Page 7 of The Forbidden Wolf

“Hey! Where are you?” I paused and then slapped my forehead. “The Apollo! When you said the theater—Well, I thought that was odd. Okay, okay, be right there.”

I shoved the phone back in my pocket and turned on my heel, marching westward with purpose. I knew the other shifters had already clocked me as an intruder, but hopefully the ones waiting on Third Avenue would fall for my ruse and head back south so they could circle around to head me off at another intersection.

When I was about twenty feet from Lexington, the male across the street began to move toward his corner. The shuffle of his footsteps told me he was trying to appear casual, but nothing could disguise the predatory vibes radiating off of him.

Dangerous, but sloppy.

Duly noted.

The pedestrian traffic signal shifted from little red hand to little walking man. I lengthened my stride, taking two steps past the short side of the green subway railing as if I meant to charge across the crosswalk. But my hand caught the corner post and wheeled me around to face the railing’s long side. In one smooth motion, I vaulted over the rail and dropped onto the stairs below.

Unfortunately, someone had recently left a puddle of pungent liquid exactly where I landed, a fact I remained blissfully unaware of until well after my feet had skidded out from under me and my right side had made contact with the hard edges of six distinct stairs. Until I was lying on the tile floor in front of the turnstiles, dazed, wet, and bruised like a stunt double from Home Alone 2. Listening to the train I’d hoped to catch rumble past on the level below.

Groaning, I lifted my head and made smoldering eye contact with the most beautiful male I’d ever seen. Minus his weird handlebar mustache, three missing teeth, and the inexplicable tattoo of an obscene doodle on his scruffy left cheek.

I blinked rapidly until my spinning mind separated the image of that perfect male specimen from the images people had added to him with black markers, and then I rolled my eyes. It was just another advertisement for that stupid streaming series. This time featuring Jayla’s future husband, who had apparently lost ninety percent of his clothes on his way to the photo shoot.

I rolled my throbbing right hip off the tile and pulled out my phone, trying not to think too hard about the damp splotch on my jeans. I needed to take a pic for Jayla so she could sleep easy knowing that her man hadn’t been written off the show. But when I held up the phone, I saw only hundreds of jagged white lines where the lock screen image of my future husband, Keanu Reeves, ought to be. The fractures immediately spread to my heart.

“No…” I shook my head. “No, no, no, no—”

Danger!

A shiny black boot swung into view, kicking the phone out of my hand. I yelped in pain, instinctively cradling my injured fingers with my left hand. The boot came down, pinning both hands just below my heaving chest, which the owner of the boot was openly ogling as he loomed over me. He looked a bit like Westley, actually, with his fair ruffled hair and piercing blue eyes, but I was pretty sure this was not the beginning of a storybook ending.

My assailant frowned. “What does it mean?”

“Huh?” I choked out.

He nodded at my chest, and I fought the urge to try to hook my leg around his and unbalance him. He was currently applying just enough pressure to hold me down, but one wrong move, and my lungs might squirt out my ears. So I humored him and glanced at my chest. My jacket had fallen open, revealing the silly human T-shirt underneath. There were five stars lined up across my breasts, the first one colored in gold while the others remained empty shapes. Underneath, big blocky letters read: Adulting. One Star.

“Nothing,” I grunted. “It’s just the first shirt I grabbed.”

“For trespassing?” The male ground his heel into my knuckles.

“Yes,” I hissed. There was no point pretending otherwise.

The male tilted his head, smiling thinly. “Then you admit to knowingly and willfully entering our territory without permission?”

“I do.” With an inward sigh, I pushed out my lower lip and batted my eyelashes. “But I don’t see why it matters. A few more weeks and—”

The male scoffed. “We’ll be one big happy family?”

I flapped my eyelashes harder. “Won’t we?”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” The male pressed down on my hands. “Stop that. State your business. Who are you meeting at the Apollo?”

I dropped the failing facade of feminine wiles and sneered, “Your mom.”

The male’s face crumpled with confusion. “My mother?”

Heavy footsteps echoed through the underground chamber, growing louder and louder until two new faces hovered above me. Their hungry eyes went straight to the stars printed on my chest. The three burly males wore nothing but boots and shiftskins, a brazen choice for roaming the city streets. The thin rubbery material clung to every line of their muscled forms. Thankfully, certain areas contained extra padding for privacy and protection, but claiming they were more modest than birthday suits was a bit of a joke. The only thing these outfits really left up to the imagination were their feet.

“She says she’s meeting my mother at the Apollo,” the first male whispered.

The second male gave him a withering look, but the third closed his eyes and deeply inhaled. When he opened them, they held an evil glint, and his mouth split into a lecherous grin. “Yeah, well, unlike your mom, this one’s never been mated. Not even once.”

Chapter Four

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