Page 50 of Wolf's Gambit

“Thursday night football?” Brian answered with a shrug. “I’m pretending to ask if the kitchen’s still open,” he added with an eye roll. The whole town knew that the kitchen closed at eight thirty, and it was ten to nine now.

“The kitchen is closed forever,” I mumbled, returning to my sink.

“You got this, honey?” Maggie asked me, and I could almost feel her inching to the door.

“Mm-hmm.” There was no point arguing or protesting. Dean was a dick for leaving me with this shit, but Maggie was a sweetheart, and I was still grateful I had a place here.

It had been a few weeks since moving to town, and no one had bothered me. There were no fights that I knew of, but between the bar and Lottie’s, the two women kept me busy. The woods at the back of Lottie’s B&B weren’t deep, but they gave a girl enough cover to run free undetected in her wolf form.

“I’ll talk to him,” she promised, and I heard the door swishing behind her as she left the kitchen to serve the customers.

When I first tidied up after Dean, I had taken more care and asked Maggie a hundred questions about what could be kept and what couldn’t. Now, after he pulled this crap for the seventh night, I just emptied everything into the trash.

If he wanted to keep it for tomorrow, then he should have put it away. That was my thinking, and when I told Maggie that later after closing while I mopped the floor, she’d laughed and mimed a high five.

“When does Brad get home?” I idly asked as I moved the bucket along the floor. Maggie was wiping down the bartop, and I had learned early on that not only did she love to talk, but she loved to talk about her son, Brad, the most.

“His school gets the whole Thanksgiving week off,” she told me happily. “He comes home the Saturday before.”

“Nice.”

My pack didn’t pay attention to human traditions—we held festivals and celebrations to the lunar cycle. I was enjoying the pumpkin spice flavoring of everything though, so I had decided I liked this human holiday.

I always enjoyed autumn colors. The turning season was more noticeable lower on the mountain, or maybe I was just growing more accustomed to orange and brown decorations everywhere I looked.

“Zia, honey, you want me to drive you home tonight?” Maggie asked me when I was putting the mop and bucket away. “The nights are getting so dark,” she added as she frowned at my head shake.

“I like the walk home,” I told her with a confident smile. Reaching for my hoodie, I pulled it on. “The night walk is peaceful.”

Which was true. Baywater Creek had a small police station with three police officers. The most troublesome event they’d encountered so far since I’d been here was a cat stuck up a tree and dealing with its hysterical owner.

Had I been passing when it happened, I could have saved them all the drama. Cats weren’t friendly with wolves. I could have let my wolf surface, and that cat would have been down on the ground in the blink of an eye.

“Have you bought a cell phone yet?” Maggie demanded while we checked the place over before locking up.

I’d told her I had lost my phone when I got mugged. Sometimes, she would remember I didn’t have one, but most times, she never mentioned it. Maggie was good at giving you space unless she was fretting over you.

She was currently in “mom” mode.

“No, I want to make sure I have enough cash in case I need it for an emergency. I told you,” I added with a calm smile, “no one is looking for me.”

“Even though you say you’re alone, there must be someone who misses you,” she said with sympathy in her eyes.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” I assured her as she set the alarm, and we dashed outside before it set. After locking the door, she turned to me, and I held steady under her scrutiny.

“You’re still young, Zia. Let me worry.”

We said our goodnights, and the irony wasn’t lost on me that I made sure she got in her car safely and watched her drive away.

Walking back to Lottie’s took around twenty minutes. I hadn’t lied—it was a nice walk. I enjoyed the stretch of my legs, knowing that when I got back to the cabin, I’d be able to slip out under the cover of darkness and run through the woods undisturbed.

The sound of an engine approaching made me tense—a flashback to the night dirt bikes chased me making me almost stumble.

Looking over my shoulder, I searched the road behind me for the source. Seeing nothing, I made the decision and slipped off the road and into the nearby woods.

Knowing I was probably overreacting didn’t slow my step, and instead, I hurried toward Lottie’s, eager to be home.

When the low lights of the B&B and the cabins lit up the darkness, I made my way back onto the track. An engine backfiring made me jump and look over my shoulder again, but the road behind me remained empty.

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