little weird.”
    “What?”
    He crooked his thumb toward the silent woman on the bench. “It’s like she’s not even there, huh? Truth is, I would have been more surprised if I had fetched four completely ordinary mate prospects from the airport.”
    “Why?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t have ordinary wolves in my pack. Why would the goddess send me women who couldn’t keep up?”
    “You believe the goddess made this match?” She turned and pointed to the blond wolf leaning into his house’s doorway, whom promptly raised a middle finger in salute.
    Fucking asshole. He could probably hear every word they said, and she didn’t give a single shit.
    She turned back. “No disrespect intended, Alpha, but are you insane?”
    “Only in the best ways. Listen,” he said gently, “I’m not going to force you to stay. But of the four matches I made today, the goddess picked two, and I picked the others. She happened to approve of them.”
    “The goddess did? You can’t possibly claim that. She’s not so forthcoming, even if we hope she has a hand in guiding us.”
    “Doesn’t she, though?” His voice was a whisper now. “You know our lore speaks of how fond she is of her signs. Did she send you one before you came? Maybe she put a wolf image on some unusual place, like a doodle on a dollar bill. You recall anything like that?”
    Lisa’s stomach lurched. Not a dollar bill, but a travel agency ad she’d seen in the newspaper the day she saw the mate call. There’d been a yellow wolf in the logo. She forced down a swallow and put a hand over her thrashing heart. “Just a coincidence.”
    “I don’t think so. Hey, I try to be a decent person. That’s usually good enough for her, so she talks to me sometimes. No one’s expecting you to submit meekly here, Lisa. No one here expects you to anything more than to give respect to the people who are owed it.”
    That would be Alpha and Mrs. Carbone . The rest—her mate —would have to earn it. She was pretty sure that was what Alpha was saying.
    “Run your household as you see fit. I strongly suggest you stay and examine what you have. There’s always room for change.”
    “Change.” The word was like candy in her mouth—a luxury she was so rarely afforded. “You’d let me do that? Make changes?”
    “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I weren’t open to them.”
    “Fuck.” She’d held out a glimmer of hope that her mate would be if not easy to live with, then at least cooperative. He was going to push her past her tolerance, and she was going to be mad at herself for letting the domineering battle-ax out. She was volunteering for the sakes of her sisters, and she needed to be kind. She needed to make Alpha her advocate.
    Good luck, bitch .
    She let out a long, ragged breath. “At least he doesn’t smell like he’s been rolling in pot,” she said dryly. “That’s a start.”
    “And he’s gainfully employed. I hear ladies love that.”
    She groaned and rubbed her eyes. Shit.
    She trusted Alpha— believed his connection to their goddess was legitimate—but that didn’t make accepting the man assigned to be her mate any easier. First