Marcel Conway is fresh on the market for a new year of the Mating Season: a sex auction masquerading as a Peace Trade to keep the packs from going to war. But she's gritting her teeth and digging her heels in, determined to come home to her small bu...
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The smell of burning firewood twisting in the late winter night air was enough to waken my senses, along with the help of the vodka and Red Bull I was nursing from my thermos.
The alcohol was courtesy of my brother.
He had dropped me off for the Ceremonial Bonfire thirty minutes ago and I'd watched ten women from our pack enter the forest threshold toward the smoking beacon in the woods.
They were the eligible tributes from our pack that would take part in strengthening the treaty.
It was cold, too cold. The alcohol warmed my blood, and I almost found myself looking forward to this forsaken ceremony.
"Waiting for me?" I heard a smoky female voice ask and I looked up from my drink at the slender, fair-skinned brunette approaching me with an impish smirk on her face.
"Nope, just waiting on the end of the world. Hoping God launches a few meteors down here and takes me out," I responded with a deadly amount of sarcasm as I gave a roll of my eyes. She grinned as she enveloped me into her ivory arms and I buried my face into her long, mahogany brown curls.
"It's good to see you Khadra."
"Had a run of it with Alpha Suppository earlier, I heard?" Khadra pulled back, her warm brown eyes studying my face for any signs of grief.
"It's not me I'm worried about. It's my family. Dad's taking it hard and Gray's true colors are showing," I sighed. "They aren't taking this well."
Khadra's nose scrunched as my breath hit her face and her eyes darted to my thermos and back to my face quickly.
"Is it wise to be drinking before this?"
"Alpha Dipshit just told me I was to show up and help Sister Edith. Not that I had to be sober. Besides," I took another sip. "I think we all are going to need something to take the edge off before this is over."
Khadra watched me wordlessly before leading me through the dark forest threshold to the bonfire. It was no secret that Khadra held her own reservations about the Mating Season. For the last six years, she has led debates and presented alternatives to our own council for the Mating Season to give women more of a choice.
Her biggest issue so far was the smallest, and that was to get them to change the way they refer to women in the Mating Season article from females to women.
Women lost their sense of identity during the Mating Season. And Khadra's outlook was if she started small to make a change, then maybe it could progressively change the whole article. But the council always dismissed her.
At last, the narrow passage of trees broke through to a clearing. In the center was the blindingly bright bonfire, the heat so intense I could feel it the second we entered, offering my numb fingers and cheeks some relief from the icy air.
