Page 4 of The Forbidden Wolf

Charlie squealed and clapped her hands in front of her nose. Jayla covered her face and groaned. She owed him fifty bucks now that he had proof The Snack was into him and not her. I felt a petty surge of jealousy as they began hammering out a weekly installment plan. Not because I also had a thing for the delicious young man who sold us our movie treats and tickets, but because I would never know what it felt like to exchange coy smiles and witty barbs and accidental finger brushes until the passion finally boiled over and—

Evan swore loudly as a southbound MTA bus groaned and hissed to a stop beside us. Next thing I knew one of his perfectly good bags of popcorn had exploded against the side of the bus, leaving a greasy smear of butter on the image of a Gothic academic building snugged between the giant worried faces of Kiernan Shipka and Helena Bonham Carter. A pair of unsettling white eyes—not quite human, not quite animal—loomed in the foggy sky beneath the clustered list of Emmy wins for the streaming series’ wildly popular and critically acclaimed first season.

My lip had just begun to curl into a disgusted sneer when Jayla ripped the second sack from the crook of Evan’s arm and hurled it at the enormous ad. Popcorn ricocheted all over the sidewalk, skittering around our shoes like the rats that would soon emerge from the sewer to consume it. Evan gaped at Jayla with his now empty arms spread wide.

“What?” She coolly met his gaze. “I thought we were doing a thing.”

“I was doing a thing with the bag I paid for! But that one was a gift!” Evan gestured dramatically at the theater. “From my future husband!”

“Yeah, well, they didn’t put my future husband on this poster.” Jayla gestured just as dramatically at the bus. “And that is bullshit. He carries the whole damn show on his beautiful back.”

“Wait.” Evan held up both hands. “Are you… are you watching this trash? After what they did to me?”

Jayla pressed her lips together, guilty. Evan’s nostrils flared with a furious inhale.

Charlie sighed. “Here we go…”

“And you?” Evan fumed. “Have you been betraying me too?”

Charlie became very interested in a loose thread on her cute pink cardigan. Evan’s jaw clenched. He turned his accusing gaze on me.

I lifted my hands and took two steps backward. I knew nothing about Alma Mater Animalis other than that it was built around the fundamentally absurd premise that shifters went to shifter college. Lurid curiosity had tempted me to join Jayla and Charlie’s watch party last summer when Evan went to Fire Island with “the boys” but I’d chickened out last minute. For one thing, I was paranoid about leading Manhattan wolves to my friends’ apartment, and for another, I was paranoid about my own wolf freaking the fluff out like Evan was now. But with fangs.

“Dude. King Triton won’t even let her watch The Little Mermaid.” Jayla clapped him on the shoulder. “How do you think she’s watching Naked Werewolf Hour?”

Oh, right. That was one other thing I did know about the show: everyone was always naked. I knew this because when the first season dropped last May, my father had to attend an all-day meeting on Roosevelt Island with the Alphas and Betas of the other five boroughs regarding whether or not to release an official statement about our kind’s longstanding commitment to modesty and decorum. Shifters had been wearing some version of shiftskins since the days of Chann and Marrak.

Ultimately, Father and the Manhattan Alpha convinced the other Alphas not to deign such prurient human lies with a public response. Better to let people have their fun at our expense than to make a big fuss that might invite more scrutiny into the way we actually lived. Somehow, this tiny alliance had blossomed into a mateship arrangement that would join the Bronx and Manhattan packs forever. Just the sort of thing no one really wanted humans finding out about us. Funnily enough.

“With you traitors!” Evan waved one hand between Jayla and Charlie before pointing at me. “Tell me the truth, Elyse. Have you participated in this egregious betrayal?”

I shook my head, but my eyes darted to Charlie, trying to convey that I didn’t believe she and Jayla had actually done anything egregious. We’d all felt appropriately terrible when Evan didn’t get the part he received a callback for, but honestly? I’d have made the same decision as the casting director. Evan was way too old, and that ironically named Wolfhard boy could’ve played Marla Singer in a Fight Club reboot. But instead of accepting his defeat as a simple matter of needing mother and son to resemble each other, Evan had taken it… quite personally.

After the show became an overnight pop culture sensation, Evan had thrown himself headlong into his day job as a computer something-or-other. I couldn’t really understand. I didn’t even have a computer. Or else I might have secretly streamed the damn show in my room. Just to see what other lies they were telling about my kind.

“Evan.” Charlie grasped his wrist and gave him a searing look. “Do you really believe I’d put Elyse through that?”

Evan narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. Slowly, he lowered the hand he’d been pointing at me, and then quickly, he pointed the other one between Jayla and Charlie. “We will discuss this at home then.”

I frowned. “Put me through what?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Charlie waved my questions away. “It just isn’t your thing.”

The traffic light flashed green, and the bus lurched away from us. I watched the faces on the poster disappear into the shadows of the next block and then narrowed my eyes at Charlie. “Why not?”

“Don’t you worry about it,” Charlie repeated in a goofy chipper tone, poking my shoulder playfully with each syllable. “Now you’d better scoot on home!”

I swatted her hand away. “Not until you tell me what you mean.”

Charlie sighed. “It’s not a big deal, Elyse. There are just some… themes…”

“Look, we all know you’re afraid of shifters,” Jayla cut in. “Not a big deal.”

“Well, that’s not really what I meant,” Charlie muttered.

But my jaw had already hit the sidewalk. “I’m not afraid of shifters, Jayla! There’s no reason to be afraid of shifters! They don’t bother anybody!”

“Um, yeah.” Evan tucked his hair swoop behind his right ear. “Because they don’t exist. Makes it hard to be a bother.”

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