Page 7 of Enemy Wolf

“I know you’ve got more than two brain cells in there, Ors. Use ‘em.”

Another growl of frustration rumbled out of my chest before I could stop it. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to apologize for. I just did what the alpha told me.”

“Here’s a tip for you, pup.” It was almost word-for-word what Shiloh had said to me, which made me even more annoyed. “The trick to getting along with people is having empathy. Put yourself in her shoes. Think about it from her perspective. Imagine how it would feel from her side of the conversation. Make sense?”

“Sure.” I shoved the last piece of equipment into my backpack. “I’ll see you later, Tryn.” He thankfully moved out of the doorway and I made my escape.

A few of my packmates were lounging in the common room, and I nodded good morning to them as I crossed the expansive space. See? My packmates weren’t complicated. Why did everything else have to be?

Pushing through the heavy front door, I crossed the lodge’s wraparound porch in two long strides before coming up to my motorcycle. I turned on the machine and it broke through the quiet morning like a massive beast awaking from its slumber. It was no wonder why us shifters liked riding so much. A motorcycle was the one vehicle that seemed just as much animal as machine.

I walked the bike backward, just far enough to turn, and then settled in for the ride. There were lots of things I had to learn when I came into the Howling Death pack. The worst? Socializing. The best? Riding, one hundred percent.

The morning air was crisp as it rushed over my skin. The last of the fog was burning off as the sun began to rise. I actually liked running through Vargmore’s forests on cold, foggy mornings. It reminded me of the better times before I’d joined the pack, the best part of being feral. The world was quietest at that time, heavy with magic, especially after a full moon.

But on this morning, I had a job to do. I wanted to install these cameras before Stout & Spirit opened for business and definitely before Shiloh woke up to yell at me again.

Something I couldn’t properly express the night before, and I still didn’t fully understand, was that I needed to protect Shiloh. These cameras needed to go up because she needed to be safe. And I had to be the one who kept her safe.

All throughout our arguing last night, my wolf was howling inside me and clawing to come out. Not because he was angry with her, that was all my human side. But because he wanted to stand guard over her, watch for any threats against her, dispose of them with his teeth and claws, then lay them at her feet.

It was mostly to appease him, this sneaking out to put cameras in the trees, because it was one step closer to making her safer. That was my wolf’s number one priority ever since last night, and it threw me for one hell of a loop.

My wolf was skittish. Withdrawn. Still feral by most civilized werewolf standards. The only time he reacted to anything was when he felt threatened. Otherwise, he was often silent and unseen.

That all changed last night when we went into Stout & Spirit for the first time, where Shiloh’s scent filled the space. And at the first whiff of it, my wolf became a goddamn golden retriever.

His tail wagged like a windshield wiper on the fastest speed. He was full-on grinning, paws tapping the ground in a happy little dance. He wanted to roll over and show her his belly, lick her face, and feel her scratch his ears.

It was like the moon herself had extracted my wolf from my soul and replaced it with a completely different one. The human side of me was just along for the ride and saying, “What the fuck?” the whole time. I mean sure, Shiloh did have a nice natural scent. It was fresh citrus with a bit of spice, something like cinnamon.

I had never been interested in hooking up with females before. Sure, I repeated some crass jokes that my packmates said, but actually doing it took a level of social skills I did not have. But with my wolf having a personality transplant and that sweet scent, I thought I might be interested in getting to know this witch, who everyone seemed to know and love.

That was until she burst out of her back room, wielding a baseball bat, and accused me of breaking in, despite knowing full well the front door was unlocked.

Imagine how it would feel from her side of the conversation. Tryn’s words echoed through my head, a calming force in my swirling maelstrom of thoughts.

Fear had begun tainting her scent last night, moments before she confronted me with the bat. She had been afraid of me, and I recalled how my wolf took great personal offense. His excited yips had turned into distressed whines and then mournful howls. He felt…rejected. Hurt. He wanted her joy, not her fear. That was what spurred his protective instincts into overdrive too. My animal was determined to make her fear go away, and to do that, we had to make her safe.

Even more oddly, the sight of her with that baseball bat had excited him. We both saw the hardened expression on her face framed by silky black hair, the narrowed sage green eyes, and the flushed skin highlighting the freckles on her nose.

My wolf was giving me such whiplash, the first thing that came out of my mouth was stupidly asking about her cable closet. Even someone as socially stunted as me knew that I was supposed to say hello and introduce myself. But I had no chance to backtrack and didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of her anyway. For some reason, that had been important to me. And Shiloh was already pissed off at me at that point.

Damn it, now I was starting to see why. My wolf had been yelling at me to do one thing while Shiloh was afraid and wanted me to do the exact opposite. She had no idea what was going on with me though. How could she? We had never met before.

I was way out of my element and handled the whole thing poorly. I handled most conversations poorly, but letting Shiloh down felt like an especially bad offense.

We have to make it right. My wolf was determined, his ears erect, eyes sharp, and snout pointed straight in the direction of Shiloh’s bar.

“How?” The sound of the word was lost, taken by the wind rushing past me on the road. But it wasn’t like I needed the sound to carry. I was essentially talking to myself.

Protect her, my wolf growled.

* * *

I parked a few hundred yards away from Stout & Spirit and walked the rest of the way so that my bike wouldn’t rouse anyone at this early hour. The bar looked like a charming cabin from the outside, with a slate roof and red-bricked chimney. The building itself too looked like it was sleeping, all quiet and still before waking up with its cozy interior lights and all the conversations and people to energize it.

Definitely not my scene.

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