Page 26 of The Awakened Wolf

“No, seriously. What kind of fluff-boy does something like this?” Evan gestured at my stomach as if I were a Cocker Spaniel he’d just sprung from the pound after a night of spaghetti and chicken-chasing with a mutt from the wrong side of the tracks.

I opened my mouth to tell him enough was enough, but with a bizarre digitally produced reproduction of whirring and gears, the hands on the massive digital clock came together and it let out the first of a series of deep chimes to mark the hour.

It was nine o’clock.

Chapter Ten

Kiana threw open the doors to her penthouse so hard they almost bounced back and hit me and Evan in our extremely tight faces. She snatched up the remote control to the lone digital decoration in her personal space, the television, which I hadn’t even noticed earlier because it was hidden behind a screen made to look like a Renaissance painting until she turned it on. Once the black mirror appeared, she dropped onto her golden jacquard throne, knees jiggling, fingers banging on the remote buttons.

“Of course, your sister doesn’t offer you the only seat.” Evan said, staring warily at my midsection like the facehugger from Alien could burst forth at any moment.

“I’m fine, Evan.”

I took a spot behind the throne where I had a good view of the news Kiana had found. Not picking up on the vibe, Evan followed me and threw his arm around my shoulders, prompting my wolf to suggest that we see how much blood loss he could survive. Fortunately, my human side was feeling a little vulnerable. I melted into him. This was how the younger me had wanted My Best Friend’s Wedding to end, after all.

When the footage from the battle came up in the news teaser, my stomach turned. As the anchors began speaking, the sensation of dread, cold and hollow in my gut, deepened. On top of the footage I’d already seen of Sebastian attacking Damien and whisking Yara away, there was amateur video from scores of cell phones, humans who’d been on the periphery of Damien’s control.

There was plenty of gore to terrify the masses. Coverage of the events had hit social media almost immediately, and it seemed like the entire world was melting down. There were stories on BBC, Al Jazeera, and NHK Tokyo. The crawl across the bottom of the screen screamed, “Storybook monsters are real and out for human blood.”

My hand flew to my mouth as the next clip showed two white wolves racing through the pouring rain, stopping only to bite what looked like dead bodies. That was bad enough, but when the next clip showed those bodies reanimating, jerking and screaming to hybrid shifter life before shuffling after me into the woods, Kiana and I cursed in unison. The real word. Not fluff.

“We’d like to welcome Trent Fallon, our chief science correspondent,” the perky co-anchor chirped, her dark eyes wide like she couldn’t believe her own luck. “To address concerns from the public that this may be viral or some sort of contagion.”

“Oh my Gods, what?” I startled. “They can’t possibly think—”

“They don’t know what to think, Elyse,” Evan said. “Trust me, I can see it from their perspective and this…” He paused. “This is every human’s worst childhood nightmare come true. Like World War Z and Alma Mater Animalis had an unholy baby.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Kiana said, whirling in irritation. “No babies. We call them pups.”

As the clips kept coming, my stomach stopped trying to escape my body and my focus returned. Though the anchors and their pundits were airing all kinds of preposterous apocalyptic scenarios, there was something missing. One critical detail. With all this footage, from every angle of the park, starting before Sebastian and I showed ourselves and finishing long after the last shifters had melted away, there was not a single shot of the One-Eyed Man and his wolves. Before I could point this out, the anchors stopped their coverage to shift to a press conference.

We watched as Governor Mantel took the stage. I wasn’t one to pay much attention to politics, especially human politics, but the image of Mantel as he strode to the podium gave me immediate ick. You know when you touch something gooey unexpectedly, like on the underside of a restaurant table? The recoil is instant. That was how I responded to the oily man.

He was telegenic, to be sure, with his tall thin frame and perfectly gelled silver hair. But his eyes didn’t smile with his lips, and he seemed to have crafted his hand gestures from a grab-bag of the last three U.S. Presidents. He gave me the creeps. At least he wasn’t leaning into the hysteria, instead taking the, “There’s no reason to panic” high-handed blah, blah, blah about declaring a state of emergency in NYC.

“And so,” he said, his voice nasal but firm, “we ask that everyone cooperate with these new requirements, particularly around curfews, until we can get more definitive answers to what’s going on here. To that end, I’ve invited the world’s leading expert on wolf shifters: Godwin Moone.”

The gathered crowd, including some of the reporters, burst into applause. I was staggered. The idea of an expert on shifters was beyond strange, but people taking him seriously was the surest sign that we’d crossed over some invisible line. Shifters had gone from silly bedtime stories to monsters IRL in one day.

Kiana gasped, and I pressed hard against Evan, half expecting some kind of attack.

Was I jumpier these days than a pup on a hot sidewalk? Yes.

Could you blame me? No.

When my eyes returned to the screen it was my turn to gasp. Taking the stage and shaking hands with our Governor was none other than the One-Eyed Man himself. And he wasn’t alone. The two batshit wolves, Gary and Frecky, loped beside him. I almost laughed when I saw that they were leashed. That was clearly to placate the nervous humans because no strip of rope was going to hold back those hellhounds.

More shocking than their presence at a press conference though was how well Mr. Face-Hole cleaned up. He had a clean eye patch, a responsible but not extravagant gray suit, and his homeless chic hair and beard had been washed and neatly trimmed. But then again, we were in NYC. It couldn’t have been that hard to find a branding consultant, even on such short notice.

Laughter bubbled to the surface, and I coughed instead. I was losing it.

“Wow,” Evan said, his mouth quirking up. “I know this is a serious moment and all, but that dude is the spitting image of Odin.”

Kiana shot a glare at him. “Who?”

He turned to me. “I don’t expect this one to know Marvel movies, but come on, Elyse. You see it, right?”

Before Kiana could react to being called ‘this one’ again, I shushed Evan. Godwin Moone was speaking now.

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