Page 2 of The Good Boys Club

I raised my eyebrow. Of course, out of all the interns, it was the sex demon who mentioned knots. “And what about knots?”

“Shifters have a single knot and were have a double.” Succubus spoke confidently, as though from experience.

I turned to the other interns. “And you all know the purpose of knots, right? I’m not going to have to explain, am I?”

They nodded. Obviously, they would do. None of them were lupine, but I’d wager an entire year’s salary on each and every one of them having a knotting kink. Why else would they take a job at a wolf-dating agency?

Human One raised their hand. “Doesn’t a knot only . . . erm, come out with a true mate? Like a fated mate?”

I laughed. It was one of the more widely believed misconceptions, and had led to our largest portion of complaints from non-canine folk of all genders who’d been intimate with a shifter or were. Their companion’s knot or knots had popped, as they were so flippantly wont to do, and the human, or other species, had taken it as a celestial sign they were fated.

For those not in the know, it caused frequent confusion, and sometimes heartbreak. It happened so often—pretty much every time a person in possession of a knot or knots was about to come—that we had to put a disclaimer on our app. It’s not you, it’s not fate, it’s the wolf. Don’t read too much into it.

“No, not at all. Sometimes knots pop even outside of . . . sexual activities. Sometimes for the most random reasons and at themost inconvenient times.” Like at the supermarket, or on the U-Rail, or that one time during a funeral service. In my defence, I had been sitting next to the man I’d had a crush on for over a decade, and his scent kept wafting over to me. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Succubus turned to Bear Shifter. “Have you got a knot?” they said, with zero trace of HR awareness.

I began to correct them. “We don’t—”

“No knots. Baculum, though,” Bear Shifter said, not even remotely embarrassed. The younger generation was such an odd bunch. Bear Shifter looked at me. “Do were and wolf shifters have bacula?”

“Only while shifted,” I replied, turning my face a little to hide the heat crawling up my skin. I had no idea why; discussion on knots was an everyday thing here at Howl. I cleared my throat. “Well, those are the main differences between werewolves and shifters. Anybody have any more questions about that”—I pointed to the poster—“before we move onto the next part?”

Fae’s hand went up. “What are you? Were or shifter?”

Really? I’m gonna teach you all of that shit for you to still ask? “What do you think?” I said instead.

“Um, shifter?” they said. I nodded, and gave them my most impatient teacher expression, demanding a breakdown of their assumption. “Because . . . not super tall and don’t have fluffy ears or a tail?”

“Bingo.” I tugged on the poster’s cord and it flew back into its cylindrical container. “Right, let me show you the rest of the offices.”

The interns followed me around the Howl Ya Doing building. Well, the three storeys out of fourteen that the dating app occupied. I showed them all the important places like the fire escapes, the canteen, the rec room, the lockers, the bathrooms, and the shifting room—even though every full moon was anofficial holiday granted by the company. No employee, no matter their species, had to work the day or night shift during this time, so nobody was ever in the building to use it. But whatever.

“And this is the workfloor, so if you don’t end up in facilities or accounts or HR, you’ll be in here,” I said, moving through the large open-plan office, the interns trailing. “Technically, it’s a hotdesk policy, so in theory you can sit wherever there’s a free space, but you’ll find everyone’s already staked their claim on their preferred desk. We tend to sit together in departments because it makes things easier. Over there are the help-desk folk.”

Some of the help-desk folk wearing their headphones and mics lifted their heads and waved.

“The UX designers, the backend developers, the QA team . . .” I pointed to each micro cluster of people in turn. “And this is where the managers sit, including m—”

I cut myself off, stumbled over my own feet. My heart threw itself against my stomach as it did every time I saw him.

I stood up straight, cleared my throat. “And this is where I usually sit.”

“There’s a werewolf in your chair,” said Human Two.

“Yup.” I heaved out a sigh. “And how do we know he’s a werewolf?” Might as well continue with my lesson.

“Um,” Human Two squeaked. “He’s really, really massive, and has fluffy ears, and his tail is wagging?”

I finally turned to face the werewolf in my chair. His tail was indeed wagging. Thumping against my desk, actually, and edging my glass of water dangerously close to my keyboard. He’d propped his feet up onto my colleague Gideon’s desk, that’s how long the newcomer’s legs were.

Luckily, Giddy preferred the night shift, so wasn’t in the office yet. No doubt he was as fed up with Mash Cassidy materialising unannounced in the building as I was. Like, who was even lettinghim in? He didn’t work here, didn’t even have a lanyard or key card. He had no right or reason to be here.

And yet, here he was, and as always my traitorous heart was glad for it.

Mash beamed at me, flashing his perfectly straight, megawatt smile, his elongated canines glinting under the office-light fluorescence. Then he turned his smile to the interns. His gaze landed on Human Two. He brushed his sandy-blonde hair from his forehead, licked his lower lip, and raised a brow towards me. A silent question.

I gave him an almost imperceptible shake of the head, letting him know, in no uncertain terms, it was not okay to fuck my interns. Nor would it ever be.

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