Page 1 of Stealthy as a Wolf

Chapter One

MAGGIE

“Order up!” I yelled, shoving the nasty smelling, green tinged sardine malt through the passthrough window. Jimmy’s Specialty Café catered to feeding the beast in our souls. Most people turned their noses up at the food we served, preferring to eat only human food while in their human forms.

Yet, when it got closer to the full moon, a small percentage of people couldn’t resist their beasts’ intense cravings.

Hence, sardine malts.

I grabbed the blender and rinsed it under water hot enough to boil off flesh, but no matter what I did, the atrocious smell stubbornly remained. It saturated the air, permeating my very pores. Gahk!

“Thanks, Maggie.” Carrie, the waitress, grimaced as she lifted the tray of food and hurried to the booth of penguins.

Well, penguins in human form.

Even from a distance, my wolf smelled and heard every damn thing in the café despite my best attempts to tamp down my abilities. My wolf had been the bane of my existence since she showed up at my reveal fifteen years ago. While most people would love being an alpha, the boost of power ended up destroying my life.

I took a deep breath and focused on the penguins to avoid thinking about my past and ward off a full-on panic attack.

There were four of them seated in a booth by the window. One ordered the malt, another ordered sushi, a third ordered a full tub of pickled herring, while the last actually ordered a fishbowl.

Yup…an actual fucking aquarium with a dozen tiny fish swimming in it.

The short, stout man avidly watched when Carrie arrived with the tray of food. He licked his lips, practically snatching up the fishbowl and clutching it to his chest. When he leaned forward to look at the fish, his eye was magnified by the glass until it was so large, all I could see was his eyeball.

My wolf pushed an image at me, and the penguin’s animal form shimmered over his human body like they were one image. The penguin practically salivated as he watched, almost hypnotized, while the food swam in a circle, completely unaware of their impending doom.

From a distance, I could hear the men squawk and chirp, even though I knew they were speaking words. It was like my wolf could see and hear things that others couldn’t.

It was because I was just as big a freak.

While most people just saw humans, my wolf’s senses were so sharp that she sensed the animals underneath and constantly pushed the animal images at me. For the first few years after my reveal, I was constantly assaulted by a flood of information.

No matter how hard I pushed back at my wolf, the she-bitch rebelled, and I was the one who was forced to adapt.

There was never a reprieve.

Even now, for instance, two men sat in the far booth, eating off paper plates and drinking out of plastic cups—then proceeded to eat said plates and cups. Which didn’t surprise me since they were goats. On the opposite side of the diner, four rabbits ate a salad, carrots, blueberries, and hay.

Yes, actual hay.

But they weren’t the cute, cuddly pet rabbits.

No, they gave off skinny, mean girl vibes, chatting excitedly about the upcoming protest for animals against brutality.

“Coffee,” a man barked from where he sat at the counter. While my wolf pushed the images of us flashing our fangs at him and showing him which one of us was more dominant, I shook off the impulse. I stepped out of the kitchen, pasted a smile on my face, and grabbed the coffeepot to refill his cup.

My wolf just slumped in disappointment, like I was a troublesome child who couldn’t be taught how to behave properly.

“Here you go, Henry.” I ignored the bib he’d shoved down the front of his shirt. The man was a bloodhound in his altered form, but I could see the characteristics pull through to his human side with his long, sad face and droopy cheeks. Food and drink liberally speckled the counter as he chewed, and I wiped it off, as I did for him every morning.

“Thanks, Maggie. Crazy times, huh?” Henry nodded toward the TV, and I turned up the volume on the Soul Deep channel that played twenty-four seven.

“President Ted is heading off to the Summit. In five days, the fate of the current drug epidemic will finally be decided.” Candace gave the impression of a pretty newscaster, with blonde hair and green eyes, but the very pregnant blonde should’ve been a piranha instead of a kangaroo. The chatterbox didn’t even pause for breath as she ruthlessly cut off everyone else before they could speak.

As Candace rocked back and forth on her feet, my wolf pushed an image of her kangaroo counterpart to the front of my mind, superimposed over her human form, until it looked like she was rocking back on her thick tail while she chirped, “I, for one, can’t wait to see what results from the meeting. How about you, Stevie?”

Stevie was her co-host and a rottweiler. Though he was impeccably dressed in a black suit, it did nothing to make him look presentable when he constantly breathed through his mouth. Worse, his tongue hung out, and an ever present string of drool quivered on his chin before plopping down and leaving behind an ever widening wet spot on his tie. He opened his mouth to answer, but Candace had already switched subjects.

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