Page 41 of The Lunatics

“Fifteen years now,” she said. “I’m Monica, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.Now can you please answer the five hundred questions about the bond that I can’t ask my mother without her turning it into the most uncomfortable conversation of my life?I wanted to add.

“Are we really going to just sit here and pretend we don’t want to fight her?” a compact man in his late twenties asked as he took the seat across from Monica.

His skin was a darker olive than mine, and his head was shaved, which made his thick black eyebrows all the more apparent. The shirt he wore could have been a twin of my own, both in color and size. How he’d managed to get it on over all his muscles without ripping it was beyond me. Scars peppered his exposed skin. Claw marks. Gunshot wounds. Peeking out from his collar, a still healing vampire bite looked pink and angry. He wrecked shit for a living and wanted people to know it.

Monica spared him a glance. “Yes, Kevin. We are. Because what your null ass can’t tell is that she’s shielding herself. Which means the power you’re feeling is a trickle of the heat she’s packing.” She turned my way. “You’re MacKenzie Valley, aren’t you?”

I stared at her. Maybe other wolves had wondered about it, but Monica was the first one to ever ask me flat out. It made me instantly respect her. She seemed like a woman who didn’t bullshit.

“I am,” I said.

I had to give it to the others: They handled it better than most. Monica simply nodded. James sucked in a breath and straightened in his chair, all hint of flirtation gone. Kevin, weirdly, leaned forward, a gleam of excitement in his eyes.

“Don’t do it, Kev,” Monica warned. “I met one once. He was in my husband’s former pack. If she’s anything like he was, she can throw you through this wall.”

Ronald turned and pinned her with a look. “The wall is twenty-inch-thick steel-rebar-reinforced concrete.”

“Your point?” Monica asked.

Ronald slowly pivoted his head toward me, brows rising in question.

I shrugged at him. Past my favorite parlor trick in high school—getting tipsy and lifting cars to entertain my friends—I hadn’t really tested the full range of my strength. Nor did I plan to. I knew through the grapevine that most of my fellow MacKenzie survivors served as enforcers or alphas in other packs. Their lives were brutal and short. No thank you. I’d much rather die in bed at the ripe old age of ninety than be cut down because I felt the need to show off.

“Are you really shielding?” Kevin asked me.

“Like a sonofabitch.”

“Stop,” Ronald said, taking a seat next to Kevin. I didn’t miss the way it placed him between us.

“Stop what?” I asked.

“Shielding,” he answered. “This room is warded. We need to know how much your power could surge if you’re pissed off enough or knocked out.”

Michael and Emma took the only open seats remaining, him on my left, with Emma between him and Ronald. Good. If Kevin lost his mind and tried to lunge at me, they could protect her.

Michael shook his head. “It won’t surge if she’s knocked out. She shields even in her sleep.”

Monica leaned forward, expression curious. “Really?”

I nodded.

Ronald was like a dog with a bone. “We still need to know.”

I looked around the room. All eyes were on me. “As long as everyone understands that I amnotan alpha. I am not challenging you in any way. Please don’t try to attack me.”

“We have more control than most,” James said. “Right,Kevin?”

Kevin put his hands up and grinned. “Can’t really blame me for being interested, can you? I don’t remember the last time I lost a fight.”

Michael leaned close to me, our shoulders brushing. “You are under no obligation to do this.”

I met his dark eyes for a brief moment. “I know. It’s fine. They’re your people. If you trust them, I trust them.”

“Awww,” Kevin said.

Monica threw a pen at him. “Shut up, turd breath.”