Page 2 of Her Fake Mate

Josh’s eyes flash, and they look a little gold, like his fox. “Maybe.”

Ugh.

I’m wildly unprepared to be in charge of a teenage fox. There’s a specific set of challenges that come with shifters of that age, anyway, since our first shift hits us somewhere in that age.

But foxes? Foxes are notoriously bad.

I think maybe hyenas are the only other shifters who even come close to rivaling the types of hormones and insanity that fox shifters experience.

Normally, there’s a whole bunch of adults in each leash—the term we use for fox families—to take care of the situation. Now, there’s just me and about six elders who are fast past teenage-wrangling years.

I frown. “Maybe? What does maybe mean?”

“Maybe I was out running in the woods.”

“Or maybe you were what? Causing havoc downtown?” My eyes widen. “Josh. You didn’t go to the human parts of town, did you?”

He flashes me a grin with teeth that are too long. “I don’t know which parts are the human parts.”

Oh, for the love… “Josh. No humans. If you smell a human, you run.”

“I did.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You did?”

“Well. I would’ve if I’d smelled one.”

I don’t know how my father did it. I obviously couldn’t have been as stupid as Josh. There’s no way that he would have let me live to adulthood. “Josh. Tell me the truth. Did you go to the human side of town?”

He kicks at something on the dirt. “We didn’t go there with the intention to go there.”

I do a very good job of keeping my cool. “What did you go there for?”

He sighs. “Tony said he knew a guy who could get us some moonshine.”

“And who is Tony, again?”

“One of the wolves,” Josh says with a menacing gleam in his eyes.

Great.

“How does Tony know someone on the human side of town who can get moonshine?”

“He got stuck there. Once. As a wolf. He got drunk and shifted and then got stuck in Iris’ rehab center.”

“And this is how he met someone who would sell a teenager moonshine.”

“Well, he got drunk on the moonshine first.”

I can’t follow the logic. “You are never going to hang out with Tony again.”

“Why?” Josh flashes me yellow eyes.

“Because he’s a bad influence.”

“You don’t get to say that! You don’t know how hard it is!” he shouts.

That hits me right in the chest. “I don’t know how hard what is? Living here?”

---