Page 86 of Fighting Furry

He smiled wide. “You won't be letting me out of your sight?”

“Yeah. When I do, you have a nasty habit of running away and sacrificing yourself to the powers that shouldn't be.”

“Sweetheart,” he said, his expression softening, as he scanned my face like he had something important to say.

“Quiet! Everyone shut the fudge up and listen.” I turned from Axel and looked at the long table of council members. A woman, tall and lean with glowing, gray skin was standing and surveying the crowd. “Our rules have been broken, but it is time for us to accept that the old ways don't belong in these new times. The council has decided to downgrade Axel and Julie's punishment to sixty days of house arrest.”

“What about the rest of us,” someone from the crowd shouted. “Is it still a secret that we're werewolves?”

“That question is not an easy one to answer,” the woman said. “The council will meet on this issue and make a decision. We'll alert you all when we have reached an agreement.”

I didn't bother to point out the obvious, that there was a camera crew who'd gotten a shot of everyone in that room, so their covers, all of them, were blown. “Did she just say we can't leave your house for sixty days?” I asked.

Axel grinned. “Nope, she said we can't leave our house for sixty days.”

He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me tight against him. I didn't argue with him calling it our house, I figured I'd earned my place there seeing as I'd just saved his life.

“I don't suppose the camera crew will stay outside?”

“Not likely,” I said. “But maybe we could be so very boring they decide a show about us won't get any viewers and move out.”

Axel snorted. I was about to ask him what that was all about, but a hand on my arm and my name spoken softly stopped me.

I turned to see the tall, gray woman from the council table. “Julie Jacobs,” she said. “I would like to ask you to remove the camera crew from the premises and destroy any recording they have made.”

I made a mock-sad face. “I'm really, really sorry,” I said, not the least bit sorry. “But I already signed a contract. It's unbreakable. If you hadn't tried to kill my boyfriend, I wouldn't have had to go to such an extreme.”

“You're going to have to break that contract,” she said. “It's one thing to expose werewolves to the humans, it's another thing entirely to have us under surveillance while we have no control over—”

“Excuse me,” Sarah said, in a tone that suggested she wasn't really looking to be excused. “Could you say that again?”

The tall, gray woman reared back and frowned even harder than she'd already been frowning. “What?”

“I fucked up,” Sarah said. “I didn't expect you to come over here, so I got your back for the first few moments of you talking to Julie and Axel. Could you start over?”

“Young lady,” the woman said. “I am not some actress you can boss around. I am an elder of the council and I'm going to require that you not film me at all.”

Sarah frowned. “Wow, then I guess you can't talk to Julie. I'm under contract to film everything she says or does for the next three months.”

“Everything?” Axel asked, frowning.

The gray woman glared, but Sarah seemed entirely unaffected. Seeing she wasn't going to get anywhere without resorting to violence that would be filmed, the gray woman huffed and sauntered away, her back stiff.

“That won't be the last time they try to shut this down,” Axel said.

“They can try,” Sarah said. “But this is my fucking chance to prove myself to all the dicks at the network who think I can't hack this 24/7. I am not letting anyone stop me.”

Music blasted from every speaker in the place. “Let's have some fun,” Clarissa yelled. She'd climbed onto a precarious arrangement of chairs piled on one another when they were pushed aside to make room for the dance floor. “All are welcome, but if you don't want to party, get the hell out of our house.”

Sarah's eyes lit up. “This is going to be fucking fun as shit.” Even her crew seemed a bit perkier at the prospect of a party.

Axel smiled down at me. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

“You're welcome,” I said. “Next time don't try to be the martyr. We're a team. Whatever happens, we do it together.”

His smile widened. “A team? Are you admitting you like me?”

I rolled my eyes. “Please, I'm just worried about what kind of trouble you'll get into if I leave you alone.”

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