Page 47 of Little Etheldreda Riding Hood

“You look terrified. You have this…remember just ask for help before you’re in too deep.”

I sigh. “What if I already feel like I’m in too deep?”

She laughs. “One step at a time, Red. This is History 1301. I walk everyone through it. But this is college, you can’t be afraid to ask for help. Promise me you’ll ask for help and not just disappear? No one person can do everything on their own. You have to let people help you sometimes.”

“You sound like my boyfriend,” I tell her, surprised at how easily the word “boyfriend” rolls off my tongue.

“He sounds like a guy you should listen to. Where are you headed to next?”

I show her my schedule and she walks with me to the door to point out the next place I need to be. Just as we are about to go our separate ways, a young guy comes up to me.

“Red?” he asks.

“Yeah,” trying to figure out where I know him from and failing.

“A guy asked me to give you this.”

The guy hands me a small stuffed animal–a cat.

“That’s weird,” Dr. Morales remarks, as another person, a girl this time, brings me another stuffed cat. She just stops and stares as ten more random people come up to me and bring me stuffed cats. They’re adorable. Normally I’d keep them, but I have a sinking suspicion I know where they came from.

“Hey,” I say to the last kid, a skinny redhead like me with freckles. “Do you remember the guy who gave you this?”

“Oh yeah, he was a werewolf with dirty blond hair and blue eyes.” My stomach drops. Of course, it was Morgan. I’d always wanted a cat when we were together, but he’d always claimed werewolves were allergic.

“How did you know he was a werewolf?” Dr. Morales asks. I know the answer before the girl even shifts into a partial shift before our eyes. I grin at the look of shock on Dr. Morales’s face.

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I tell the girl.

“You’re dating a werewolf? He’s not–you’re safe, right? He’s not violent with you?”

“No, he’s great. Sweet as can be, mostly. The problem is, these didn’t come from my boyfriend.” I set my backpack down and shove the cats inside for now. “They came from my stalker ex.”

Chapter Nineteen

In Which the Bureaucracy Gets Involved

Asking for help about my stalker situation turns out to be far more bureaucratic than I expected it to be. Zach, of course, wants to hop in his truck and take care of Morgan himself, but Randy, his Alpha, and thankfully the voice of reason, insist they apply to the State Counsel of Wolves.

“You’ll be Alpha here in a few years,” Randy reminds him. “They need to see you going through the proper channels before you turn to bloodshed.”

“I’m just supposed to let him sniff around my mate without challenge?” I cringe at his words. Morgan’s stalking is pulling at the wolf in him and it’s a pain in the ass.

Randy raises an eyebrow. “We are challenging him. We’ll start with this. If Luke and the rest of the counsel can’t reign him in, then we’ll look into other, more hands-on approaches. But you have to give the system time to work.”

The time the system needs to work, unfortunately, is typically three to five business days. Thankfully, we get our answer back in two. Thursday morning, Morgan is issued a temporary house arrest, of sorts, by the counsel until an in-person meeting can be arranged for everyone involved to see the state Alpha, a man named Luke. Since we're in different parts of the state, Morgan will be free to move about within his home county, but can't leave it.

Despite the order, Zach is still grumpy and protective. He insists on driving me to school and waiting for me in the parking lot. It seems way too extreme, but I won’t argue since it gives me the opportunity to get a nap in on the drive home.

Zach drops me off by the front door of the building where Dr. Morales’s class is held. The second day of her class is twice as intense as the first. I kill my wrist trying to keep up with notes in her class, then hurry over to math to get lost in equations. Class is over before I know it, and I text Zach that I’m on my way to the truck.

Of course, the peacefulness of the last few days was too good to be true. The Werewolf Counsel’s orders are apparently just as effective as a human restraining order. I step out of the Math building and find myself trapped.

Less than a hundred feet away, Morgan is standing there, as breathtaking as ever, with a huge bouquet in his hand. He spots me because it’s hard to blend in when you’re a ginger. I angle myself to avoid passing him, turning at a forty-five degree angle, and hoping my fast walk will be fast enough to get past him. I’m being delusional. He’s a wolf…of course I’m not going to get past him.

He moves to intercept me. Without saying a word, I start to move in the opposite direction.

We are playing this absurd game like pieces on a chessboard–he’s the rook coming after my king. Every step I take to avoid him, he moves to intercept. I want to roll my eyes. All I feel is disgust when I look at him and those stupid flowers. Did he really think this would work?

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