Page 7 of Lone Wolf
“No. Just the usual government medical exam on Thursday.” But looking at the total in my account, so close to what I needed, maybe I should see if I could pick up a shift before my second heat hit.
She leaned across the table to shake a finger in my face. “Don’t do it. No more than one day, anyway. You look exhausted already.”
“Nothing a day’s rest won’t fix,” I promised her. “I swear.”
She nodded and let it drop. After all, I’d been working this job for a year and a half now—I knew what I was doing.
Probably hard to stop being a mom though. And management.
“You want to book a car to go into the city some day?” I asked her.
She looked up from her tablet in surprise. “Thought you were saving money?”
“Not all of it. I need some new clothes.”
“Nothing suits in the enclave store?”
“Not really.” Not that I’d had much time to look for the past week. Fourteen hour days to ride the wave of my hormones meant little time to spare for anything else. Of course, a shifter in heat didn’t have much interest in anything other than a nice cock, so it was just as well to have something to do with all that energy. “You’re probably right. I can get by with what I have until I have enough to get the apartment.”
Ma turned off her tablet and stood up. “You know you can always come to your Da and me for help. If you’re a little short, we can loan you some credits. And you do need good clothes for work.”
I ate another bite of toast and contemplated the numbers on my phone’s screen. “Maybe after my next heat. Then I’ll see where I am.” Once the three pups left at home moved out, Ma and Da could sell this place and get one of the nicer ones up by the artificial lake. This was a good home for a young family with lots of pups, but once you were down to two adults, it was really too big and the property tithe for occupying an apartment with two empty bedrooms would be high.
“Well, let me know,” Ma said. “Guinivere owes me a favor, but I’ll need a bit of warning if I’m going to change my shifts.”
“Okay.” I ate the rest of my toast in three bites and drank the last of my orange juice. “I’ll wash up, then I’m going back to bed.”
“Make sure you get your post-heat physical,” Ma reminded me. “That’s not an option.”
“Can’t I do it on Thursday when I do the swabs for the government?” Aside from the monthly check-up to make sure we weren’t passing on one of the two sexually transmitted diseases common to both humans and shifters, anyone who worked through their heats had to have a physical to make sure they hadn’t damaged themselves while their hormones were surging. Such a pain in the ass. Literally, on occasion.
“Today,” Ma said in that tone that told me she was speaking as management, not my mother. “If you don’t have that clearance slip by the time I’m home this evening, I’ll take you off the schedule.”
“Ma!” I protested, for all the world like I was still twelve. “I’m an adult. I think I’d know if I’d hurt myself.”
“Rules of business,” she said firmly. “Paperwork, or no work. Your choice.”
I sagged in my chair, defeated. “Fine. But I’m having a nap first.”
She bent down to kiss my cheek—I made a face—and ruffle my hair. “That’s fine. I’ll let them know you’ll be by later.”
“All right,” I said grumpily. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She sounded almost smug, but then again, she was right, and she had won.
“Love you, Ma,” I said before she got out the door and tilted my head so she could see my grin.
“Love you too, sweetie. Get some sleep.”
“I will.” I gathered up the dirty dishes as the door closed behind her and smiled as I took them to the kitchen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Damian dropped his bag on the floor in front of his couch and decided to sit down for a minute. He was, in this moment, so fucking done. Three and a half weeks camped out in the desert trying to spy on an underground compound, all for nothing. Even his night-time forays in wolf form to sniff around the above-ground sections had been useless.
He didn’t want to think about the paperwork that this disaster was going to require.
In a movement that was almost ingrained him now, he reached for the rum bottle in the old trunk he used as a coffee table and screwed the cap off. The smell of the alcohol hit his nose, promising sweet, if temporary, relief from the sense of wrongness that had been riding his nerves like anoknikafor the past month. Actually, at this point, he’d take one of those fanged monsters over his current state of mind—a monster, no matter how mythological, was something he could fight.
