Chapter 3
Felix rolled over groaning and silenced the alarm on his phone with a dramatic sob, throwing an arm over his eyes. Ugh, he didn’t wanna go to work… Five more minutes. He’d get up after five more—
Mister Meowzptlk—Myx—stirred from the tangle of bedclothes around Felix’s legs, and Felix went limp, playing dead. If he was very, very still…
A furry head butted against his face, the cat’s purr a low rumble as it nuzzled against him.
Felix fought not to tense, knowing it for the trap it was, but if Myx thought he was asleep, maybe he would go back to—sharp teeth chomped down on one of Felix’s nostrils, he howled, shoving the nineteen-pound beast off the bed.
He slapped a hand to his throbbing wound, then inspected his fingers with a tentative sniff. Was he bleeding?
Myx huffed out a very human sigh and sat, tail curling around his feet. The stripy gray Maine Coon kept eye contact, nibbling delicately on one, unsheathed claw. Felix could practically hear the cat ask him, “Do you want to be?”
“Fine.” Felix flipped back the covers, well aware that the furry jerk was threatening him. “Get a familiar, they said, all the best warlocks have them, they said.” How convenient that they hadn’t managed to summon a dumpster diving thug with a penchant for sadism.
Myx yawned and stomped out of the room, his footsteps far louder than a cat’s had any right to be. God. And he’d been so cute when he was little. How he’d turned from a furry ball of fluff into that…Felix stumbled after him, and Myx’s pace slowed to the exact speed necessary for maximum trippage.
“You know you don’t make things easy, right?” Felix grumbled, stumbling over the cat. “I’m going to feed you, the least you could do is get out of my—damn it!”
Myx blinked back at him as Felix knocked into a potted fern. He scrambled to save it from tumbling to its doom and glared at the cat, his familiar suddenly acting far too innocent. Stupid plant was only up there to keep him from puking it everywh—
Oh ho. Was that the grift? Felix narrowed his eyes. “Nice try.”
The cat huffed again—his insidious plot foiled for the moment—and continued to stomp into the kitchen.
Felix ran a hand over his face, frowning at the scritch of stubble beneath his palm.
He retrieved his majesty’s kibble from the pantry and dumped it into the bowl.
Myx promptly put his back to him and buried his face in it.
“Ungrateful beast,” Felix grumbled, his hands on his hips. “I should let you starve. Maybe then you’d earn your keep and start policing the mouse population instead of throwing rodent raves when I’m not around.”
Myx’s tail thrashed twice in response, dismissing him.
“As if,” Felix muttered, padding back the way he’d come and ducking into the bathroom.
After his shower, shave, and third cup of coffee, Felix was almost ready for human interaction.
He bid adieu to his furry overlord and drove over to town hall, with a quick stop at Cups for coffee number four and breakfast.
The line was blessedly short and the holiday music playing at a low drone tolerable. He stepped behind Miranda Clarke and Kerry Woo, the two of them yapping away like it was happy hour instead of the ass crack of dawn.
“He really said he’d go?” Kerry squealed, clapping her mittened hands together.
“He did,” Miranda gushed. “Peggy was right there, and she heard it, too.”
The woman in front of them turned with a chai latte in hand. “I was, and I did. You should’ve seen everyone’s faces. I couldn’t believe it, either.”
“Do you think this means he’s on the market again?” Kerry asked, stepping up to the counter littered with frolicking snowmen tchotchkes. “Grande espresso, please. I didn’t think his divorce was finalized.”
“It isn’t, but that’s not like that stopped Jenny from boning Pete, or anyone else for that matter.” They all snickered, and Felix felt ill. That couldn’t have been a good situation—then or now.
His lingering anger over the polycule proposal aside, he didn’t envy Liam having to deal with that.
Pete Randall was a nail pairing shy of homophobic and somewhere along the line had fallen down the conspiracy theorist rabbit hole.
Rumor had it that he’d built a bug-out shelter somewhere in the western woods and developed a serious drinking problem to go with it.
Miranda shook her head. “Why anyone would trade in a man like Liam Montgomery for Pete Randall…”
“Well, you’ve heard the rumors, right?” Peggy raised a poorly microbladed brow, her amber eyes flicking over Felix before returning to the group. “Apparently, Liam has a thing for men, and when Jenny found out, they agreed to have an ‘open marriage,’” she finger quoted.
The other woman looked at her, stunned.
“You mean, all this time, I could’ve been banging Liam?” Miranda asked.
Peggy rolled her eyes. “No, stupid, he’s gay.”
“I can fix him,” Miranda blurted.
Kerry laughed, her hand on Miranda’s arm. “I’d be up for trying, too!”
Fix him? What idiots. Felix snorted, then coughed into his fist as Miranda gave him the side-eye. The gaggle collected their orders and migrated to one of the tables. Felix stepped up to the counter, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was way too early for this crap.
“Macchiato, three extra shots, and oatmeal to go, heavy on the cinnamon,” he said, pulling out his wallet.
Greta rang him up, and he stepped aside for the middle-aged proprietress to take the next person in line.
He flipped through a paper someone had left.
Looked like they could expect a white Christmas, the livestock thefts across the county were still going strong, and the feds had issued a travel advisory way out on the West Coast.
“Order up!” Kelsey met his eye through the window into the kitchen and waved. The quirky were had an elf’s cap on and candy cane ribbons plaited through her pigtails today. “Hey Felix! You going to Jena’s tonight?”
“Yep, you?”
“Right after work. We have to pick a date to talk about her baby shower. I saw the cutest party favors!” She grinned, the bell on her cap jangling as she bounced up and down. “Okay, don’t be mad, but I may have already gotten them.”
Felix was afraid to ask. “Oh? What’s the theme?”
“Yaks.”
He blinked at her. “Like…Himalayan cows? The big hairy ones?”
She squeed. “Oh my God, they’re adorable!” She handed his to-go bag through the window, her grin stretched ear to ear.
Greta rolled her eyes and passed it to him along with his coffee. “Enjoy.”
“Mmm. Thanks.” He waved at Kelsey. “Sounds cool. You can show me pics later.” Dear God, what was that girl smoking?
Yaks? Though he supposed it couldn’t be any worse than the opossum retirement party she’d thrown last year for a guy everyone was pretty sure was in the witness protection program.
Him up and leaving in the middle of the night right after hadn’t helped quell that rumor.
Felix huffed out a clouded breath as he stepped back outside, the tips of his ears and nose totally numb by the time he made it to his car to drive one block over to town hall.
God, he hated this weather. Was it too much to ask for a winter home where frostbite wasn’t a thing?
It didn’t even have to be down south. He’d go west for year-round board shorts and Tex-Mex.
Speaking of which, he was definitely due for a margarita at Snaps. Maybe he’d try to hit trivia one day this week. Jena’s pregnancy and her canoodling with Chase was seriously cutting into his happy hour time. If their little blighter didn’t come out cute, he’d never forgive them.
Felix deposited his to-go bag and coffee onto his desk and stuffed his parka into the closet.
Chambers chittered at him from his cage, and Felix doled out a measure of the organic kibble Myx had deemed inedible, despite its hefty price tag.
Once a dumpster cat, always a dumpster cat.
His familiar’s preferred fare was the equivalent of Micky D’s, which was probably why the cat was so damned miserable.
All that junk couldn’t be good for his gut biome.
Not that Felix was about to try and swap it out again. The beast would murder him in his sleep. He clicked on his computer and sat, smoothing his tie as he eyed the stack of legalese from yesterday. Right, time to see if that job posting had gotten any hits.
Holy crap, he had like two hundred emails to go through.
Felix unpacked his oatmeal and started clicking.
Liam jogged through the snow-silenced forest, everything his parents had said last night rattling around in his brain and his wolf doing backflips.
They knew about Felix, well, how he felt about Felix. What that meant. For Liam, for the pack. They hadn’t come out and said it, shit, he hadn’t come out and said it, not even to himself, but the idea of it, the label, how terrifying it’d been before—
Somehow everything seemed more possible this morning.
He grinned and picked up the pace, his breath streaming out behind him. He burst from the wooded path and into the field the tracks ran through, the tingle of the ward Jena had reenforced during Samhain tripping across his skin.
His sneakers hit asphalt, and he headed into town.
Maybe he’d stop into Cups to grab a coffee and see Kelsey.
She hadn’t been around the compound much lately.
With the holiday, Greta had her working extra hours, and his sister had been seeing some guy when she wasn’t.
What the hell was his name? Liam knew she’d told him, but he’d been so caught up in his own crap…
Tom something. He’d been part of the EMS crew that had responded on Samhain.
Liam bit his lip. So much for first impressions, though he couldn’t say he remembered talking to him. He hadn’t exactly been at his best. Leave it to Kelsey to hook up with the dude that’d admitted him into psych.