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“Night-blooming jasmine,” Glen replied, his voice a little too casual. “And cinnamon.”
Finnick snarled. “Cinnamon rolls and traces of shit.”
I didn’t acknowledge the pissant. Instead, I flashed a smile at Glen. “That was not at all what I expected. Night-blooming jasmine, huh?”
He smiled. He had a really nice smile, all straight white teeth and strong lips.
Strong lips? What the actual fuck, Flor?
Those strong lips twitched. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling strangely shy. “Like, I knew about the cinnamon. Never heard the jasmine part.”
“I like jasmine. It isn’t a perfume, then?”
I snorted. “Unranked wolves in our pack have to work for the right to live in the pack. They don’t pay us. I never got to wear perfume. Never had enough money for girl things like that, or makeup.”
“You’ve never worn makeup?” Finnick sounded offended. Judgmental.
“Heck, I haven’t been able to afford deodorant for almost four years, since my mama died,” I said, hoping it made him feel like the asshole he was.
“What do you mean, about earning the right to live in the pack?” Glen asked. My stomach interrupted, growling. He reached into his pocket and pulled out something in a wrapper, handing it to me. Holding it up to the moonlight, I read the name of what I thought was a fancy energy bar. “Here, princess. Let’s walk and talk.”
“Thanks, Glenda.” I tried not to scarf down the energy bar as fast as my stomach demanded. “Are you asking about our pack’s structure?”
“More about the way your unranked are treated,” he replied.
Alpha Callaway had made sure everyone knew not to share details of our pack with anyone else. He’d even given an Alpha command at a pack meeting about it. Luckily, I had been working in the kitchen when he’d done that. So I spilled all the shitty Southern tea. “For one thing, unranked wolves here have to work inside the compound, right? They can’t take outside jobs. They’re all tagged, too.”
Supposedly, unranked wolves might not have enough power to control their shifts, so they were an exposure risk outside the gates.
Glen cursed softly. “But they don’t pay you? How do you survive?”
“I got lucky. Del got me a job in the dining hall once I was old enough. Our unranked wolves don’t have pack meal privileges, except for special occasions—everyone was really excited about the Conclave since all the parties means lots of food for us.”
Glen started pacing, like he needed to move or he might explode. Finnick let out a soft curse, but I ignored him.
“Anyway, twice a day, Del and I got to eat whatever the ranked wolves left on their plates, and he snuck me rice when there weren’t leftovers. And taught me to hunt, of course.” I waved at the trees. “I’m pretty amazing with a slingshot, if I do say so myself. I can get a squirrel eight times out of ten now.”
Glen stopped pacing, balled up a fist, and punched one of the pines. Pine needles pattered all around us like rain.
“You have a pet squirrel or something?” Maybe I needed to apologize.
Glen groaned, shaking out his fist while Finnick cleared his throat. “When did you start hunting?”
“Let me think. Del took me out for the first time when I was six.” I sighed, remembering those hours in the forest. They were the best moments of my life. “Mama couldn’t work a lot of the time, so she didn’t get rations for the two of us. Del kept us fed back then.”
“Why didn’t she work?” Finnick’s voice was softer now. It reminded me of Luke’s. Ugh, that asshole. True mate, my Aunt Fanny. He’d let me go hungry. He’d seen me scrabble for food over the years. Watched me hunt squirrels.
I got back to my story, not that I was going to tell these strangers all of it. Not even I knew everything that had happened, but Del had told me that most of Mama’s scars had happened when she was first mated and barely pregnant with me. For all I knew, that could be where the faint silver scars on my own chest came from; I’d had them since I was a baby.
“Our Alpha hated my mom. She was pretty unstable. She sort of spaced out for a lot of my childhood. But she was better away from the pack, and Del convinced the Alpha to let her get a job in the QwikMart outside the grounds when I was about fifteen.” That had happened right before I’d been picked for the Hunt. “She was gone a lot, pulling doubles every weekend until… Well, I was glad I had Del to protect me.”
“Protect you?” Glen asked.
“Yeah, from the Hunt.”
“The Hunt?” Finnick rasped out the words. “What is that?”
