Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Iwas still a little shaky when we arrived at Cloud.
“I’m sorry, Susan,” Bart whispered as we walked inside the building and headed towards the elevators.
He was shaking more than I was. In fact, his whole huge body was trembling like Jello. “I should have realized sooner that he was a shifter. It’s bad enough I can’t protect you from any attacks, but I’m not even doing my job of intelligence properly.”
“It’s okay, Bart.” I patted his arm and pressed the button for the elevator. “You can’t be expected to catch everything. Especially when you’re frightened.”
He nodded, his bottom lip still wobbling. “I’m scared of the police, and I’m even more scared of werewolves.”
“Is that what he was? A werewolf?”
“Yes, I think so. I didn’t get a good enough look at his eyes, but he did bare his teeth at you once, which is always a dead giveaway.
That and the fact that he uses a lot of gel in his hair.
For some reason werewolves feel an intense urge to groom their hair to extremes when they’re in human form, so it’s usually a good indicator.
Oh”—he took out his frustration on the button of the elevator—“and also, the fact that he’s a cop.
Wolves love any job in enforcement. It gives them a valid reason to flex their muscles and lord it over other people.
They’re pack animals,” he said darkly. “Human cops are, too.”
I remembered. “I was sure I saw a flash of orange tinge in his eyes.”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely a werewolf.” Bart rubbed his cheeks for a second. “I’m so sorry, Sue. I’m a coward.”
“You’re not a coward, Bart! You’re an intelligent man who carefully weighs risks, and in this situation, there was nothing you could have done.”
He stabbed the elevator button again. “I should have done something.”
“What? What do you think you should have done? Turned into a bear and mauled that asshole in broad daylight?”
The elevator finally dinged, the doors opened, and we walked inside. I pressed the button for the top floor. That button was white, where all the others were black, and instead of a number, it just had a word. Cloud.
I turned back to Bart as the doors closed. “Stop beating yourself up. It’s not like you ran away and left me alone or anything like that.”
“I was tempted. And anyway, I should have been helping you with the one thing I could help you with, and that’s intelligence.
As soon as you spotted him, I should have scanned him and figured out he was a wolf, then I could have told you, then you would have been prepared.
You weren’t prepared, Sue.” Bart sounded distressed. “You hate being unprepared.”
It was true; I did hate being unprepared.
But I hated my friends being upset even more.
“Bart, stop it. It wouldn’t have made one ounce of difference.
Even if I knew that he was a werewolf, it couldn’t have prepared me for that amount of women-hating vitriol he threw at me.
That wasn’t a supe thing, Bart. That was a very human thing to do. ”
“Yeah.” Bart let out a long breath. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
In fact, that alpha-hole bullshit was something I was an expert at dealing with.
I nudged Bart and gave him a reassuring smile.
“It’s not too late to help me with the intelligence part, you know.
Tell me. Should I be worried? Detective Striker was spewing some intense alpha-male garbage. Is that usual for shifters?”
Bart took a deep breath, and some of the color came back into his cheeks. “I hate to say it, but yes, it is. A lot of shifters are misogynists. Especially werewolves. But they only do it here in the human realm.”
“How come?”
“That kind of behavior doesn’t fly in the Woods.”
“I don’t understand.” I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“All that woman-hating alpha-male posturing. Here, among humans, male shifters can say all sorts of misogynistic things and get away with it. As a matter of fact, sometimes humans will applaud men for publicly saying such degrading and belittling things about women. They can talk all day about how men are supposed to be the leaders and women need to stay subservient and submit to their husbands and stay in the kitchen and raise the children and be… well, be slaves. Some of those podcasters have millions of followers.”
“So why can’t they act like that in the Woods?”
“They’d get their heads ripped off. Female shifters don’t play, you know.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh.”
“The whole ‘alpha male’ wolf thing was debunked by science ages ago. There’s no such thing. In fact, in most animal shifter hierarchies, the mom is in charge. She’s the hunter, she’s the carer, she’s the provider, and her partner supports her in any way he’s needed.”
“I see. Well, I suppose that makes sense.”
“So that’s why shifter men enjoy talking shit about women in the human realm.
They get away with it here. If they tried that sort of talk in the Woods, they’d be torn to pieces.
And”—Bart raised a finger—“it might be worth mentioning that the kind of shifters that spew their woman-hating alpha bullshit here in the human realm…well… none of them actually have female partners. None of them are getting laid.”
“And they’re out there, telling younger men to act like them in order to get women. Poor fools,” I sighed.
Bart gave a little smirk. “The ones that are getting laid, aren’t getting laid by women, if you know what I mean. And I can tell you that for a fact.”
I chuckled. “I hear you.”
“There’s nothing more satisfying than ejaculating down the throat of a sexist male podcaster. Best orgasms ever.”
“Bart!” My cheeks grew hot, but I sniggered and nudged him. I was glad he was feeling better. “Should I be worried? I mean, I’m already worried about Striker, not because he’s a shifter, but because he’s a cop. And he’s stalking me, waiting for me to do something dumb so he can arrest me.”
Bart shrugged. “You don’t even jaywalk, Sue. I don’t think you need to worry about him suddenly arresting you.”
That was true; I had never been much of a lawbreaker. The opposite, in fact. I was a very responsible, law-abiding citizen. “I’m also worried about the implications of his little hate-speech. It sounds like most of the Middle World have accepted that there has to be one ruler for all the Worlds.”
That whole thing made me feel incredibly uncomfortable.
I still didn’t believe in the so-called prophecy, but it seemed like everyone else did.
And if everyone else did, I would be stupid to ignore it.
“Connor has obviously chosen his election platform for world domination, and from Striker's little speech, it was rooted in misogyny. If he’s out there telling people that I’m not fit to rule just because I’m a woman, how many supernatural creatures will think the same thing? How many will agree with him?”
“Even one is too many.” Bart sighed. “And unfortunately, the answer is more than that. There’s a lot of disgruntled and lonely men out there, Sue, and it’s only getting worse.”
I hissed through my teeth. “I thought so. Damn.”
“The other Middle World realms have the same sorts of social issues that the human realm does. Cost of living has gone up, and wages have gone down. You can’t buy a house with one income anymore. Women in the nineties were told they could do it all, so they did.”
I nodded and sighed. “And the men who didn’t adjust found that the bare minimum wasn’t good enough anymore.”
I was a Gen X woman; I’d seen it all firsthand.
Both sets of grandparents—especially my mother’s—had been very traditional.
The wives stayed home and raised the children and waited on their husbands hand-and-foot.
Mostly because there were no other options.
It’s hard to run away when you don’t have any money, your husband can legally beat and rape you, and you can’t open your own bank account without your husband’s signature.
As a kid, I watched as the female emancipation movement rolled over the globe.
Women, sick of having boots on their necks, demanded the same freedom that men enjoyed.
And the economy, desperate for workers, decided that women actually being paid to work was a great idea.
Not too much, of course. Not the same amount as men. We still hadn’t gotten that far.
And even though we still hadn’t achieved equality, the backlash had already started.
Conservatives were starting to get louder and louder about the destruction of morality and the family unit, and how important it was to return to traditional gender roles.
Men should be leading, providing, and protecting.
Women needed to be nurturing and submissive.
Traditional roles were all well and good when everyone agreed and could actually stick to them, but unfortunately, late-stage capitalism and the cost-of-living crisis made it impossible.
Women stepped up because men weren’t making enough money to take care of their families anymore.
One income wasn’t enough; the wife had to go out to work, too.
Trouble came when women stepped up… but their husbands didn’t. That was the root of the problem, now. It was why so many women were tired and defeated and were giving up on having meaningful relationships with men.
And it was the reason why so many men were so angry.
They considered unpaid domestic labor as exclusively women’s work, and they refused to do it.
They didn’t pick up the slack at home. Women found they were doing everything—working, taking care of the household and the childcare and all the mental labor that came with it—and eventually, they started looking at their husbands, and they realized he was just another child they had to take care of.