Page 1 of Witchwolf

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Dakota

Eyeliner actually looked... pretty good on me.

At least, I thought it did. I’d watched a hundred video tutorials before trying it, and it seemed to look just like them.

The giggling outside my bedroom snatched my attention, and I ended up with a jagged line on the second eye, making me sigh and wipe it off to start again.

I’d just finished when there was a knock on my bedroom door.

“Not dressed,” I called to keep Donnie from barging in and seeing me trying to put on eyeliner. Not to mention the ridiculously tight black skinny jeans and tank that showed off the definition of my arms and chest.

I’d been working hard at the gym for that muscle, so I thought I deserved to show it off.

“We’re heading out,” he called through the door. “Don’t wait up. Good luck with the first day tomorrow. Get to bed nice and early!”

There was another giggle, no doubt his already-pregaming friends amused that a person would choose to go to bed early and have a job, rather than go clubbing and get laid. Frankly, I had no idea how any of them afforded living in San Francisco without jobs. It was a ridiculously expensive city to live in, and they weren’t all independently wealthy. Donnie certainly wasn’t. His parents lived in a trailer in Bakersfield, and I didn’t think he’d replaced his job yet, after getting fired from his waitstaff position last month.

But he’d paid his half of the rent, and he didn’t seem worried, so I wasn’t going to worry for him.

“Thanks,” I answered. “Have a fun time.”

“We will,” he singsonged as he headed for the door.

I waited.

Well, no, I checked and perfected my eyeliner, then my outfit, and then I grabbed my boots, pulling them on and lacing them up, listening as Donnie and his friends cleared out of the apartment, down the hall.

The distant ding of the elevator indicated they were truly gone.

I waited another ten minutes in my room.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Donnie. He was my best friend. We’d met in college, and he’d changed my life. Taught me to take things a little less seriously, stop thinking my perfect GPA was going to do anything for me after I graduated college, and start living just a little bit.

The problem was that Donnie was a butterfly. He was beautiful and... flighty. Every time we went out to a club together, every man we met hit on him. On the unusual occasion someone actually showed interest in me, for some reason, Donnie’s carefree attitude about grades and school disappeared. Every time I’d gotten even close to a guy, he’d managed to chase him off.

This one wasn’t hot enough, and that one wasn’t smart enough, and the other one “looked poor.” I’d pointed out that I didn’t care about any of that and just wanted to get laid, but he’d been adamant. I shouldn’t settle, especially not for my first time.

So when he’d said he and his friends were going out tonight and invited me to go with them as a sort of celebration for my brand-new job starting tomorrow, I’d told them that I planned to go to bed early so I wouldn’t be tired on my first day.

Which was precisely what I should be doing.

I should go to bed early, so I’d be bright-eyed and ready for anything on my first day of work. It was an amazing job that one of my professors had helped me to get, a company looking for something like a Japanese translator and interpreter. It wasn’t precisely what I’d studied for—I didn’t have a background in interpreting at all—but I’d double-majored in Japanese and communication, so I could totally do this. After all, they needed more than an interpreter, or they’d have just contacted an interpreting agency. They needed a go-between who knew about the culture and the language, to help them navigate a merger with a Japanese company. It was a huge job, and a massive score for me, since I’d literally graduated college last month.

That, I’d told Donnie, was why I’d worked hard to keep my GPA high. My professors had been invested in me, so when one had heard about the job opening, she’d thought of me.

So yeah, I should be going to bed.

But I had a year-long contract that was going to eat up my whole life starting tomorrow, and right now I was a twenty-two-year-old virgin. I was fucking sick of that.

Since I could never attract and keep a man’s attention with Donnie there, I’d decided I needed to take drastic measures.

I needed to pick a night Donnie was going out, wait for him to go, and then go myself, separately. I had even searched for gay bars in town that Donnie didn’t go to, which had been an undertaking in itself, because Donnie lived for clubbing.

I’d managed, though, finding a place I’d never even heard of before, Howl. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one that I’d never heard of them, but their website had been great, with pictures of the club and dance floor that made it look head and shoulders over most of the places I’d been with Donnie and his friends. They even had a great menu, including steaks and burgers, which wasn’t the norm for places Donnie took me.

They had this whole wolf schtick going on that was a little funny, like silly drink names, “private rooms designated for pack alphas” and stuff like that, but it fit the name, and it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever seen in a business. Donnie favored this little coffee house that liked to pretend they were a fairy garden, and their single gender-neutral bathroom had a picture of a person with wings on it instead of the usual silly dress-or-pants-wearing stick figures.

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