Page 23 of My Boyfriend Bites

“In a sense.” How to explain that he dealt with the oddities in the world. Mysterious disappearances. Missing treasures. Vampires, or other beings, gone rogue. Being born into wealth had led to him being bored as a young man, hence his mother’s suggestion he find a hobby. However, the regular things people did—sports, video games, partying—held no interest for him. It took a news piece on a village in South America dealing with a rash of deaths for him to embark on his first quest. A mission of curiosity. Turned out a cougar had been the culprit. But this was no regular large cat. The cougar had been possessed by the spirit of a man who’d been sentenced to death for his crimes. The villagers had staked him out in the jungle, and the cougar had been the one to end him. And then the possessed cat went stalking for revenge.

Dante still had the rug he’d made from its fur.

That incident led to Dante looking for more violent and unexplainable events. Renard jokingly called him a monster hunter. Apt in a sense, as Dante did dispatch those that couldn’t keep their proclivities from the public eye. He saw himself as a preternatural vigilante. Hence why he’d embarked on the cruise.

It had come to his attention that several cruises had run into issues in the past few months, not just the recent one that gained traction on social media. Digging showed there’d been a concerted effort to cover up the incidents to protect the sales and reputations of the cruise lines involved. On the surface, it seemed a simple case of pirating, but a deeper look showed more at play than theft. Missing people presumed dead, but not one witness as to their demise, which seemed odd. Usually, the hostage-takers executed their captives publicly to keep the rest in line.

Intrigued, Dante began researching and found one commonality among all the cruises that had been boarded at sea. Make that a few people. A line cook who used different names for each job, but since his appearance didn’t change, it had triggered the program Dante had run checking into passengers and crew manifests. The cook was currently on the same cruise as Dante and Selene. He, along with two deck hands, had all been on those ill-fated voyages.

“I raise bunnies,” Selene announced in reply to his oblique mention of his job.

He glanced at her. “Bunnies?”

“Yes. You know long ears, fluffy tails? I sell them to people looking for a pet, as well as restaurants who serve them as part of their menu.”

“I don’t think I ever met anyone who did that,” he stated, holding in his amusement.

“Go ahead and laugh. Most people do. And while we’re at it, I’m going to go even more farm girl on you and mention my mom makes honey and pies on our farm. My brother works as a mechanic but also creates artisan goat cheese. Only my sister, Athena, has what people deem a normal job, as a technician for a lab.”

“You have to admit raising rabbits is different from most careers. Do you enjoy it?”

“Yeah. It’s not going to make me rich by any means, but it is mostly satisfying.”

“I hear a but.”

She sighed. “The problem with it is I’m kind of tied to the farm. Can’t really travel the world or explore. Live animals need a person to care for them.”

“Yet you’re on a week-long cruise.”

“Only because my family is taking care of them during my trip.”

“Sounds as if you might be due for a change in jobs.”

“Doing what, though?” Her nose wrinkled. “Anything I do for a paycheck is going to require me showing up. And besides, I don’t know if I have the right temperament to gallivant.”

“How so?”

“I try to avoid things that are overstimulating, and before you ask why, I have a medical condition. I’m supposed to avoid situations that cause intense stress or emotions.”

While she danced around the true reason, Dante understood. She lacked control over her wolf, which explained the incident the previous night when she shifted in her sleep.

“Surely you could condition yourself to handle it.”

She glanced at him. “I’ve been trying, and thank you for not suggesting I drug myself stupid. I hate how those pills make me feel.”

“Drugs would only mask the problem. Better to try and solve it.”

“If only it were that simple,” her quiet reply.

As the road turned from jungle to town, she sat up in her seat. “What am I going to say if I’m asked what happened?”

“Exactly what you told me. Wild animals attacked the robbers, and you escaped.”

“And if they don’t believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t they? The bodies were obviously mauled. It’s not as if you could do that.” He said it and held in a grin because she sure had mauled the hell out of those thugs.

“You make it sound simple.”

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