Page 1 of The Good Boys Club

Can I Pet That Dawg?

Present Day

Cian

“Can anyone tell me the difference between werewolves and wolf shifters?”

No hands went up. Not that I expected any to. In a group of five interns, there wasn’t a single canine—no werewolves and no wolf shifters. I fiddled with my lanyard and made surethe newbies knew exactly who’d been lumped into giving their bloody induction again:

CIAN BARKER

SENIOR PROJECT ARCHITECT

I didn’t bother to learn any of their names. No doubt two-thirds of them wouldn’t make it to the end of their contracts. I simply started referring to them by their species.

Succubus was fuchsia-skinned, scantily clothed, a little jittery. Fae was ethereal, had blonde hair, icy-blue eyes, pointed ears, arrogant. Bear Shifter was tall, furry, hot as fuck, but far too young. Human One was masc, wore plastic-rimmed glasses similar to mine, with olive skin tone. Human two was femme, had more tattoos than I did—no mean feat—and had been very heavy-handed on the gourmand perfume earlier that morning.

“Nobody?” I sighed and pulled the cord on a roll-away poster we kept tucked in the corner of every conference room. The interns should have seen this poster a thousand times before. It was on our website, our app, and had been used in almost all of our social media campaigns. The infographic had become so ingrained with the Howl Ya Doing brand, we’d had it TMed.

The poster showed a sketch of two figures—two guys—one a wolf shifter and the other a werewolf. They stood side by side. The comparative differences had been printed in bold, all caps, with little arrows pointing to the diagrams.

“Now can anyone tell me?”

Hands went up . . . gingerly, but they still went up.

I pointed to Human One. “Werewolves are bigger?”

“Correct. The average height of a male wolf shifter is five foot ten, and a female is five four. The average height of a werewolf is almost an entire foot taller. Males are usually around six eight or nine, and females six three. This is in their human forms. Incanine form, you’re gonna need to add an extra ten to fifteen inches to those measurements.”

The interns nodded along. They all already knew this information. If they didn’t, they were really in the wrong job.

“Anyone else?”

Succubus. “Werewolves always have some wolfish features even when in human form.”

“Such as?” I said, feeling like a teacher coaxing out the answers.

“The ears. Werewolves’ ears are furry and pointy. And the tails. They have tails in human form too, whereas shifters don’t. They’re human passing.”

“Yup. Anyone else?”

Human Two. “Wolf shifters can shift at will, but werewolves can only shift under a full moon.”

“Yes!” I pointed to Human Two. “Ten gold stars.” They beamed, obviously missing my sarcasm. “This is the main difference. Shifters can shift whenever they like and stay shifted for however long they like. Were don’t get that choice. Their shifts last between six and fourteen hours once a month when the Diana moon—that’s the big yellow one in the middle—is full.”

Of the three moons that hung over the Eight and a Half Kingdoms, Diana was the biggest and brightest. The other two moon cycles had no effect on werefolk. If you ever asked a werewolf why that was, they’d simply shrug and say something along the lines of, “It’s a were thing.”

I continued with my mini lecture. “I should also add that a shifter will remember every moment from the time they shift to the time they shift back, but werewolves usually can’t remember what’s happened during the full moon. Some werefolk can be very salty about this.”

“What do you mean, don’t remember it?” said Succubus.

“For werewolves, shifting is a bit like being drunk. Some remember it the next day, most don’t. Some remember only small bits. It’s a bit like going out on a huge bender and waking up in someone else’s bed.”

The interns shared looks with each other. I couldn’t be arsed to decipher any of their meanings.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Knots!” shouted Succubus.

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