Chapter 3
THREE
August
Whoever invented the phrase dog days of summer was probably from Louisiana. It was ninety-five degrees by eleven in the morning and the humidity was at like a hundred and fifty percent. Ben even refused to go out in jeans anymore because the heat was giving him "swamp ass."
Naturally, we had also lost steam on training every day, so on one random Tuesday morning in mid-August, we were lounging in our swimsuits on lawn chairs in the backyard. A sprinkler gradually showered us with water as it cycled over to our area of the lawn.
This is where Dad found us when he decided to take a half day at work and waltzed through the back door at noon.
"I see you two are working hard."
Neither of us had the energy to look over at him.
"Working hard on our tan lines, Dad," Ben said lazily. He rolled over onto his stomach.
Dad sighed. "Don't stay out here all day. Wolves can still get skin cancer. Are you guys working later today?"
"Nope," we both chirped, then Ben smacked me and shouted "Jinx!" like a six-year-old.
"Well, I need to do a little work, and then your mom scheduled someone to come by and clean the house this afternoon, so you two need to make yourselves scarce."
We both groaned again in unison, because sometimes we were the same person.
"We could... go run the Pack lands?" Ben asked, hesitating.
He didn't really want to go out there, but we were both at the point where we needed to let our wolves stretch out a bit.
I know I was starting to develop that low level of humming anxiety that persisted until I let her out to run.
She was really itching for a real fight, too, but there was no chance of that unless we either went out to Pack lands to spar or we got in a real confrontation with a wolf, neither of which would be happening anytime soon.
"Let's go jogging down by the river," I said instead. "I know there's a thick strip of forest that borders the river away from the jogging trail. I bet we can sneak a shift down there and sniff out some rodents or something."
"Fiiiine," he dragged the word out like he was exasperated. "Meet you at the car in twenty."
I stalked carefully through the dense trees that surrounded the Red River, which borders Shreveport to the north. My wolf eyes could make out every stick, leaf, and blade of grass that fell across my path, and I caught Ben’s golden tail up ahead, probably sniffing out some animal to torture.
We’d left our running clothes behind a bush along the jogging path that ran parallel to the river about a mile behind us, then snuck down to the riverbank and shifted under the thick cover of the trees.
While we weren’t really able to run all out, it had been nice to meander around in wolf form, sniffing things and stretching my muscles.
My wolf was almost identical to Ben’s wolf, which meant I was extra large for a female.
We both had shaggy yellow-gold fur, similar to the color of our hair.
The only difference between us was that I had white paws, while Ben was solidly golden.
"I’m going to keep running downstream, catch up to me when you can."
Ben’s voice sounded in my head. Our telepathic link only worked when we were shifted and was apparently a pretty uncommon ability.
It was known to happen between close family members from powerful Alpha lines and, on super rare occasion, between true Moon-fated mates.
My Dad told us once that he thought his great-grandfather and his brothers could mind-link when shifted, but no one else in the family had been able to since them, that he knew of.
"Got it. I’m going to poke around here for awhile," I responded back to him.
I lost sight of Ben up ahead of me, but some movement in the bushes about six feet to my right caught my attention. I crept closer and sniffed.
A bunny!
I could make out the little black rabbit cowering under the bush. She was scared of me, and rightly so as I was a giant wolf with a mouth full of sharp teeth. She took off down through the trees at top speed.
I tracked her a bit just for fun, which wasn’t very nice of me since she probably thought I wanted to eat her for dinner. When I rounded a curve in the river, I caught a different scent.
Coyote. And my poor bunny friend was in his line of sight.
The bunny saw the coyote a second too late. She tried to veer left and sprint up the bank and out of the forest toward the jogging trail, but the coyote snapped his jaws out with lightning speed and bit down on her little bunny leg. She squealed in pain.
Not today you mangy mutt!
I came charging around the corner and leapt at him with a snarl. He wisely dropped the bunny with a yelp and sprinted away as fast as his skinny little canine legs could carry him.
I peered down at the muddy ground where the bunny lay still. I nudged her with my nose and whined at her. I didn’t see any blood, so I didn’t think she was gravely injured. Maybe she was just playing dead so I’d go away.
Suddenly, there was a soft cracking noise and a faint shimmer, and laying where the bunny had been was a very naked young woman.
I shifted back to human form a second later.
"Holy shit!" I cried, standing over her. "You’re a rabbit shifter. I’ve never met a non-wolf-shifter before!"
I held out my hand to help her up, but she just stared up at me with both annoyance and confusion on her face.
She looked to be about my age, and she had deep brown skin, light brown eyes, and absolutely baller short-cropped bleached blonde hair.
She looked like Prudence from the Sabrina show on Netflix, and I was here for it.
She continued to just stare at me.
"Are you serious?" she finally exclaimed. "What in the world are you doing shifting down here? Pack wolves are only supposed to shift on Pack territory so this shit doesn’t happen! I thought you were going to eat me."
"Ugh, I know I’m so sorry if I scared you.
My brother and I were trying to sneak a shift in without going to the Pack lands.
" I hesitated, shifting my weight from foot to foot while I was still just standing over her completely nude. "We’re new to town and to the Pack and have kind of just been trying to avoid mingling with them. Our old pack was kind of oppressive. We’re trying to just live as independently as possible, I guess. You know, avoid all the pack drama?"
She nodded, and then she finally took my hand and pulled herself to standing. "I’m Harriet Jones," she said, and she shook the hand she was holding.
"Mave Fortune," I replied. I looked at her leg. "Are you hurt? He had a pretty tight hold on you."
"Nah," she said, reaching down to rub her right calf. "He had me in a vice grip but he didn’t break the skin. It’ll probably bruise later but no real damage done."
"What do you say we get our clothes and I’ll buy you a meal to make up for scaring the shit out of you?
" This was oddly forward for me since I’d been so content to keep to myself since we got here, but there was something about having a friend who was a shifter but not a wolf that really, really appealed to me.
She nodded again and gave me a friendly smile. "You’re on, Mave. I’m pretty interested in getting to know the wolf who joined the mighty NWLA Pack yet somehow has zero interest in rubbing elbows with the insufferable Pack elite."
That made me smile wider. Fuck yeah, I’m keeping this girl.
Ben came trotting around the corner in wolf form. He chuffed at us and gave Harriet a big wolfy grin.
"Fuck, there’s two of you!" she exclaimed. "You’re both enormous, too."
Ben chose that moment to pop back into human form, then tossed a sexy smile at Harriet, who only just realized she was still naked and half-heartedly tried to cover her bits.
"My wolf’s not the only thing that’s enormous about me, baby," Ben said with a wink.
"Cut your shit out, Ben," I snapped at him and then playfully flicked his ear. I turned to Harriet, who still had her hands across her boobs. "Don’t worry, new friend. You don’t have the right body parts to keep his attention."
"Spoilsport."
"Shut up, Benji."
Harriet relaxed then, and motioned for us to follow her back out toward the jogging path.
The three of us probably made a pretty interesting sight trekking naked along the river together through the dense trees.
We followed her to where she picked up her clothes, then we grabbed ours a few hundred yards further down the path.
Once we were all decent, we led Harriet to where we parked the car. She clambered into the back seat while Ben and I were driver and passenger, respectively.
She gave the Tesla an appreciative once-over, then said, "Well, Mave and Ben, where are you taking me for my apology dinner?"
"We know just the place."
"Holy shit, Ben! The boys’ locker room? What if you’d gotten athlete’s foot on your dick or something?" Harriet guffawed as Ben looked scandalized by her reaction to his and Antonio’s love story.
"I’ll have you know that I kept my dick off of any surface that would ever have been touched by a foot."
"Sure, sure, buddy."
I smiled over my Diet Coke. We’d taken Harriet straight to Marilynn’s Place, of course, and we were lounging at a patio table, drinking sodas and sharing cheese fries.
She and I, as we were destined to be best friends, were almost matching in our tight jogging pants and cropped running tops.
Ben was in a tight tank top and tiny running shorts and had only actually put a shirt on because Marilynn wouldn’t serve him without it.
We’d kept the conversation light so far, giving Harriet the CliffsNotes version of our move to Shreveport ("Dad’s job"), our joining of the NWLA Pack as new unknown omega-wolves ("Common procedure for unknown new pack members"), and our summer activities so far ("Working, shifting in the back yard, and avoiding other wolves").