Chapter 5
The only thing that would be worse than Robbie shifting in her office would be Robbie shifting in the backseat of his crossover SUV while she drove like a bat out of hell up the state highway. He’d climbed into the backseat willingly enough but was now groaning and writhing around.
“Why do you have the heat on so high?” he whined. His thick twang would have been adorable if she hadn’t been racing against a literal biological clock. She shivered as the cold air from the vents blasted against her.
“I don’t have the heat on. You’ve got the damn temp as low as it gets and turned it up full blast.”
“It’s too hot,” he panted.
“Godsdamnit,” she muttered under her breath, shifting to pull her cell phone out of her back pocket, the car swerving slightly as she did.
She pushed the button for the virtual assistant and hissed, “Call Magda.”
The phone rang seven times before there was a pickup in the line.
“Yes,” she whispered, but then Magda’s voicemail message clicked on.
Hi, this is Magda Nutter. I won’t call you back if you don’t leave a message, and even if you do leave a message, I still might not call you back. Sorry. It’s just not my thing. Best of luck though! Have the day you deserve!
Nadja clenched her teeth through the recording. Why did Magda have to be so godsdamned… Magda? And worse, so fucking unavailable? She remembered Robbie sheepishly apologizing for cursing in her office and almost laughed.
The recording beeped. “Hey, Mags, it’s Nadja. Listen. I need you to do me a favor. Robbie Cain came to my office this morning for an appointment, and shit went sideways.”
She was panting. She could hear it. Could feel the adrenaline of the past twenty minutes surging through her veins like water from a fire hydrant.
“He’s approaching his first shift. I’ve never heard of a wolf not shifting until the age of thirty-four, but he says that he’s been a blood donor since he was seventeen, and my best guess is that the vampire venom held the change at bay?
I know this is like three hundred HIPAA violations, but he told me that I needed to tell the whole story to a Callum MacLeod.
He said that you knew him? He would have called himself, but he broke his phone this morning when the tremors began and doesn’t remember any phone numbers.
So I need you to pass this message onto him. ”
She wasn’t sure that Magda did, in fact, know Callum MacLeod. But she was certain that Magda knew of everyone who crossed into World’s End and could absolutely find him. If she felt so inclined, that is. Which was a big if.
“Robbie is extremely volatile right now and needs to be around other wolves until he acclimates. He’s a huge danger to both himself and others otherwise.
I’m taking him to the nearest pack. They’ll help him navigate his first shift safely.
The Alpha is an old friend of mine who owes me a favor.
I’m gonna stay until he’s settled and then I’ll be back.
I’m happy to talk to Mr. MacLeod about Robbie’s situation when I get back, but the cell service is spotty out on the pack lands.
I don’t know if JJ’s gotten Wi-Fi yet and brought them into the twenty-first century or not, but I’ll try my best to reach out soon. ”
Robbie groaned and sat up, reaching for her.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, elbowing him back. “Don’t make me strap you down, asshole. I will. Behave. Behave.”
Robbie flopped back to his side on the bench seat, his groans sounding more like growls with every breath. She felt bad about the asshole comment. He seemed like a really nice guy, but she had to be the alpha in this situation, at least until she could get him to a real Alpha.
“Good boy,” she said, before remembering she was still leaving a voicemail.
“I gotta go, Mags. Pass it on for me? You’re the best. And tell them—fucking hell.”
A tiny, iridescent yellow hairball rose from the cupholder and began launching itself at her face.
A Brightling Beetle. They were a protector species, which had always amused her given that they were no bigger than a golf ball and most of their mass was hair.
But they were excellent with poisons. The fact that Robbie had one was interesting.
“Argh!” she screamed. “I didn’t touch him! Stand down!”
The Brightling Beetle looked familiar. She’d only ever seen one that color at—she groaned. At Magda’s.
Still on the line for the voicemail, she dodged as the Beetle—Walter, she remembered him being called—dove for her eyes. “Fucking Peep with wings! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! Gah! I said—”
In the chaos, she ended the call and yanked more than steered the car onto the shoulder.
“Godsdamnit, Walter!” she shouted. “Stop trying to get us all killed! We have met!”
Walter’s eyes were hidden by his fluff, but she had the distinct impression that he was glaring at her. He did, however, stop trying to blind her and bumbled over her shoulder into the backseat to rest on the side of Robbie’s head.
“Hey, buddy,” he said weakly, and she watched him lift a calloused, tattooed finger to stroke between Walter’s shimmering wings.
“What the fuck,” she said under her breath.
It had been such a normal morning. She’d woken up and done her online yoga class in her living room.
She’d showered. She’d eaten. After that cancellation, Robbie was meant to be her only client that day so that she could catch up on billing and notation and reorganize the puzzles by difficulty, rather than number of pieces.
And yet here she was in a car that she may or may not have stolen while the owner of said car was possibly moments away from turning into a wolf for the first time while a Brightling Beetle tried to run them off the road.
Aside from Magda, who was her neighbor and had informed her in no uncertain terms that they were going to be friends, her life since coming to World’s End had been defined by a striking amount of normalcy.
When she was exiled to earth, landing on a college campus, she’d done what anyone would do who didn’t know what else to do, and enrolled in classes.
She’d been interested in Psychology and majored in it with a minor in Literature.
She’d enjoyed school so much that she’d gone on to get a master’s in social work and gotten her LCSW certification.
She liked helping people. Isn’t that what had gotten her in trouble in the first place?
Helping someone instead of hurting them?
Now, she also had a Voyours account with people who paid money to be told what to do to themselves, and from that, she was able to derive enough sustenance to live.
Not to thrive, but survive. But when had she ever thrived?
The hunger had always been an unwelcome obligation to fulfill, a mouth to feed without a care for flavor.
Her stomach growled and then became a pit of worry as she remembered that she was headed north to her friend JJ’s pack at Dismal Falls, where the technology was stuck in the 1970s.
She’d be lucky to be able to reach Magda to ask her to come get her, and that old bat would come get her for all she’d put her through.
The real problem, though, would be feeding.
She had to feed soon. The hunger had a sharp edge.
But unless JJ had installed high-speed internet, she wouldn’t be eating tonight.
Still parked on the shoulder, she opened her Voyours app and cancelled her appointments, sending quick apologies and promises to reschedule.
She rested her head on the headrest and closed her eyes, getting her thoughts sorted.
She could handle this. Well, as long as Robbie didn’t shift in the car. She just had to get him to JJ.
She’d met JJ years before when his car broke down in front of her office and he’d asked for help.
He’d crashed in Magda’s empty A-frame cabin for a few days while he worked at the mechanic shop in exchange for the parts to fix his car.
They’d gotten to know one another, and the night before he’d left, they’d slept together.
She thought about that first night a lot, how it was the first time she’d been with another person and been able to be really and truly present.
She’d felt safe. And for a few years after, whenever the hunger gnawed at her with teeth too sharp to ignore, he’d driven down to World’s End for a weekend to take care of her.
They hadn’t slept together since the dawn of online spaces like Voyours, but maybe he’d be willing to help her, too.
Nadja did some box breathing to get her racing heart under control, but it was like wrestling an angry crocodile.
What the hell was she doing? She sure as hell couldn’t help Robbie any more than she could help herself right now.
So why hadn’t she dropped him off with his friend, this Callum?
Or driven him to Magda’s and made her deal with it, the meddlesome crone?
She had only just met him this morning, after all.
What had possessed her to haul him into the car and peel out of the lot driving hellbent for leather without bringing even her laptop?
She wasn’t that far out of town. She could turn around and drop him with Magda. That’s what she should do. And yet she found that she couldn’t. The thought of turning around felt wrong. Nauseating.
Robbie groaned in the backseat. A glance in the rearview mirror showed him restlessly asleep, his ribs lifting and lowering with heavy pants, the exhales trilling slightly like growls. Walter nested at the crook of his neck and, if she wasn’t mistaken, was purring softly near Robbie’s ear.
Nadja sucked in a deep breath. Trusting her intuition, she pulled the car carefully back onto the road and kept driving toward help.