Chapter Four
She couldn’t do this.
Destiny yanked the handle of her car open and sank back down onto the warm seat. It was so cold outside, she could see her frozen breath.
Where are you? Mom texted.
Destiny couldn’t just stand her mother up, but was she ready for this?
Already, she couldn’t get Dodger out of her head.
Today had been such a roller coaster. Good things had happened.
Very good things. But if she went into Copper’s and hung out with Dodger, it felt like a date and she hadn’t ever done this.
She didn’t know what she was doing and certainly not with a werewolf.
She’d talked herself out of a dozen dates before now and it had been easy to walk away from them all, but this one? Seeing Dodger? She felt like one of those dumb bugs who drifted toward the bug zapper and got electrocuted simply because they couldn’t help themselves.
I see your car. Come on. It’s cold as a witch’s tit out here. Mom had always had a way with words.
Destiny blew out a frozen breath and got out, nearly busted her butt on a patch of ice and clung to her door clumsily. Very human of her. Very un-werewolf-like.
Why had she listened to her mother? Why had she worn this damn skirt tonight? Already, it was riding up to just below her butt cheeks. Sure, she had on translucent tights underneath, but she felt exposed through and through.
She grabbed her oversized jacket with the faux fur lined hood and yanked it on to cover herself but nearly fell again on the slick street as she struggled into it.
“Farfignugen,” she muttered as she held onto the hood of her car to ease her way toward the sidewalk.
The center of the walkway was newly salted at least. The street crews were working day and night, but they were in a storm right now.
The streets kept refreezing. On the way here, she’d nearly slid off the road twice.
And that was more proof that she had lost her mind. She tried not to drive in this weather, and what was she doing? Driving her two-wheel drive car through a freaking blizzard just to see a werewolf that was completely unattainable, and had told her his red flags, which were many.
That man was dangerous and here she was, risking a car crash just for the chance to see him.
Men made women stupider.
Gritting her teeth, Destiny stepped up on the curb and splayed her legs as she studied the patches of ice that littered the sidewalk.
Her mom was standing near the door of Copper’s, arms thrown tightly around herself to ward off the cold wind.
“Is he here?” Destiny called.
“Nope. I’ve been here for half an hour. He will show though. I have faith.”
Or he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d talked himself out of this. Destiny had messaged him good morning before she’d started grading papers today, but he’d never responded.
Yet another red flag. He was uninterested.
She did ice skating movements in her high heels. She’d thought this sidewalk was salted, but she’d been wrong. It was slick as hell.
She gasped and her legs went wide, and at that exact moment, a car hit her.
At least, that’s what it felt like. A solid wall hit her in the back and she went flying.
Destiny yelled in fear, but she hadn’t been hit by a car at all.
She found herself in Dodger’s arms, against his brick wall of a chest, smelling the most delectable cologne she’d ever encountered.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” he gritted out. His frost blue eyes cast down to her quickly and then back up as he strode with powerful steps toward her mother, who wore a plastered smile on her face as she snapped a picture. Great.
“I can walk on my own,” Destiny groused.
“You literally can’t,” he gritted out. “I just watched you almost fall three times in a ten foot stretch. How do you survive your daily life?”
Destiny struggled out of his arms. “Put me down.”
“You’re welcome,” he said as he settled her onto her feet and walked past her.
She still had fifteen feet to get to the door, and the snow and ice was piled here. She took a step and her heel slipped.
From the doorway, he stood next to her mom with his arms crossed over his chest, head cocked, staring unblinking at her.
She took another step, and it was more slickness. “Okay!” she said in frustration. “If you’re just going to stare at me and judge me, you may drag me.”
He snorted and stepped forward easily like the ice parted for him. Annoying. He grabbed her hand and dragged her behind him. She did a combination of stabbing the ground with her heels and ice skating until they reached the door. “Stop taking pictures,” she said to Mom.
“I’m not. I’m taking video. Okay, honey, bye.”
“What?” she asked as her mom pulled her into a hug.
“I’m leaving you to your date.”
“It’s not a date,” she and Dodger said at the same time with the same conviction.
“Mmm hmm. I’m meeting Behren for dinner at Ollie’s. If you need anything, text me. Don’t forget you have a rape whistle.” She turned to Dodger and gave him a hug like they knew each other. “If you hurt her, I will sic my husband on you.”
“Why do you smell like werewolf?” Dodger asked through a frown.
Mom gave a charming smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” She walked away across the slick ice much better than Destiny on account of her wearing the proper snowshoes with thick rubber tread on the soles. She marched directly across the street to a familiar Ford Explorer with chains on the tires.
Dad.
The window rolled down, and her stepdad, whom she referred to as simply “Dad” was sitting there glaring directly at Dodger, with his fiery gold eyes.
“Who the hell is that?” Dodger gritted out, holding his gaze.
“That would be my stepdad,” she said, waving to him.
“Your stepdad is a werewolf?”
“Yep.” She smiled at the shocked look on his face as he watched Dad pull out of the parking space and drive away.
“What Pack?”
“He’s a Rogue. He hasn’t been in a Pack since he met my mom. Ready? I’m cold.”
He turned automatically and guided her to the door with a light touch on the small of her back. He opened the door, but she didn’t miss it—he was still staring at the street with a confused look on his face.
“Wait, so you were raised by a werewolf?” he asked.
“And a human. Both worlds.”
“And that’s why you approached me yesterday?”
“I approached you because you were alone and I was afraid the restaurant was making you sit outside on purpose. Some of the places around here try to pull that shit with my dad.”
“You call him Dad and not stepdad.”
“He’s the only dad I know. I don’t know my real dad. He bounced when I was six months old and never contacted me. My mom tried to get him involved for a while, but the family life wasn’t his gig.”
“You have zero emotion in your voice while you’re saying this,” he pointed out.
“Hi,” she told the hostess. “The bartender said we could have the table by the window at eight.”
“Well, it’s about to be sat right now, sorry,” she said, her eyes on Dodger’s face.
Dodger gave her a snake’s smile, and grabbed Destiny’s hand, then led her past the gawking host. He led her directly to the table, where the bartender was clearly talking to the hostess seating a four top at their table.
He nodded to Dodger and told the hostess, “See? They’re here.
I can serve these nice people at any other table but this one. ”
Dodger pulled a chair out for Destiny right in front of the grumpy looking foursome. They were about their age and seemed to be on some sort of double date.
“He’s a werewolf,” a blond said, like that was supposed to mean something.
The hostess shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
“We want to talk to the manager,” she said, looking disgusted. Her man looked uncomfortable and said under his breath, “Let’s just go somewhere else.”
“Bye,” Dodger said in a growly voice.
Destiny pursed her lips against a smile to hide it and looked down at the table as Dodger took his seat across from her.
“Beer?” the bartender asked as the foursome walked away to another table across the room.
“Two of them. Same as yesterday.”
The bartender, Byron, his nametag read, nodded and headed back to his workstation at the bar.
The blond was glaring at Dodger from across the room, and Destiny leaned forward to block her line of sight and glared back.
The woman broke eye contact first. Destiny rolled her eyes and shook her head as she returned her attention to the menu.
“You’re a spicy human,” he said, a slight smile transforming his handsome face.
“I don’t like rude people.”
“When did your stepdad meet your mom?”
“So curious about the werewolf side of my life,” she teased.
“Hell yeah I am. I’ve never met a human raised by a werewolf.”
“A werewolf and a human,” she reminded him.
“So, you understand the discrimination.”
“To my bones. I grew thick skin about it.”
“Why would it affect you?”
“You don’t think the kids in school had an opinion when they found out my mom was paired up with a werewolf?”
The smile that had been sitting in the corners of his lips faded to nothing, and he dropped his gaze. “I didn’t think about that.”
“My mom was called the werewolf fucker. I was the bastard daughter of a werewolf. I smelled like dog, I was raised in a cave, bla bla bla. For my entire junior year in high school, the girls wouldn’t let me use the restroom at the same time as any of them. They said I was dirty.”
“What changed?”
“My husband.”
He lifted his glowing blue eyes. “You met him in high school?”
She nodded. “He was the jock. Mr. Cool. Everyone respected him. He beat the shit out of three guys that had been bullying me, and the bullying stopped. He freed me. He was already sick, but none of our friends knew it until he was twenty-one. He was very quiet about what he had to deal with.”
“He told you though?”