Two Scents' Worth: A Wolf Rampant spinoff serial (Bloodling Serial Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

mortification at catching me in dishabille, but something about the experience had taken the shine off his ever-present coat of charisma nonetheless.
    Before I could answer, a couple of the guys we'd been out drinking with two nights before walked past. Victor was too frazzled to recognize them, but I noticed how their eyes initially lit up when they caught sight of my companion. Then his ruffled demeanor sank in and the pair quickly looked away without offering a greeting. How very human of them.
    And isn't that interesting? It seemed Victor's game face was only good for short periods of time...much like my own. No wonder he'd tried to stab me in the back if his previous attempts at friendship had been so short-lived. He probably didn't understand what was and wasn't cool behavior within a pack.
    Mentally removing the hacker from my shit list, I deigned to offer a few tidbits of information on the previous night's coding spree. Then, as the bank manager turned back to face us, I finished, "I'll tell you more about it later, dude."
    Because my attention needed to be fully focused on the matter at hand now that the moment of truth had finally arrived. I sat up straighter in the overstuffed chair that graced the lobby and searched the older gentleman's face with my eyes.
    When I'd thought about this meeting after breaking into the website, I'd hoped Mr. Pendleton would be pleased, would clap me on the back and praise me much as I'd thanked my younger pack mate the night before. But it was obvious now that the win wouldn't be so easy. The bank manager's stance was stiff and his face stern. And once he opened his mouth, his words confirmed my suspicions.
    "I should be offering you a job right now, Mr. Young," he said gravely. "But I honestly don't feel comfortable doing so. The truth is, I've run this bank on gut reactions for the last thirty years, and my gut says there's something not quite right about you."
    The sudden inhalation of air beside me turned into a coughing fit as Victor tried his best not to swallow his own tongue. I knew my cyber buddy was replaying the scene of three naked males in my hotel-room bed one more time, the image burned into his retinas as if he'd peered too closely at the sun.  Yes, by human standards, there certainly was something not quite right about me.
    A bank manager from small-town Ohio would probably find my supposed ménage à trois reason enough to refuse to offer me a job. Victor knew that as well as I did. So I fully expected to hear the hacker's voice pounding the final nail into my coffin.
    After all, hadn't Victor made it perfectly clear that this job hunt was just one more challenge, no different from his shoot-em-up video games? All's fair in love and war and all that jazz. So why not push the advantage he had over me?
    Sure enough, Victor spoke as soon as his coughing fit subsided. But his words weren't at all what I expected. "I know Wolf comes across as a little strange at first, sir," the human male said. "But the truth is, I've known him for over a year, and he's as solid as they come. He once paid a speeding ticket for me so my parents wouldn't have to know about it, and he's been supporting his aunt and his entire extended family for pretty much all of his adult life."
    A hint of a smile curved the corner of Mr. Pendleton's lips upward. To the older gentleman, I'm sure neither Victor nor I had spent any time as adults, which dramatically lessened the impact of my friend's second point.
    Meanwhile, I found myself equally surprised by Victor's monologue, but for an entirely different reason. First of all, I hadn't been expecting my opponent to come to my aid, cyber-buddy status aside. And, second of all, since when had he actually started paying attention to the tidbits I let drop about my personal life? Victor had always seemed fully focused on the next video game and the next coding adventure. His own dramas had vastly overshadowed my own...or so I'd assumed.
    Now I realized