Page 4 of Craved By the Werewolf
I slumped back in my chair, the words tasting like defeat. "You already know it's a yes. But I'm getting hazard pay, a medic on standby, and my name stays first on the poster."
She snorted. "Poster? Honey, there's a billboard going up this week."
I was halfway to arguing when her expression shifted into something almost... gleeful. "Oh, right. One more tiny detail."
I narrowed my eyes. "Define tiny."
"He's coming in tomorrow night." She paused, shuffling through her papers with that infuriating casual air she'd perfected. "We'll have confirmation hopefully in the morning, so the afternoon shows can start plugging it."
"Tomorrow night?" I nearly spilled my tea all over the control board. "As in—tomorrow tomorrow?"
"Yes, Vala. Tomorrow tomorrow. First joint promo spot. Fun, fun, fun. Together. The whole town will be listening."
I stared at her, jaw hanging somewhere near the floor. "You ambushed me."
"Technically, I prepared you. This is me being helpful."
I pressed a hand to my forehead. "You could've at least given me a week to stock up on silver jewelry and holy water."
"Wrong monster, darling."
"I'm keeping the holy water anyway."
Mika rose, gathering her papers and my shredded peace of mind in one graceful sweep. "You'll be fine. He'll be fine. Haven House will rake in a fortune. Everybody wins."
She left before I could come up with a good comeback, the door clicking shut behind her.
I sat there for a long moment, staring at the empty mug, thinking about Thorne Kaine's threatening glare and the way my pulse jumped every time his name came up.
Tomorrow night.
Great.
2
THORNE
Paper cuts and politics—my two least favorite hazards of leadership.
By noon, the conference room smelled like burnt coffee and too many people thinking too hard. Outside the glass walls, the Mystic Ridge Pack compound kept moving—boots on stone, clipped radio chatter, the sharp bark of a training command—but in here, the air was suffocating.
Security maps were spread across the table like open wounds. Color-coded perimeter routes, vendor grids, med tents, noise-dampening zones for the young wolves who still flinched at bass drops—it all stared back at me like a beast waiting to see if I'd blink first. House Party always looked simple from the amphitheater seats: music, food, community. From my chair, it was a hydra.
"Which head are we chopping first?" Kai asked from across the table, sliding a pastry toward me with the kind of grin that meant he'd already eaten three. His elbows were planted on a section of map I'd spent an hour marking, which he either didn't notice or didn't care about.
"Noise control from the main stage," Raina said before I could answer. She leaned in, fingertip tapping a red-outlined zone. "Last year it bled into the back field and set off two different packs during the headliner. We'll switch to directional stacks this year and rotate sentries every ninety minutes. Ear fatigue spikes after that."
She was my second-in-command for a reason. Raina had the patience of a saint and the instincts of a battlefield general.
I made the note on my tablet. "Double the medics near the back field. Last year, half a dozen humans tried to mosh with a troll."
Kai snorted. "Whatever happened to them?"
"They bounced. Hard. Two landed in the beer tent, one in the merch line, and the rest... I'm still not sure."
That got a few chuckles from the rest of the table, but no one stopped working. This close to House Party, we didn't get the luxury of distraction. Thousands crammed into one event meant potential problems multiplied fast. And, eyes—both the friendly and the unfriendly—would be on us.
I studied the map again, mentally tracing each checkpoint and choke point. House Party wasn't just another gig for me—it was a promise. The event kept Haven House running year-round, giving kids a place to learn how to live with what they were. I'd grown up with a powerful pack behind me; I knew how rare that kind of safety was. I didn't intend to let anything happen to jeopardize it.
