Prickly Business Read Free Page A

the next comment over his shoulder, his tone all but indifferent. “He almost got his ass handed to him by Glenn a little bit ago. You barely missed it.”
    And damn if that didn’t hit the mark exactly as Lucas had intended. The hair on the back of Dylan’s neck stood and his shoulders tensed as he searched for Glenn’s ugly face. He wasn’t there. A growl lumbered in Dylan’s chest. Regardless of his feelings for Avery or Avery’s for him, Dylan couldn’t rid himself of his protective instincts when it came to the hedgehog.
    “Wanna play?” Lucas trained a slow smile on Chance as he bent over the table and racked up another game.
    Closing his eyes, Dylan sighed, never more grateful for Lucas’s flirting. Dylan felt like he was about to lose his shit, and, thankfully, Lucas could probably tell.
    When he opened his eyes, Chance was watching him, head tilted curiously. Dylan almost laughed. Chance had to know something wasn’t quite right, and Dylan liked the guy more for not asking.
    Dylan took a seat at the nearest table and forced his focus to his group of friends, trying to keep up with the game. It soon became obvious Chance had no idea what he was doing. Dylan wouldn’t have doubted it if told the guy had never played billiards in his life. He was horrible.
    “No.” Lucas laughed from across the table, his big indulgent grin all for Chance. “The stripes. Aim for the stripes and this time try not to hit the big black ball with the eight on it.”
    Dylan grinned. Jesus, with Lucas and the flirting, but he was just that guy. The nice one with great hair and shiny charisma. He was charming in ways most people only dreamed. He made friends everywhere he went. Case in point. Dylan shook his head when Lucas leaned in and whispered something in Chance’s ear. The poor guy’s face and neck turned beet red, and he looked away giggling.
    Dylan might never get laid again.
    Unbidden, Dylan’s gaze drifted to the bar where the one person he was doing his best to avoid sat. Avery threw his head back in a full-bellied laugh. Dylan could hear the forced happiness all the way from across the bar. The twinge that had started in his chest at the first glance of Avery bloomed into a full ache, and Dylan wanted to ignore it, wanted to run from it, but with Avery so close and Dylan’s friends there as witnesses, he wasn’t running. He wasn’t a coward.
    Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut. Ignoring the damned bond between him and Avery didn’t make him a coward. It made him smart. What wolf in their right mind wanted to be tied forever to a mate who didn’t want them? Dylan’s mother’s smiling face flashed behind his eyelids, a strained smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Not many of them did.
    He rubbed a fist over the pain in his chest.
    Lucas’s low chuckle brought Dylan back to the present. When he looked up, Lucas was leaning against the pool table, smirking back. Dylan narrowed his eyes.
    He could have kicked himself for telling Lucas about his first time meeting Avery at Jaden’s twenty-first birthday and Avery’s haughty words—“Mechanic? As in blue collar? Do you really think I’d waste my time with a low-class loser?”—but there had been alcohol involved. A lot of it. Avery’s words back then had angered him more than they had hurt. The best thing those words had done, though, was reiterate every reason Dylan didn’t need nor want a mate.
    The teasing glint in Lucas’s eye gave way to sadness, not pity or apathy. His friend was more understanding than judgmental. Fuck knew what it was like for a wolf who actually wanted to be tied down. Dylan shook his head against the voice—which sounded an awful lot like his best friend—that whispered it was exactly what he wanted too. He had already been forced to sit through Lucas’s lecture on the gift of mating and how Dylan should be thankful for what he’d been given. They’d agreed to disagree.
    Lucas tossed his cue to Kirk and wandered