Page 17 of Fighting Furry

I did as he asked. The shirt fell to about mid-thigh and was the sort of thing I'd wear as pajamas. The cotton was soft and worn and it smelled like Axel. He definitely wasn't getting his shirt back.

I returned to the car, only to see that wolf Julie had scratched the hell out of the seat, the dashboard, and the tint on the window. “Sorry about the car,” I said. “But if you'd just told me where we were going I wouldn't have freaked out.”

Axel was already in the driver's seat, gripping the wheel tight. “You call that an apology?”

“I call that the truth. I may not have been totally in my right mind, but when a girl asks a man she barely knows where he's taking her, he should just fucking answer with a location.”

He sighed like I was the difficult one. “We're going to a farm. One of the council members lives there with his family. His wife and kids don't know he's a wolf, so you need to stay in the car and out of sight.”

“Seriously? How can his family not know he's a wolf? Aren't his kids wolves?”

“Step-kids,” he said. “Darius sees the wolf genes as a curse. One he doesn't want to risk passing on to his kids. If we're lucky, we won't even see him, but if we do, I need you to keep quiet and as still as possible. He's not a bad guy but he's not going to like that Jeremiah turned you.”

He started the car and pulled back onto the street. “This sounds like a colossally bad idea,” I said. “Why don't we go somewhere else?”

“Because you need to run somewhere we can count on you not being seen.” He turned on his signal and started down a long, paved driveway. “He's one of the more reasonable council members, believe it or not.”

I wasn't really listening any more. I was peering out the window into the darkness. There was a full moon, but I could see as well as if it were full daylight. “This wolf vision is wild,” I said.

“That's already kicked in? I've never seen a wolf evolve as quickly as you.”

“Have you seen a lot of turned wolves?”

“Five or six. Two of them didn't even make it through their first shift.”

“Think maybe you should have told me that before I tried to shift?”

“Then you'd have been afraid, and fear makes the shift riskier.”

He parked in front of a small, ranch-style house and shut off the engine. We sat in the darkness and waited. Axel pulled out his phone and tapped at it, before shaking his head and sighing. “This day just keeps getting better.”

“What's going on?”

“His wife and kids are out of town, visiting relatives. He wants to meet you.”

“You told him about me?”

“Didn't have to,” he said. “The gossip vine with wolves is faster than email.”

“Grapevine,” I said.

He paused with his door open. “Huh?”

“It's grapevine, not gossip vine.”

He screwed up his face in confusion. “What do grapes have to do with gossip?”

“I don't know. I didn't invent the phrase, I'm just telling you what it is.”

“Well, it's stupid,” he said. “Gossip vine makes a hell of a lot more sense.”

I got of the car with a sigh and followed him to the house. Ordinarily, I'd be embarrassed about my outfit, but my humiliation quotient for the day was pretty much dry.

The front door opened and a middle-aged man in a suit stepped out. He had a scar running from his right eye to his jaw and a hard expression. He was also clean-shaven and his hair was neatly trimmed. Huh. Not all werewolves were of the mountain man variety.

“Please, come in,” he said. We walked into his foyer and he offered me a manicured hand. “I'm Darius Worthington. Axel tells me you were recently turned?”

“Yes. Julie Jacobs. It's nice to meet you.”

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