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I pulled out my soaking ponytail. “A bottom-feeder would think it’s about luck.”
The other students snickered. Jerkface flushed. “You don’t have to be a bitch.”
“Don’t be a smarmy asshole and I won’t have to say mean things to you and hurt your feelings.” I headed to the showers.
The she-wolf was there, in front of the mirrors, touching up her eyeliner, but dressed in not-sweaty workout clothes.
Was she really putting on eyeliner to go work out? That was a thing that happened?
She was a few years older than me, with beautiful dark eyes, and slender, but not strong-slender. And probably wasn’t here to work out seriously if she was touching up her eyeliner to hit the weights.
She caught my eye in the mirror and slowly turned around to face me. Her gaze was direct but not threatening. She had some prestige and composure, but not as much as she wanted me to think. She had the uncertain air of a wolf trying to posture above her status, like it was a shoe that was a size too large and caused her to wobble.
“I’m Maya,” she introduced herself first, yielding to my rank-induced silence. “Of GranitePaw.”
A GranitePaw. Well, well, well. Supermodels, wanderers, and windows got someone’s attention. “Winter, the Luna of SnowFang.”
“Rodero’s daughter. I’d heard you’d moved to town.” She smiled prettily.
The sweat dried into a thin film as my heartrate slowed. Her posture remained schooled, and in the chlorine-thick air of the locker room I couldn’t get more than her basic scent, but there was a little tilt of her shoulders, and her hips were square, feet planted firm. Not genial, as her tone wanted me to believe. No jewelry of any kind, nails neatly but not extravagantly manicured, same for her hair, and flawless makeup but that said nothing beyond how bizarre it was she felt it necessary to have on makeup to work out. Her clothing told me nothing, nor her shoes, or the phone strapped to her upper arm. No wedding rings or other clues if she was mated, attached, or single.
She was waiting for me to confirm my pedigree, so I said, “Yes, but he passed recently.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know. I’m so sorry.”
I wasn’t, and neither was she. “Thank you. Are you a new arrival as well?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” she said airily. “I’ve lived here all my life. I just joined this gym, though.”
I might have been a feral, but I hadn’t tumbled off the back of a turnip truck. The GranitePaw had their own training facilities.
“Is the man with the silver hair your husband?” She drew her fingernail from navel to pubis. “The one with the silver burn scar from here to here? I saw him while I was getting a tour the other day.”
Riiiighhht. Nice try, and not even close. The top of the scar started about at his right hip and ran in a jagged diagonal cut halfway across his lower abdomen. She’d clearly never seen it.
Her fingernail lingered between her thighs, pressed into the fabric of her leggings, probably right into the top of her slit. Her lips pursed in a sweet, cherubic pucker I wanted to smack right off her.
My mate is fully intact, you catty bitch. I ignored the lousy bait, and I kept my tone bland. “Yes.”
“Such a nasty scar,” she mused, finger lingering low, her pleasant smile somehow still friendly and open even as her eyes hardened.
What game were we playing? Some strange city game of cat-and-mouse? “It’s superficial. You have him confused with someone else.”
“No, I’m sure I’m talking about the same man,” she said cheerfully, and that finger still did not move. “What’s his name? Silver?”
This was the saddest attempt at being high-level catty I’d ever had to endure. Pathetic. “Sterling.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She removed her hand from her privates and tightened her ponytail with a two-handed tug. “Nice to meet you, Winter. Tell Sterling I said hello. I’ll let you get to your shower.”
She’d let me get a shower. And do tell Sterling she said hello. As if any Alpha would give a damn about some random female telling him hello. I brushed past her towards my locker. She rewarded me with a slight sound in her throat, her scent startled. Her sneaker squeaked as she half-turned on the ball of her foot.
I ignored her and pulled off my rashguard. I dropped it onto the floor in a soaking pile. “Is there something else?”
She smiled at me. “Oh. Just one small thing.”
“What?”
“What did you end up doing with that woman’s request?”
