Page 5 of The Forbidden Wolf

“Okay, well, that’s not true either,” I said, pores suddenly prickling with sweat. “They definitely exist. But they’re nothing to be—”

“Oh, please!” Evan chuckled as he bent to pick popcorn off the ground. “They’re just an old myth to keep people in check. I’ve lived in this city for almost five years now, and I’ve not seen so much as a single tabloid pic? Unrealistic.”

“Well, that’s because—” I snapped my mouth shut before I blurted out that each pack had a team devoted solely to making sure pictures of us never appeared online or in print. “That’s because they’re elusive,” I mumbled instead. “But they’re not scary.”

“Right,” Evan scoffed. “Because they’re fiction.”

“No, they’re not,” Jayla said quietly, and all eyes turned to her. “I’ve seen one.”

My heart pounded in my chest. Or maybe that was just my wolf’s tail wagging because I’d gotten myself into the sort of awkward mess she was always warning me about.

“You have?” Charlie’s sculpted eyebrow shot up her forehead. “Like… wolfed out?”

Jayla nodded gravely. Her shoulders hunkered as she shoved her hands into her jean pockets. Four years of friendship and she’d never mentioned this to any of us? My stomach flopped like the silver-green fish I’d once found washed up on Orchard Beach. I had tried to set it free, but before I could, Kiana unsheathed her claws and stabbed it. A mercy killing, she claimed, but the water was five feet away.

“Where? When?” Charlie clutched her arm. “Tell me everything.”

“In Central Park.” Jayla kicked some popcorn into the gutter. “I was in middle school. Me and some friends were walking home from a ball game in the North Meadow, and someone got the bright idea to find the Blockhouse up in the North Woods. My daddy always told me never to go up there, but…” Jayla shrugged and shuddered. “We never did find the Blockhouse. We found it instead.”

My wolf growled softly in the back of my throat. We weren’t an it.

“It was probably a coyote,” Evan said. “Central Park is full of them. Just like Georgia.”

Jayla cast him a dark look. “You ever seen a six-foot-tall, snow-white coyote, farm boy?”

Evan looked away, pouting. “Maybe.”

“It was a wolf.” Jayla’s eyes darkened. “Covered in blood.”

I swallowed loudly. “Maybe he or she was hurt?”

“No.” Jayla shook her head. “But the man it was eating sure was.”

Chapter Three

I do want to say I told you so.

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

The words in my head matched the rhythm of my sneakers on the street as I hightailed it back toward the Bronx. My friends’ laughter echoed faintly in the distance as they trudged back to the apartment they shared a few blocks south of the cinema. Normally, it was a comfort to be able to hear them for as long as I could, but now…

I want to say it again.

Shut up.

She had, of course. Told me so. Every Friday and Saturday for the last four years, and pretty much any time my thoughts drifted toward my friends during the week. But I had refused to listen then, and I refused to listen now. Jayla’s disturbing story didn’t change anything between my friends and me. They were never going to find out that I was also a giant white wolf with blood on my muzzle every now and then.

But only from enemy shifters! I would never harm a human, and if one somehow forced my fangs in self-defense, I certainly wouldn’t eat them afterward. I didn’t know any shifters who would. And I knew a lot of shifters who really disliked humans.

Maybe the Manhattan Pack was more feral than I’d ever known, but I was pretty sure pre-teen Jayla had simply misunderstood whatever she’d witnessed in the North Woods. That wolf had probably just been standing over the body of another shifter in their human form. A troublemaker or an intruder.

Ah. So… someone like you?

Shut up!

I ducked my head into the frigid wind whistling down the concrete canyon. Once I reached 125th Street, there would be a short reprieve as I cut across to Third Avenue, but from there it would only get worse. If the wind caught my jacket flaps on the bridge, I’d probably go flying over the river like a sugar glider.

Damn this broken zipper.

---