Page 24 of A Touch of Magic at the Comfort Food Café
I turn my head slightly, and see blurs of movement in the treeline. Flashes of white, glimpses of lean bodies, the rustle of branches. The howling stops. The greenery is pushed aside… and Aidan emerges. I stare at him, and more than half of me expects him to suddenly fall to the ground and morph into a gigantic slavering beast.
‘Hey!’ he shouts over, waving at me. Do werewolves wave? Could he have changed back into his human form that quickly? Why oh why didn’t I think to buy a gun loaded with silver bullets?
I don’t even reply, because as he comes out from the trees, he is followed by four enormous animals. They stay by hisside, jostling for position, all of them fixing their eyes on me in a way that makes me lose the ability to breathe. I love dogs, and I’ve always thought that wolves were exceptionally beautiful, but standing here confronted by them I realise that I underestimated their power. Each one of these creatures is huge, all massive paws and athletic muscle. And teeth, of course. They’ll have lots and lots of teeth.
As Aidan continues to walk slowly towards me, three of them fall back, lurking instead at the treeline, watching carefully. They dig at the ground, and let out snarls, but they don’t follow him. The fourth one, though… The fourth one has different ideas. It streaks towards me, eating up the ground between us, terrifyingly fast. I flatten myself back against the door, my hands hitting the wood. The envelope drops to the ground at my feet.
‘Don’t worry,’ Aidan calls, jogging towards us now, ‘she’s harmless, I promise!’
I note the ‘she’, and a still hysterical corner of my mind wonders if it’s his sister or his mother. If in fact his entire family are werewolves, and they all live out here in the woods together…
His sister/mother/aunt barrels into my legs, then snatches up the envelope I dropped. She holds it in her mouth and looks up at me, her bushy tail swinging from side to side. She’s absolutely exquisite, mainly white with streaks and stripes of light brown, and striking amber eyes peering up at me from a mask of darker brown fur. She comes up past my knees, and her ears are twitching around like they might be antennae.
There is absolutely no sign of aggression from her, and as soon as my mind accepts that, my body starts to relax. I reach out a very slow hand in her direction, and she drops the envelope so she can give my fingers a good sniff. Her tail continues to wag, and Aidan is now right by her side, looking on. ‘That’s okay,’ he says softly, I suspect more for my sake than the animal’s. ‘It’sfine to touch her. She likes you, I can tell. Plus, Juno is a major goofball. She won’t hurt you.’
I look up at him, see how calm he is, and nod. Okay. I can do this. I gently run my fingers through the thick fur around her head, and smile at how it feels. Like a combination of thick and silky soft. She leans into it, and I scratch behind her ears. A sensation of complete joy swoops through me, and I crouch down to get a better look at her. She licks my face, and then collapses down on the floor with her belly facing up. I laugh and give her the rub she so obviously demands. It feels incredibly special, being so close to this spectacular creature. A total privilege.
‘I warn you, she’ll let you do that all day,’ Aidan says, as I reluctantly stand up. He’s yet again not wearing a top, but the silly grin I have on my face has nothing to do with him, no matter how glorious his bare chest looks. I only have eyes for Juno. ‘You want to come inside?’
‘Only if she does,’ I reply, and he laughs as he opens the door. Juno prowls through and proceeds to give everything a sniff. I follow. The hallway is spacious with a paved stone floor. There’s a wooden cabinet full of dog things– leads, harnesses, grooming brushes, plastic chew toys in the shape of bones, tug-of-war ropes. It smells like his car: clean, but with a distinct eau de canine. I inhale, loving it.
‘Sorry about the stink,’ he says, noticing me. ‘Comes with the territory. Coffee?’
Juno pads through into what turns out to be the kitchen, and jumps up into an old sofa that is very obviously hers. She stretches out, watching us both with those amazing amber eyes. Aidan starts up a coffee machine that looks like it could be from a steampunk movie, and grabs a sweatshirt from the back of a chair. ‘Sorry about the state of me, too,’ he adds.
‘No need to be sorry about anything,’ I say hastily. ‘I’ve turned up uninvited. And anyway, I love the stink. What… What is she? Juno? And will the others come in?’
‘They’re all Wolfdogs. And the clue’s kinda in the name. They’re a hybrid of wolf and domestic dogs, usually German Shepherds, Huskies, that kind of thing.’
‘Wow. Is that… Um, I don’t mean to accuse you of being a criminal, but is that legal?’
‘As long as they’re what’s called third generation, yeah, here in the UK. Different rules in the States. My family always had Shepherds and Malinois, great guard dogs, super intelligent. When I moved to England, I came across a rescue centre that looked after these guys, and I was smitten. It took time and a lot of training– for me– but eventually I adopted Juno. Lucked out with her; she was only young when she was abandoned, so she was able to bond with me, and generally socialised well with humans. As you can see now, she’s a killer…’
Juno raises one eyebrow at him and thumps her tail once, as though acknowledging that he is talking about her.
‘What about the others?’ I ask, fascinated. ‘They don’t come inside?’
‘They do, yes, but they won’t when you’re here, not until they’re sure about you. They’re a little more wolf in their behaviour. All three of them ended up in the rescue as adults, and that can be hard for them. Like with wolves in the wild, they’re pack animals, and their owners are their pack, their entire world. If that goes wrong, there can be problems. They’re more likely to run at the sight of a strange human, and it takes them a long time to trust one. They’re good with me, but I need to start introducing others into the mix now. It helps that they’re together, but they’ve still got a way to go. It’s… Well, it’s a commitment. One I’ve made to them.’
He talks with such passion that I find myself looking at him in something akin to wonder. How many layers are there to this guy?
‘What?’ he asks, smiling in that knee-buckling way. ‘Are you laughing at me inside?’
‘No! No, I’m really not, honestly! I’m just… Well, you’re a billionaire playboy philanthropist, aren’t you?’
‘Iron Man? Really? Cool as Tony Stark was, I’m not him. I earn my own money now, so I’m a way from being a billionaire, and I’m not sure rescuing Wolfdogs qualifies me as a philanthropist. Playboy… once upon a time, maybe. Not anymore. Now I only have eyes for one woman.’
He gazes at me, and it is intense. The man is stupidly good-looking and I gulp audibly.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, one side of his mouth quirking in amusement. ‘It’s Juno.’
I laugh in relief, and clasp my hand to my heart. ‘Oh thank the Lord! You had me worried for a moment there! And I totally get it. I think I might be in love with her as well… Do you, you know, take them for walks? Or is that yet another stupid question?’
‘I take her out, yeah. She’s good with people, even though she can be a little nervy around too much noise, or too many new smells. The others are, yet again, a work in progress. I have them in their harnesses for an hour or so every day to get them used to it. I have muzzles if I need to take them to the vet or anything. But mainly, we run together. I have a decent amount of land, lots of good terrain where they can play and chase and dig. And a really high fence to make sure they don’t escape!’
‘I’ve never seen them before,’ I say, ‘Wolfdogs. Are they common?’
‘More now than they used to be.Game of Thronesmade them kind of popular. But they’re not the easiest of pets,and a lot of times people underestimate what they’re getting themselves into.’
