Running with the Pack

THE PACK AND THE PICK-UP ARTIST MIKE BROTHERTON

Prime had barely taken two steps into the dark club before one of his students accosted him.

“Sage just struck out twice,” the excited guy said. “He said he’s going back in.”

“Cool.” Sage was Prime’s co-instructor at the weekend boot camp. Guys would fly into San Francisco and plunk down three thousand dollars for pick-up instruction and supervised nighttime field work. Out sarging in the evenings, the students were supposed to be the ones approaching the sets while the instructors gave advice and debriefed. Still, it was normal for the guys to want to see their instructors demonstrate their prowess, which normally wasn’t a problem.

Apparently tonight it was, for Sage.

Prime looked beyond the student to a hot babe, a seven, no, seven-and-a-half, standing with a couple of guys further into the Den. He smiled and waved in the direction of HB7.5 and pushed past his student.

She smiled and half raised her hand, a little uncertain. It was a standard trick to force a show of interest. She thought she knew him, or that he at least knew her, and didn’t want to look like she didn’t remember.

Still smiling, Prime eased through the clumps of people, lightly touched her shoulder, and settled in next to her. “Hey, how’s it going?”

The guys she was with turned toward him, expressions blank.

The girl still had a half smile on her face and gave an unsurprising response. “It’s going okay. What about you?”

The guys turned away to talk to each other, assuming that she knew him, just like they were supposed to.

He wasn’t particularly interested in HB7.5, but it was better to be in set than not, and it would build his social proof while he checked out how Sage was doing.

Prime’s partner got laid like a rock star, but beyond that similarity, he was not at all like Prime. Sage peacocked, wearing outrageous fancy clothes and even make-up (always accompanied by the perfect cologne), while Prime threw on the same jeans, leather jacket, and cowboy boots night after night. Sage worked and taught pick-up using a very mechanical system and was a great believer in the concept of “fake it till you make it” while Prime often improvised his pick-ups, and believed that if you made yourself into a quality guy the women would follow naturally. To top it off, Sage was a sushi-eating vegaquarian to Prime’s carnivorous ways.

HB7.5 was prattling on in response to a question he’d asked her about whether it was infidelity for a girlfriend to make out with a girl, and normally he would have cut her off, but he had just spotted Sage.

His partner, sporting a white suit and hat tonight, was approaching a large group, a mixed seven set, lounging around a fireplace at back. From a technical point of view, Sage looked good at first. He went right in and engaged the whole group, drawing everyone’s attention. Nice body language, good kino, touching three of the group within the first fifteen seconds. Still it was all for naught. Prime saw that the attempt was doomed, as the group’s body language shifted to lock him out.

Engaging a group of seven people all at once in a noisy club was not an easy thing to do, but a task well within Sage’s capabilities. Sometimes failure wasn’t your fault—you engaged particular individuals or sets who were not open to being approached by strangers—but this was rare. Almost everyone liked to talk with the coolest guy in the place, the life of the party. Almost everyone.

The girl he had just met continued to jabber on like they were old friends, allowing Prime to take a closer look at the set. Three men, four women, all attractive, both older and younger than him. He paired off the couples based on their seating arrangement and body language. The single girl in the group, well, she was breathtaking when he focused on her. Perfect cheekbones, beautiful smile, and huge eyes. Superhot babe, an eleven on the ten-point scale. SHB11 possessed a raw sexuality dancing in her model-quality features.

SHB11 was worth the risk of failure.

Failure was only certain when you didn’t try.

As Sage was patting one of the guy’s shoulders on the way out and trying to make his failure to hook the set inconspicuous to observers, Prime was telling HB7.5 that he’d needed to go say hi to a friend and was making his own departure.

As Prime made his own approach he passed by Sage. He smiled at his friend and gave him a quick high-five.

“Impossible set, man,” said Sage.

“Nothing’s impossible,” said Prime.

“Then show me how it’s done, Professor Prime.”

Prime just grinned at him and moved toward the fireplace.

He didn’t bother to open the set properly, the way Sage had done. Prime just bulled his way through to the fireplace and said, “Excuse me,” as he squeezed in to sit down on the bricks between SHB11 and one of her friends. “This fire looks awesome.”

It wasn’t exactly textbook. As an approach, he deserved points for placing himself next to his target, but that was about it. He had no doubt that Sage had tried three variations on textbook approaches and had failed with all of them, so why not?

“Chilly out there tonight,” he said, leaning back toward the fire.

There was an awkward moment as they evaluated him. He’d just invaded their space with a barely plausible excuse and they were trying to figure out if they were cool with that or not.

Prime gave them the moment, soaking in the heat. It was a little chilly outside tonight, that was the truth, and he felt no shame in taking the seat he had now.

He was a bold man who broke the rules and rarely felt fear, but at that moment, suddenly and surprisingly, despite the heat, the hairs on the back of his neck rose up. He felt . . . vulnerable.

That was odd. He’d set aside his approach anxiety years ago and just didn’t give a crap anymore how anyone received him.

There was something different about this group.

SHB11 leaned in his direction, a little, tilting her head down. His heart picked up its pace as she surreptitiously sniffed him.

Well, that was different. He didn’t move and held his position.

Everything relaxed then and his hairs settled back into place.

“I like your T-shirt, man,” said one of the guys in the group. Prime pegged him as the alpha member of the group. He was the oldest and the biggest guy there, and it seemed that he had now won the AMOG over without much effort. How had he done that? His shirt?

What shirt had he thrown on today? Oh, yeah. The one that said Meat is murder . . . tasty, tasty murder. It was Gaucho Grill day.

“Thanks,” Prime said automatically, using it to launch into one of his set stories. He raised his voice and engaged the whole group. “Tonight I hit my favorite restaurant, a Brazilian churrascaria. When the Brazilians barbeque they don’t slather on that goopy sauce like they do in the midwest. It’s just salt and meat, you know? Natural and honest, and tasty as hell. My place here is awesome, and they have everything. Every cut of beef all served on swords, pork, sausage, sometimes even ostrich. Oh, and chicken hearts, done the way I used to enjoy them in Rio.”

“You were in Rio? What were you doing there?” SHB11 asked.

“Yeah. I was there studying jujitsu, but I probably spent more time on the beach.” He went on about the views from Copacabana Beach, and the time used his martial arts training to rescue cute Israeli tourists from a mugger. It wasn’t his best story, not by a long shot, but it let him drop some interesting displays of higher value without too much bragging, and he could feel out a group with this stuff. Sometimes he turned off the hippy types, way too common in San Francisco, but pick-up wasn’t about scoring with every girl you met. It was about finding out who you were and what you wanted and being able to get it when you found it. Hippy chicks were not for him, SHB11 or not. Sage could take those.

“Chicken hearts?” SHB11 said, licking her lips. “Love them.”

A show of interest. Excellent. Prime smiled and gave her a quick hug. “You’re my kind of girl, aren’t you. Wait a second,” he said, pushing her away, “can you cook?”

“No,” she answered, giggling. “But I can eat.”

Hook point. He was in.

Her name was Anastasia, and she was not only a hot girl, she was a cool girl. Her group was . . . odd. The AMOG, it turned out, was her father, Yuri, and her mother was there, too, Elena. The others were an aunt and uncle and her older sister and husband. Not your usual clubbing set, but when you found a SHB11, you didn’t question the circumstances. Many of the hottest girls didn’t go out to bars at all and you had to find them at supermarkets or the gym.

And if they went out with their family and that was how he found them, that was how he would game them. Romancing a girl in front of her parents was not something he was afraid to attempt.

Prime chatted them all up and everyone was smiling and feeling good and comfortable with him. Time to isolate and escalate, or he’d just be that friendly guy they met that time. He also realized that he felt a bit strange. Not drunk—he didn’t drink when he was working or sarging—but warm and light headed, and the air was pregnant with a musky scent.

“I was cold when I came over, but now I’m more on the toasty side,” he said, standing up. He held his hand out to Anastasia. “Catch some air with me.”

She glanced away from him, a nonverbal check with the parents, and then took his hand and let him lead her out.

They got looks not only from Sage and the boot camp students, but quite a few other envious guys in there.

It didn’t bother Prime one bit.

Outside there were a few clusters of smokers lingering about, which gave Prime a bit of an excuse to maneuver them into even a bit more isolation.

“I like it that you don’t smoke,” he said. “Makes a woman’s mouth taste like an ashtray.”

“I could never,” she said, smiling. Her green eyes glinted in the moonlight. “Hurts your sense of smell.”

“You smell good,” said Prime. He leaned in, brushed her hair aside, and sniffed her slowly from shoulder to ear. “Mmmmm, really good.”

She smiled and made no effort to stop him.

“Smokers or not, so many people have lost their sense of smell in this modern world,” he said. “We’re so artificial now, like machines, not the animals we really are. Animals, you’ll notice before they mate, will always smell each other. We’re hardwired by evolution to respond to certain, fundamental things, in the nose and in the gut. Our noses know, so to speak, and tell us things we need to know about the world.”

“That’s so true,” she said. She started to say something else, but stopped as his hand slid up the back of the neck into her hair.

“There are a lot of things like that that we humans have forgotten. You’ll notice how lions, when they mate, bite and pull and claw at each other. Here,” he said, pulling her hair downward so her face was tilted up toward his. “Like this.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“The best, most sensitive places on the body are hidden places, like the nape of the neck where your hair starts, and like the inside of the elbow, the back of the knee . . . ”

Prime traced his fingers along some of those places as he spoke. “Places like those have millions of little nerve endings, sensitive little guys, all signaling for the release of endorphins when properly stimulated.”

Anastasia seemed entranced, giving him what the community called doggy dinner bowl eyes, just the way she was supposed to be at this stage in the game.

He took her arm, bent it a little, and erotically bit Anastasia on the inside of her elbow, slowly closing his mouth and bringing his teeth together.

She shivered.

“Right?”

“Yes,” she said. “You understand very well.”

“But do you know what I love best?” Prime asked. He pointed at the side of his neck. “A bite right here. This is where the jugular vein is most exposed, and since so many sexual fantasies involve submission and vulnerability, it just floods the brain with endorphins.”

He waited. About half the time the girls didn’t do anything and he would have to instigate. The other half of the time they were game, but usually the first attempt was lame and he would insist on showing them how it was done.

In either case, a passionate make-out usually ensued with minimal effort.

Anastasia reacted more positively than most.

She jumped him, wrapping her legs around his waist, grabbing his hair, and devouring his lips and neck with her hungry mouth.

Prime staggered back a step against the brick wall, pleasantly overwhelmed.

And then there was no thought, only lust and passion.

Eventually Prime realized that they weren’t kissing or biting each other any more, that he was thinking again. At least a little. In the cool night air their breath formed little wisps of mist around their faces. Hell, Anastasia’s upper chest was flat out steaming.

“Anastasia!” came a voice calling from the front door of the Den. Her family was leaving.

It took Prime a moment to process that something was going on, so lost in the moment he had been.

That hadn’t happened in a while.

“I must go now,” she said to him. “Meet me at Muir Woods tomorrow at 1 pm. We will have a picnic, yes?”

Prime tried to re-engage his brain to think through the logistics. Logistics could always ruin the most perfect pick up. He fumbled for his cell phone so she could put her number in.

“No, no, no,” she said. “I don’t have a phone. Just meet me tomorrow. You will be there, yes? Tell me.”

“Yes,” he said to her as she backed away from him, his head full of the raw feelings of passion of the last few minutes. “Yes.”

“Good,” she said.

Prime stood there steaming in the moonlight as Anastasia and her family walked away together.

His mind eventually fully kicked in and he remembered that he had students to supervise. Time to go to work.

Work . . . workshop . . . tomorrow . . . shit.

Prime looked at himself in the bathroom mirror the next morning.

Jesus Christ, he thought.

Most of his neck was a bruised mess and where he didn’t have bruises he had scratches.

Anastasia had done a real number on him. How had she done that?

The thing was, he hadn’t had feelings like this for a girl in years. Rationally he knew he was thinking like your average frustrated chump. AFCs put pussy on a pedestal and gave women all the power in relationships, and ironically, while women liked that they did not find it attractive in a man.

Prime checked his watch and decided he didn’t have time to shave properly or do anything about the superhickeys. He didn’t even own a turtleneck.

So be it.

He finished dressing and went downstairs to eat breakfast before the boot camp recommenced at 10 am in the mansion’s living room.

Sage was already there, working on a bowl of Fruit Loops. “Wow, dude! She chewed you up, didn’t she?”

“I guess she did,” he said, smiling, as he went to make some bacon and eggs. “Not an impossible set, just a dangerous one.”

“Yeah, well, I guess so. The crazy chicks, you can have them. You should have at least gotten laid for your trouble.”

“I will,” said Prime.

“No way. You’re going to see a crazy chick like that again?”

Prime cracked a couple of eggs into a pan and started scrambling. “Sure. She’s super hot.”

“She was hot, but she wasn’t that hot. And did you see the guys in that group? I haven’t seen that many monobrows in the same place, ever. You said they were all family. She’s probably got it, too, and plucks daily.”

“So what? You get your chest waxed,” Prime said.

“Touche.”

What was real, what was fake, it all got blurry. Was Sage a hairy-chested man hiding, or a smooth-chested man making himself over to reflect his true self-image? Almost every pick-up artist made themselves over, down to going by names that were really just reworked CB handles. Sage was wise, spicy. Prime was number one. Go by a name for enough time and it becomes part of you.

Prime had been born Jonathan, but hadn’t ever seen himself as a Jonathan. Another artificial label, a name. Animals didn’t give them-selves names. They knew what they were.

Prime carried his food over to the table and joined his friend. “I’m going to have to miss a few hours this afternoon.”

“Got a doctor who will see you on a Saturday?” asked Sage.

“No. I’m going to a picnic.”

Sage noisily crunched on his cereal for a moment. “I don’t think so, Jon. This is a business. These guys aren’t paying for you to screw around with crazy chicks on their time.”

“It isn’t that big a deal. We move my sessions to late afternoon. Move the story telling stuff first.”

“We have it in the order we have it for a reason. The British guy, Nigel, he flew over here from London because he wanted body language lessons from the famous Prime. They pay us thousands of dollars because they want us, the Better Man Program, to give them our undivided attention for a few hours. There are a hundred other guys as good as us, just without the rep, ready to take our place if our graduates leave here without real changes in their lives.”

“I know.”

“So, be professional.”

It was his own damn fault, Prime knew. He’d double booked. He hated making promises he couldn’t keep, and if he hadn’t been so pussy-drunk he wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

“If I skip meeting Anastasia,” said Prime, “I may never see her again. I didn’t get her number.”

“Cripes, Jon. You got oneitis already? Go out and fuck ten other girls and you won’t remember this one at all. There’s always another girl.”

Too true, and that was their code. There’s more fish in the sea. No need to get needy. No need to compromise to score with any one particular girl. No need . . .

Prime took a bite of bacon. This girl had unleashed something inside him in a way no girl ever had. He knew not only what we wanted to do, he knew what his gut insisted that he do.

“There’s a difference between you and me, partner,” Prime said. “You make up your rules and follow them to the letter, like a computer, and I admire that. It makes you successful, and it has helped us develop our boot camps. You’re the brains here, no doubt, and you define professionalism.”

“Thanks, but you’re a professional, too,” said Sage.

“I am, but I’m not perfect. I have to listen to my heart, my gut. That’s who I am. That’s what I have to do.”

Sage finished his bowl, carried it to the kitchen, and tossed it into the sink with loud clanking. He gave Prime a look, but didn’t say anything.

Prime hated the passive aggressive shit. He could read Sage’s thoughts and his friend was just too chicken to voice them.

“I have a case of oneitis,” Prime said. “So what? That’s my problem. The students won’t even miss me. If they do, promise them I’ll give them each a free follow-up coaching call in a couple of weeks, Okay?”

Sage’s posture shifted ever so slightly. That was it. He really wasn’t worried about Prime. He was worried about the business.

“Okay. But just be careful out there and remember that she’s just a girl.”

Prime rubbed at his raw neck. Was she?

Muir Woods not only sported some giant wood, it wasn’t the smallest park in the world. Prime wondered how he was going to find Anastasia. Logistics could kill the best pick-up, and he didn’t even have a phone number for her.

He’d only been wandering around for a few minutes when she found him.

“Jon? I knew you wouldn’t disappoint us.”

Us? He turned and there she was, with her whole entire family.

Well. He only wanted to sleep with her, not the whole pack of them. Still, he had enjoyed their company and if that was how it was going to be, that was how it was going to be.

He walked over to her smiling and gave her a hug and peck on the cheek, then shook her dad’s hand and said hello to everyone else.

Sage was right. The guys did come awfully close to sporting mono-brows. If he and Anastasia had kids, he’d have to worry about that.

Prime stopped himself. Kids? Where were these thoughts coming from? He’d experienced an overwhelming physical attraction and connection with this girl, but that was not the stuff to make a pick-up artist marry. That was just an everyday occurrence in his life these days.

But he knew that the raw, instinctual feelings he’d had the night before ran deep in his hindbrain.

Normally on a day two meeting like this he’d plan to be alone with his girl and build comfort, rapport. The real thing, too. There was nothing fake about this part of pick-up. The artist just knew how to do it fast.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Anastasia said. “They can do without us for a while, don’t you think?”

“Is that all right with you guys?” Prime asked Yuri and Elena.

“Sure,” Yuri said. “You kids have fun.”

“And I’ll take that,” said Elena, reaching for the bottle of wine Prime had brought.

“Thanks,” he said, and off they went.

As soon as they were out of sight of the rest of her family, she jumped him again, and it was all he could do to make her stop.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Don’t you feel what I feel?”

Oh Lord, how he did. There was a palpable, raw lust arcing between them every time they touched.

“Yes,” he said. The first instant they’d touched again there was no doubt that they’d sleep together the moment the logistics allowed. The thing was he wanted more, some kind of relationship.

Most master pick-up artists managed a small and revolving harem of girls in non-exclusive relationships. There was always a girl available when he wanted, or new ones to hunt. Prime had three women in multiple long-term relationships at the moment. He just couldn’t envision Anastasia as one of these, assuming he could even see her without her extended family tagging along.

He wanted more. He wanted to consume her.

This was all irrational he knew, intellectually. He didn’t know this girl at all beyond the facts that she was hot and cool and liked him. That and the fact that the pure physical lust had been overpowering.

“There are a lot of pretty girls in the world,” he said. “Other than your looks, what are three things that make you special?”

She took hold of his face between her hands and looked deep in his eyes. “You’re still thinking too much, but I will humor you my Jon.”

Prime looked right back at her, triangular gazing, moving his focus between her two eyes and mouth.

“First, I am free. I see what I want and I take it, and I am responsible for my freedom.

“Second, I understand the natural order of things and accept it.

“Third,” and she paused to smile, showing her perfect teeth, “I can recognize a strong man when I find him, a man with potential to be more.”

Wow, what an answer. Most hot girls had to stop and think hard about that question. He’d once seen a pick-up artist on a talk show leave Jessica Alba initially flummoxed, as the question alone had removed her beauty from the attraction question.

Anastasia’s response made him think of something that had happened to him. It was not a story he shared often, although it was a true story and important to him.

“I went hunting once, when I was a teenager. I wanted to know what it was like to be responsible for killing one’s own food. I’m a carnivore, as you already know, and anyone who eats meat should know first hand what that means.”

He paused, thinking about how to articulate the next part, then stopped worrying. It would come out.

“My dad had a friend who hunted, who taught me about guns, and took me. He told me about buck fever, how he’d get so excited before shooting a deer that he almost couldn’t pick up his rifle let alone aim it. It made me imagine a housewife at the grocery store pissing herself with excitement as she reached for a pound of ground beef.”

He was quiet again, remembering that daydream and the first time.

Anastasia rested her head in the nape of his neck, listening.

“When I had the deer in my sights,” he continued, “it wasn’t like I was shopping at a grocery store, but it wasn’t like I had buck fever either. I’m not religious especially, but it was a holy thing. A beautiful and natural thing that I’d been too ignorant to realize existed every day, everywhere around the world. It wasn’t just about eating, and it wasn’t just about dying. It was about being part of the world, and understanding you place.

“After I shot the deer and it went down, I cried.”

“Why?” she whispered.

Maybe she did understand. The other times he’d tried to tell girls this story they had been near crying themselves and the obvious explanation was not what had moved him. He wasn’t sorry he had taken the animal’s life or that he found Bambi’s mother delicious.

“It was the first time I ever felt truly alive, and glimpsed the responsibility.”

She said something then that surprised him with its depth of insight. “That was because you saw the world as it is, but not yet fully your own place in it.”

Or was it insightful? Maybe she was just spouting bullshit the way schools trained kids to do.

He held her tighter as he realized it wasn’t bullshit. She wasn’t a bullshitter, and he was ashamed there was as much bullshit in his life as there was.

Because of the rain they had their picnic in the family’s RVs, with Prime, Anastasia, and her parents in one and the rest in the second. The group had two and were touring the west coast on vacation.

The logistics suddenly seemed nearly impossible, but Prime was committed to making more of this strange, blossoming relationship.

“And what do you do for a living?” Yuri asked over a bite of chicken leg.

“Yes,” said Anastasia’s mother. “Last night you told us you repaired disposable lighters, and while that was a very funny answer, I don’t think it is true.”

There was a short answer to the question, and a long answer that was more obscure but no less true. Unlike some pick-up artists, he was not shy or ashamed about how he made his very good living. He told it the way he saw it.

“I take nerds,” he began, “and guys broken by divorce, and socially stunted Silicon Valley executives, and fellows whose fathers were either clueless in the first place or failed to pass on their wisdom, I take them all, and I help them make themselves better men.”

“Sounds like the army,” Yuri said.

Prime grinned. “We do call our workshops ‘boot camps,’ and some of the same principles apply. Men are resistant to change, even when the change is good for them. Even when it is about them realizing their every dream and becoming responsible for their own power.”

This was the long answer, and truer, at least to him, than any trite answer about teaching guys to get laid. The term pick-up artist conjured up negative connotations to so many who thought the trade was all a bag of tricks about how to manipulate women out of their panties. Well, he admitted, some of it was. But the core of it to Prime had always been about helping men realize themselves and their personal power. He liked the army analogy better than the self-help guru image that he knew Sage preferred.

“That sounds like a fine thing,” Yuri said. “Is that what you always want to do with your life?”

He didn’t know if Anastasia’s father realized it, but that was a loaded question. To Prime, it sounded like he was asking if he intended to spend the rest of his life fucking around. Well . . . did he? Was there the immediate alternative of cruising around the country with this girl and her family?

“I’m happy for the moment, although I do understand that the nature of life is change,” Prime replied. “What do you all do?”

“We do,” said Yuri, “exactly as we please. We have a little money, and we do not have complicated needs. We have the world, and family. We have simple pleasures. Eating, breathing, enjoying nature. It is a good life.”

They kept chatting and Prime had a good time. These were good people. A little weird, but who wasn’t? He was happy with who he was, but he wasn’t normal by any means. At one point he asked about Sage.

“My friend tried to talk to you last night,” he said. “The guy in the white suit. Remember him?”

“Oh yes,” said Elena, a subliminal “tsk, tsk” in her voice. “Poor boy.”

Poor boy? Sage? The man had picked up twins at the Playboy Mansion and had a threesome in the grotto. That was no poor boy.

“Yes,” said Anastasia. “He is sad, isn’t he?”

Sad?

“He smelled of rabbit food,” said Yuri, authoritatively. “I hope your friend does better in the future. Maybe you can help him. I trust you are good to your friends.”

Okay, some people were weirder than others.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Sage said. He turned away from Prime dismissively and bent to turn on the gas fireplace.

Prime steamed. “No. I feel like I’m finally waking up. You’re not jealous, are you? Maybe I shouldn’t have told you they thought you smelled weak.”

“Look,” said Sage, standing back up, “I’ve got Sally coming over soon, so I don’t have time for this nonsense. Isn’t tonight your night with Brenda?”

“I cancelled,” said Prime.

Sage rolled his eyes. Oneitis, said that look.

“Don’t you want me to be happy?” he asked his friend.

“God, yes!” roared Sage. “And that is why you need to get back on track.”

“Are you happy with this lifestyle?”

“Of course. What more could I want? I sleep with beautiful women, live in a mansion in San Francisco, wear the finest clothes and eat the finest foods.”

Prime smiled, remembering it had been called “rabbit food.” Still, he couldn’t help but feel that he had had a peek into a simpler, more natural, and more honest life. A life with Anastasia. And he was going to take up the invitation he’d been offered.

“Well, let’s just wait until after tonight, okay?”

“More hanging out with the Monobrows? Jeez, man, it’s like a bad Saturday Night Live skit, and you’re living it.”

“I’m living life,” Prime replied, simply. “Respect that.”

Sage sighed audibly. “Fine. I do respect you, you know that. I just don’t like to see you regressing into some kind of AFC. You’ll end up broken.”

“Or changed.”

Sage nodded.

Prime met up with Anastasia and her family out at Yosemite.

They already had a more than respectable fire blazing at their campsite and were working on a small keg. Camping, fire, beer . . . not a bad start. As Prime looked at his woman, he knew what a perfect night like this also needed: sex. And it was there.

Out came a boom box. Out loud came classic rock, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising.”

Okay, everything wasn’t pure and natural, but music was good to have. Primal.

Anastasia danced with joy, tilting her head up toward the night above, the firelight dancing across her features.

Prime finished his beer and rose to join her in the stepless dance of life.

Together, they moved.

The night faded. Her family faded. Together they were only two, under the stars and the rising full moon.

His arms over her shoulders, her green eyes locked onto his.

A voice. Yuri’s.

“You want to chase real tail? You want the real thing?”

Dancing. Intoxicating smell of woman.

Yuri’s voice, still calling, but more . . . howling than calling.

“You want to live life? Howl at the moon, man!”

At least that’s how it seemed, as he spun with Anastasia.

“You want it?” she asked. “You want a natural life? A simple, honest life? A free life?”

He didn’t think too hard about that? Why should he? The answer had been hidden in his heart for years.

“For a real man, this life is the best,” she said, grabbing his head, pulling his hair. “For you, my mate.”

Who was picking up who?

Did it matter?

They danced and Prime opened his senses while turning down his analysis.

At some point the physical urges became too much and he had to have her. Damn the lack of privacy. Damn the family. Damn the world.

They ripped their clothing. Their own. Each others. It was all the same.

Words became sounds.

Smells.

Tastes.

Pull hair.

Lick skin.

Bite.

Feel the air, the moving air, the wind.

Feel the real.

Howl!

Wait, what was he doing? What was Anastasia becoming? What was the biting doing to—stop!

Stop thinking. Feel. Go with it, truth, life.

Howl!

Time for Prime to become Primeval.

Hair, sprouting. Fangs, growing. Claws, extending. Nose, blossoming. Eyes, sharpening. Ears, encompassing. Body, transforming. Becoming a better . . . being.

Time for Primeval to take his mate.

On all fours, hunching, biting, howling, coming, with the scent of blood spilled from the sex for the first time. An honest mating. The best.

Running through the night, howling again, with wind, with his true family, his pack.

He belonged. He had his place.

He had his mate.

He had his pack.

It was going to be a long-term relationship.

Primeval howled with satisfaction.

He’d been picked up.