Chapter 236

“Who was it?” Malice asked.

Natalie groaned, letting the towel drop from her waist. She climbed back into bed. Malice snuggled into her, the wolfgirl thoroughly satisfied by rounds two, three, and then a hastily concluded fourth.

“Alaina,” Natalie said. “The baron’s daughter.”

“You sound upset. Why?”

“It’s awkward, for one,” Natalie said, wrapping an arm around the girl who had cozied up to her. “I thought for sure that was going to be Jordan, or maybe Sofia telling me to keep it down.” She’d forgotten to throw up a sound-dampening barrier, and it hadn’t been until the knock at her door that she’d realized her mistake. “But nope. It’s the damn baron’s daughter.” She groaned loudly, covering her face with a hand.

“So? Who cares?”

Natalie shook her head in exasperation. Of course the wolfgirl didn’t understand the mortification of the situation. Never mind the whole, Natalie-wasn’t-allowed-to-sleep-with-Alaina thing, either. Gods, she’d opened the door in just a bra and a towel. The latter of which had definitely not hidden much, by how incredulous blue eyes had kept flicking down there.

“Hm,” Malice repeated at Natalie’s lack of a reply. “Whatever. I don’t really care, to be honest.” A few seconds passed in which they basked in each other’s hot, sticky skin. “You asked me questions, human. Do I get to ask my own in return?”

“Oh?” Natalie said, peeking past her fingers. “About what?”

“There’s a few things I want to know.”

“Go ahead, then.” She couldn’t imagine there was anything she needed to keep a secret from Malice. After all, Natalie didn’t come from an inscrutable, all-powerful deity-like dungeon complex, thus holding unfathomable knowledge that possibly no humans in existence were aware of.

“I’ve been trying to understand the hierarchy,” Malice said. “But humans are confusing.”

“What hierarchy?”

“You five. Your pack.”

“My pack?”

“You’re at the top, obviously,” Malice continued breezily, as if what she was saying wasn’t totally ridiculous. “But putting the others in their order is harder. Or where I stand, for that matter.”

“What are you talking about, Malice?”

“The hierarchy,” she repeated. “Jordan is second, yes, because she’s your mate. I have that much figured out.”

“W-What?” Natalie stammered, growing immediately flustered. “My mate? What do you mean by that?”

“Is she not?”

“Well, what’s mate mean to you?”

“You two are bonded. Whatever you humans call it.” She paused, as if searching for a word. “Married?”

Natalie made a choking noise. “No. We’re not married.” That begged the question of how Malice was even aware of those parts of human society—how did she speak their language anyway? But Natalie was too flustered to go down that path. “Where did you get that idea?”

Malice stared at her.

“Hmph,” she finally said. “Never mind then. But if you two aren’t mates ... no, she would still be second. Ana third? I can’t decide who’s at the bottom, though. The white-haired one or the healer.”

“Sofia? Liz?” As bizarre as this conversation was, Natalie couldn’t help herself from growing amused. She laughed. “Honestly, I’m not sure which of them is the bigger bottom either. So it’s fair you can’t figure it out.”

“Oh? It’s not established yet?”

“We don’t have a hierarchy like you’re saying, Malice. We’re a team.”

Malice rolled her eyes. “Yes, but authority is always organized, even unofficially. It’s a law of life. Even humans are animals, in the end.”

“Liz and Sofia have as much say in team decisions as I do. We don’t even have an official ‘leader’. We’re all equal.”

“Stop being obstinate. There is a hierarchy. If you refuse to tell me what it is, I’ll make my own assumptions. It goes you, me, Jordan, Ana, Sofia, and then Liz.”

“Wait, you’re second, now?” Natalie laughed. “When did that happen?”

“I changed my mind. Seeing how the rogue isn’t your mate, then I would naturally be second.”

Natalie twitched for a second time at the implication of Jordan being her ‘mate’. “We’re just friends,” she repeated.

“Why do you two look at each other like that, then?”